Stars
“On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars – Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There’s no need to say another word.” -Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Music: Sandy Bull – No Deposit, No Return Blues
Major printing & art show prep happening.. a day of labor on labor day.
Tea For Two II – Commissioned
8 x 10 inch commissioned paper cutting based on my original work “Tea For Two” — but with owls.
Commission in Progress
Finishing up a commission to drop off in Wichita today. I’ll also be be dropping off a whole bunch of new greeting cards at Bella Luz when I go in to pick up my originals that have been on display there over the last month.
Music: Gosdin Brothers – The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Of all the gazillions of renditions of this song, the Gosdin Brothers’ version is my favorite.
Recap: Read Across Lawrence Paper Cutting Workshop
Today I facilitated a paper cutting workshop at the Lawrence (Kansas) Public Library in conjunction with the Read Across Lawrence program. The workshop was inspired by the cover art of the featured RAL book “Cabinet of Wonders”. The turnout was great: 56 kids came and all actively participated.
My ultimate goal was to introduce them to simple paper cutting techniques and so I had them do three short projects based on characters or elements within the book.
The first was a bi-fold paper cutting based on the tin spider character, Astrophil, and inspired by chinese and german paper cutting. Since we were using scissors instead of x-acto knives, I stressed the importance of using their non-cutting hands to turn the paper rather than try to turn the scissors around the curves. This exercise introduced them to paper cutting in its simplest form and how you can achieve symmetry simply by using the fold.
The second project was a fox shadow puppet. I spoke very briefly on the history of shadow puppets out of Indonesia, and also how I started cutting paper using similar puppets for animation. I wanted them to see how to make a silhouette of a recognizable object as well as how it can have moving parts to bring it to ‘life’. The tail of the fox was hinged.
The third project was inspired by the astronomical clock that the main character’s father built in Cabinet of Wonders, as well as Polish paper cutting where several different colors of paper are layered on top of each other. Rather than give them a template for the cut out designs within the circles (which I did for the first project), I let them come up with their own designs by cutting shapes into tri-folded circles. Lots of different, unique results came out of it.
Many thanks to all the parents and kids who came and participated. My biggest hope is that they enjoyed themselves. And since paper cutting came to me so serendipitously, I always keep in the back of my mind that this little bit of exposure just might spark something greater in one of them. We’ll see.. Til next time.
Blue Moon
The clouds cleared way for me to catch sight of the blue moon this morning as I was driving. This pic doesn’t really do it justice — it looked much larger in person..
I’ve had a blue moon inspired paper cutting in my head for awhile — it may come to fruition sooner than later.