Years ago, at the Ontario Science Center, I saw a massive traveling exhibit on Chinese culture, which included people demonstrating traditional crafts like double sided embroidery (boggling, especially when the pictures are completely different) and paper cutting. As a kid, I was completely entranced by the elaborate designs the artists were doing freehand with their tiny, tiny scissors and a tremendous amount of patience. Here's an example (click thumbnail):
On this side of the world, Nikki McClure does something similar, with a decidedly contemporary and Western spin (click the thumbnail for enlargement):
Her pieces may not have the same kind of delicacy or intricacy that the Chinese versions have, but they're equally intricate in their emotional content. The wider cuts and use of black and white make them look like ink drawings. What's interesting about McClure, at least for me, is that she's self-taught. Self-taught as I am too, I love to see people who haven't been through the art school mill making successful careers with their raw talent. One of the most talented artists I know, Adam Cvijanovic, who's finally making it very big, is also self-taught, and now teaching at Rhode Island School of Design. Seeing this kind of professionalism in self-taught artists always gives me hope. (Via Core77.)
And then Kako Ueda's work showed up on the ever-fascinating Phantasmaphile. They're a slightly different variation on the theme. They have the same intricacy you see in the Chinese paper cuts, but a completely different sensibility. Most of her work is monochrome, in black or red, but a few pieces are multicolored like this one, which is something you don't see often in this kind of art.
I saw Beatrice Coron's work a few years ago at one of the annual Center for Book Arts holiday shows and recognized it immediately when I saw it again on the web. She has a very distinctive style, and she works also on tyvek. What I like about her work is its very large scale. In one series, she's taken it upon herself to do silhouettes of people going about their lives in apartment buildings. Scads of apartment buildings. It's a bit like Robert Doisneau's The Lodgers, on a huge scale. (click thumbnail)
Chris Natrop has this kind of multi-colored, multi-layered and much more abstract thing going on. This one strikes me as whimsical and yet a little creepy somehow. It's quite varied and some of it far more intricate and he's not averse to adding a little paint or tape or glitter nail polish, even.. Many of the pieces are hung several inches out from a colored background so you get color through the cuts and the shadow also becomes part of the piece.
And who knew there was a Guild ofAmerican Papercutters? Now you do. (Beatrice Coron and Chris Natrop via Painting Speech.)
I love this stuff, but it's safe to say I'd never do it. No patience. And besides, it requires the use of sharp things, so no doubt it would be death by a thousands cuts for me.
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