Sydney-based artist and designer Jaz Lynch hand-builds one-off sculptural lamps from paper pulp without moulds or templates, integrating electrical cords into the form and finishing each piece with a surface treatment drawn from printmaking to create objects that sit between functional design and art.
Each lamp in Jaz Lynch’s Electric Beams series begins with paper pulp and no plan for what it will become. There are no moulds, no templates, no repeatable process. The form develops through layering, carving and intuition, and when it is finished you can see exactly where it has been pushed, shaped and slightly resisted. That visibility is the point.
“With so much being generated and replicated, I wanted to make something that can’t be repeated,” Lynch says, “where the process leaves a visible trace.”
The inspiration comes from natural textures and formations: rock surfaces, coral-like growths, underwater landscapes. Colour and surface are treated almost like a lino print, giving each piece a bold and slightly raw finish that contrasts with the softness of the material underneath. The electrical components are not hidden. Cords wrap and fall across the forms, integrated into the composition and made part of the visual language, reinforcing the object’s function rather than apologising for it. The result sits somewhere between domestic nostalgia and sculptural strangeness.
“These pieces sit in that in-between space,” Lynch says, “not quite product, not quite sculpture, which is exactly where I think things get interesting.”
The series was prompted by a broader concern about what is being lost in an era of AI generation and mass production: the irregular, the tactile, the unmistakably handmade. Each lamp is a one-off with no editions. The works were shown together as a collection for the first time at an exhibition on 15 May, bringing the series into a shared space and into a conversation about materiality, process and the value of imperfection in contemporary design.
Jaz Lynch is a Sydney-based artist and designer working across branding, print and object design. Her practice explores the intersection of graphic language and sculptural form.
Website: jazlynchdesigns.com Instagram: @jaz_lynch
Electric Beams, 2025 to present. Paper pulp, hand-sculpted and painted. Acrylic paint and integrated electrical components. Unique works, no editions. Photography: Jaz Lynch.
