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Galen Gibson-Cornell in his studio in Philadelphia.
Galen Gibson-Cornell was born and raised in Maryville, Missouri and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from Truman State University in 2009, (which included a 2007 study-abroad in Angers, France). He completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin in 2013 and then set off on a year-long Fulbright fellowship to Budapest, Hungary. In the following years, Gibson-Cornell traveled to multiple international artist-residency programs, developing a creative practice based on urban exploration and repurposing found materials. His studio has been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2017.
Gibson-Cornell is fascinated with once-functional materials, specifically street posters. An itinerant traveler, he explores cities on foot, studying the layers of “urban skin” – posters, flyers, and paper advertisements that cover walls and signboards. His practice combines urban exploration, repurposing found materials, and principles of détournement (which means that the meaning behind his work is quite different than the meaning of the original street posters).” Gibson-Cornell is the first professional artist featured on Paper Talk who is also featured in my upcoming book, Weaving With Paper.
Aerial, by Galen Gibson-Cornell, 2022. 78 × 110 , found street posters from Berlin, Germany; Plovdiv and Sofia, Bulgaria; Buenos Aires, Argentina; New York City and Philadelphia; Venice, Italy; sliced and woven.
Aerial detail
L’Hiver, 2025.
We talked about the magnetic system he uses for installing his work. Here’s one example showing the system at work.
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You can find out more about Galen Gibson-Cornell on his website, and you can follow him on Instagram.
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Music featuring excerpts of Makin’ Paper folk song by Peter Thomas. Listen to the full song and find out about other paper and book arts folk songs.
Gary A. Hanson did the sound editing for this episode. He practices and refines his skills in audio production while making his own podcast I’ll Have a Beer and Talk, a show about tech news, culture, weird animal stories and of course, beer. Gary is also the Deckle in Pulp & Deckle, a Portland-based community hand papermaking studio.
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