Stadtanzeiger 2011

You can get up to a lot of things with
books: you can arrange them, dust them, collect, devour, stockpile, read, censor
or give them away.

But all that Ursula Traschütz doesn’t  do.

She tatters, rips, cuts, bends, cracks and
crumples pages and creates objects that unfold their own poetry.

Many of these paper artworks appear so
gentle and flimsy as if they were created by elves and not by a woman with a lot
of rage, but luckily even more humor in her belly. Whilst men in similar
situations tend to grasp something 20 years younger and blond, the trained
theater pedagogue and educator picked reading during her sleepless nights. No
clever divorce guidebooks gave her reinforcement but reams of yellowed
pages.

Since her childhood she was captivated by
books, says the Heidelberg born. In this context she originally concerned
herself with the question if the yellowed pages could possibly stain the human
soul. Until recently she was far away from paper art however.

After several employments in educational
sciences - psychiatry amongst others – she decided to become a businesswoman ten
years ago. Impressed by the idea to offer only “pretty things”, she established
her store “Shalima” only a stone’s throw away from the “Weißhaus” cinema.
Besides the vending of fashion she started to assemble objects from household
articles. Against the background that there was little or no taking notice of
what housewives accomplish, she created ironic-funny sculptures from tea bags,
sandwich bags or baking parchment.

May be the small and also the large works of
art appeared to be so easy, because no accusal or allegation could be seen in
them. The mother of three sons (and grandma to a grandchild) plays with words
and emotions. Above all she does it in her paper works, thanks to the fact, that
the shop used to accommodate a second hand bookshop and the owner appreciated
not having to clear the cellar.

“Wortwiese”, “Literaturfraß”, “Blattwerk”
and other sculptures have one thing in common: nearly exceptionally they all
consist of what books have to offer. Currently Traschütz works at her
“Facebook”, a book whose pages are cut and fitted into the profile of a face.
“When I first started with it, it seemed to be like an explosion to me.
Something started to flow and I am glad that it is still sputtering.

Speaking of sputtering: should someone has
to give off a surgeon knife apart from yellowed books, the paper artist could
speed up the operational part of her activities.

Text from Susanne Hengesbach Kölner Stadt Anzeiger 2011