The Moon
Since I have no new paper cuttings as of late to show since I’ve been busy getting other things made, here’s some original art which I was gifted this evening. A youth’s rendition of the moon:
Music: Robbie Basho – Venus in Cancer
My Venus is actually in Gemini, but my Sun and Mercury are in Cancer, and I’m a Scorpio Rising.. wait, what, huh? Carl Jung says: “We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.” I digress.
I’ve totally been into Suni McGrath, Peter Walker, Robbie Basho & Sandy Bull lately – all in a similar vein.. it’s for real.
Splendid Sun
iPhone Hipstamatic photo taken somewhere, sometime in 2009.. no recollection really. Probably on an early morning drive to an art fair.
I woke up early this morning (err, 4am early) to do some work but was diverted by a comfy couch and hot tea and pleasant thoughts. (oops). Post sunrise: spent another 1.5 hours running on the river levy, with the sun to my face, eastward, and the moon to my face, westward, thanking both, in my unconventional way, that I get the time to do this.. (even though I’ve got lots of things that need doing). I wished I had my camera out there – the sun was covered behind a large gray cloud with shining silver lining – its beams stretching out past the cloud in all directions..
Excerpt from Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun by Walt Whitman
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturb’d;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire;
Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities!
Tuesday, Tuesday
Thanks to all of you who placed orders over the last couple days — kept me busy today. Back to printing prints for this weekend’s show in Westport, Kansas City. I’ll be in booth #95 on Archibald close to the corner of Pennsylvania Ave.
FYI: all orders placed Friday, Sept. 7, thru next Wednesday, Sept. 12, will ship out Thursday.
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.