Lepidography™ is an original sculptural fine-art medium developed by Alina Blossom, built from hand-shaped silk wings and organized into dimensional, archival compositions. The medium explores transformation, fragility, and permanence through a language that merges image, material, and structure.
Each Lepidography work is constructed from individually formed silk-wing elements. Through controlled heat, tension, and pigment layering, flat silk is transformed into sculptural forms with lifted edges, curvature, and depth. These wing structures are then assembled into carefully composed surfaces that function simultaneously as image and object - inviting close viewing while asserting a physical presence in space.
Conceptually, Lepidography is rooted in photography. The works originate from the artist’s own photographic images, which are translated and re-encoded into silk. Through this process of transformation, the photographic image dissolves, giving way to a sculptural language in which representation is no longer fixed to a surface. What begins as an image becomes a tactile, spatial construction shaped by light, repetition, and material behavior.
Rather than depicting butterflies, Lepidography abstracts the idea of wings as a universal form - symbols of transition, vulnerability, and renewal. The medium does not document nature. Instead, it uses wing-like structures as a language for emotional and conceptual mapping. Individual elements function like fragments of memory, while their accumulation forms larger psychological or spiritual architectures.
Lepidography works are organized into distinct conceptual series, including Specimens, Fragments, Duality, Eternity, Mandalas, and Waterfalls. Each series follows its own structural logic and visual rules, allowing the medium to evolve across scales and meanings - from intimate studies of identity to expansive meditations on continuity and transcendence.
By bridging photography, textile sculpture, and conceptual abstraction, Lepidography occupies a space between disciplines. It challenges the boundary between surface and volume, image and object, delicacy and endurance. The result is a sculptural medium that transforms silk - a traditionally fragile material - into an archival, contemplative form capable of holding memory, tension, life cycles, and transformation over time.