Canvas to the Imagination

Earlier in the fall I was invited to be part of an upcoming group show in Victoria that explores the theme of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. I hadn’t had any time until last week to figure out and create something new for this show because I don’t currently have anything appropriate. I was stumped and uninspired at first because the theme doesn’t really fit into my current body of work, and I’m reluctant to create one-off pieces just to satisfy the requirements of a group show.

I was actually really close to passing up on this opportunity. But I surprised myself and found my way through to creating work I am very pleased with. The White Rabbit was my inspiration and he took me down a rabbit hole of layers and layers of circles.

“Down the Rabbit Hole” | 10″ x 10″

Both of these are 10″ x 10″ with the cut paper mounted inside a wood cradle panel. There are three layers of paper in each one, and I used a compass cutter to cut the circles. I’d been playing around with this idea in my head because I have a circle cut pile of maps left over from a previous project, and I intend to do something with them. The layers work very well and build on my recent work of a single repeating shape.

To create the two rabbit silhouettes I sourced images of the white rabbit from google images, printed these out to the correct size and used them as a template. I left the details of each of them very minimal on purpose.

“Down the Rabbit Hole” | 10″ x 10″

I showed photos of these on Instagram as I worked on them last week and was thrilled to have such a positive reaction to the work. I’ll share more details about the show closer to the date next year.

Out of some crazy desire to try my hand at paper engineering in three dimensions, a few weeks ago I decided to make Halloween costumes for Boris and myself. The idea was somewhat driven by a commercial project that came my way and would involve making life-sized props from paper. Just the thought of working on these had my mind whirling with ideas so I decided to channel some of these into making the costumes while I waited to hear confirmation about the project.

For Boris I made a two foot high giraffe costume from yellow poster paper. It fits over his own head with a window in the neck for his face to peek through. It was nothing short of hilarious to have him continually try it on and all the silly antics that ensued. Boris painted the brown spots himself, which was the one thing I was willing to hand off to him.

Why a giraffe you might ask? It was something we’d joked about the previous year and I decided we needed to make it happen.

For my own costume I decided to make antlers, which is something I’ve always wanted to have, but with the whimsical twist of adding red leaves. I think of them as “tree branch antlers”.

As with the giraffe, I made these from poster paper. The trickiest part was figuring out how to attach them both to something and have them balance on my head. I used a black headband with elastic as the fitted strap that goes around the back of my head. They seem to balance just fine.

I finished the costumes the day before I began the more commercial project of making paper props for a video shoot. More about this in another post. Both projects have been a terrific learning experience, and made me tap into additional skills I wasn’t previously aware of.

I have stumbled upon yet another variation of cutting and working with paper. I sat down to play in my sketchbook last week and came up with this lovely technique I hadn’t thought about before of making a cut and then folding the paper. Suddenly my paper cuts have become three dimensional and I love it.

This top image is the idea I worked on in my sketchbook. I used the compass cutter for this one before moving outside the sketchbook and on to a larger piece of paper. For the larger piece below I used an xacto knife and cut the curves freehand.

I chose to work with this chart of geological survey information as my paper more because it was something I could grab quickly and not worry about experimenting with. It’s a happy accident that the lines of the chart combine in an interesting way with the curved shapes of the paper cuts.

It’s no wonder I am so addicted to the process of paper cutting because there is always something new to learn.