Tour the Paper Plant-Filled, Eclectic Home of a Brooklyn Artist and Author

Author and expert crafter Corrie Beth Hogg's favorite medium has extended its invasive reach from her day job to the interior walls, shelves and tables inside her Brooklyn home. And it all started with a simple sketch. "I've been making since I was a very young kid," Corrie says. "My grandmother taught me how to sew and make quilts, and I also used to make lots of drawings [and] portraits. On road trips, my brother and I would sit in the back seat and he would read The Hardy Boys and I would sit there with a yellow notepad and just draw and draw and draw. It’s always been my passion."

Years later, an apartment with very little natural light would inadvertently turn a childhood pastime into a full-time career in art and design. "This living room doesn’t get any direct sunlight, so I can’t have any houseplants in it," Corrie explains. "And I really wanted a fiddle leaf fig ... everybody you know was crazy about fiddle figs. So I made one from paper and it was an addictive process, and I just kept making more."

A paper pitcher plant, ornamental yam and pilea share the space with one of Corrie's first large paper DIYs. And like any work of art, early drafts always provide a springboard for inspiration and growth. "This [is] a fiddle leaf fig and it's a little more cartoon-y," Corrie says. "But this is the beginning. The first few were a little more stylized, and then just by doing a bunch of them I started to see that they were becoming more realistic looking."

"Working with paper was something that I picked up from my day job," Corrie says. "One of the projects I had to do many years ago was make a life-size baby giraffe out of kraft paper — you know, the brown paper. I was like, 'Oh, this is a cool medium to make sculpture with!' And it had never occurred to me before because it’s inexpensive and it’s ubiquitous and it’s easy."