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Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, now based in NYC, creates beautiful paper cut-out trees from bags, bills, and even toilet paper rolls. In his paper bag sculpture series, Notice – Forest, the trees are cut from the top of the bag and folded down to be viewed within the bag, giving the illusion that the bag is holding the fragile tree, when in actuality it is the tree that is holding up the bag.

Green Economy, a series where the trees were cut out and folded up from international paper bills, was a project done to illustrate a New York Times Magazine article. And Corner Forest is his series from toilet paper rolls, where the delicate branches cut from the cardboard tubes extend out to create a lovely forest. In a sense, it’s as though the trees are allowed to come full circle, from tree to paper to paper tree.

Currently, some of Teruya’s work can be seen as part of a group show at 601Artspace through the end of April, here in New York.