Colette Fu

• Name — Colette Fu • Birthplace — Princeton, New Jersey • Education — * Rochester Institute of Technology • Virginia Commonwealth University • Yunnan Nationalities University • University of Virginia • Occupation — Book artist, paper engineer, artist, photographer, teacher • Mother — Pearl Fu • Awards — Fulbright Scholarship, Leeway Transformation Award, En Foco New Award, Puffin Foundation Artist Grant, Society of Photographic Education Achievement Scholarship, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artist Fellowship • Website — colettefu.com • Illustration — For Our Ancestors at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists • Illustration — Noodle Mountain at Grounds for Sculpture • Illustration — Alex, from Good Day Philadelphia, visits Tao Hua Yuan Ji

Fu, born in Princeton, New Jersey, is the daughter of mainland Chinese immigrants. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Fu traveled to China with a student tour and shortly returned for three years to teach English and, later, to study Mandarin and art in Yunnan Province. Fu traveled throughout Yunnan, where her mother, member of the Nuosu Yi community, was born, photographing various people in ethnic dress. After returning to the United States, Fu studied photography at Virginia Commonwealth University and Rochester Institute of Technology, where she began collaging images into detailed hyperreal fantasy scenarios.

She teaches pop-up courses and community workshops at art centers, universities and institutions internationally. Her large-scale, three-dimensional pop-up books feature photographic images which extend towards the viewer for many layers. During an artist residency in Shanghai, Fu designed China's largest pop-up book. Pop-up and flap books originally illustrated sociological ideas and scientific principles; she constructs her own books on how our selves relate to society today. In 2008, Fu was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to create a pop-up book of the 25 ethnic minority groups residing in Yunnan Province, China, from where the artist's mother's family descends. 25 of 55 minority tribes of China reside in Yunnan and comprise less than 9% of the nation's population, with the Han representing the majority. She uses her artistic skills to spread knowledge and provide a brief portrait of their existence. Fu's well-received pop-up book series include: • Haunted Philadelphia explores the psychology of fear and spookiness in locations around the city, such as Fort Mifflin, Rodin Museum, Academy of Music and the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry. • We Are Tiger Dragon People, started in 2008, is a series of pop-up books showcasing the diversity of ethnic minority communities in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. The books feature aspects of the local culture: festivals, clothing, dance, folklore, deities, and people. • Tao Hua Yuan Ji, created at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, is the World's Largest Photo Book measuring 13.8 x 21 feet, and 5 feet high. People could enter into the pop-up book. • Noodle Mountain at Grounds for Sculpture. Fu's commercial clients for paper engineering have included LVMH, Vogue China, Canon Asia, Greenpeace and Children's Medical Center in Texas. Fu's books are in collections including Library of Congress, Getty Research Institute, Yale University, Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Colette Fu's projects have taken her across the globe and can take years to fully materialize. With the help of a Fulbright fellowship, a recent endeavor found her in southwest Yunnan Province, China, where she studied the local population, learned about their culture and immersed herself in the daily life of its people. The project took ten years to complete, but resulted in some of Fu's most notable work.

• Year — Title — Location • 2023 — Wishing Tree — Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island, WA • 2022 — Medium & Message: The Book Art of Colette Fu and Lothar Meggendorfer — The Rosenbach, Philadelphia, PA • 2021 — What the Butterfly Dragon Taught Me: Dimensional Stories in Paper — Center for Book Arts, NYC • 2019 — We are Tiger Dragon People — Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA • 2018 — We are Tiger Dragon People — Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin and Marshall College • 2017 — Tao Hua Yuan Ji: Source of the Peach Blossoms — Philadelphia Photo Arts Center • 2016 — Wanderer/Wonderer: The Pop-up Books of Colette Fu (catalog) Bold Broadsides and Bitsy Books — The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC • 2015 — Land of Deities — Georgetown University, Washington, DC • 2013 — We are Tiger Dragon People & Photo Binge — Jaffe Center for Book Arts, Boca Raton, FL • 2011 — Haunted Philadelphia — Philadelphia Athenaeum, Philadelphia, PA

• Making Books with Kids: 25 Paper Projects to Fold, Sew, Paste, Pop, and Draw by Esther K. Smith, 2016. Fu's Spinning Flower Pop-Up, page 83. • Playing with Pop-Ups: The Art of Dimensional, Moving Paper Designs by Helen Hiebert, 2014. Fu's pattern for a pop-up version of Philadelphia's First Bank of the United States is on pages 60–63.