I’ve been holding back on sharing a collection of recent paper cut work because until yesterday, I just hadn’t gotten around to photographing it all properly. I find it tricky to photograph the paper cut work, to capture the layers and textures, and make it readable to the viewers eye.

The two pieces included in this post are part of a series of four. I’ve decided to title them Wind & Water because their patterns remind me of both the ripples and eddies of water, and the billows of smoke and clouds.

Wind & Water series (1 of 4) 12″ x 12″

Each piece is cut from a single sheet of white paper and mounted within a wood cradle panel. I’ve shared the work below in a previous post but wanted to place it in the context of the rest of the series.

Wind & Water series (2 of 4) 12″ x 12″

I’ll share the other two from the series in a separate post. This work will be on display in my upcoming exhibition, Currents of Nature, opening this weekend at the Ranger Station Gallery in Harrison Hot Springs.

One thing I’ve been wondering lately is whether or not an artist still needs to maintain a print version of their portfolio or does digital suffice. I have no idea what the right answer to this is, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to have something in print. Rather than doing this photographically and inserting the prints into a a traditional (but boring) black portfolio case with plastic sleeves, I decided to make a digitally printed photo book.

I chose Snapfish because it came recommended by my friend Valerie Arntzen. She uses the service to print books on an annual basis to keep a record of the work she’s created over the course of each year.

Snapfish has a good variety of formats and sizes for their photo books. I chose the 5″ x 7″ Everyday Book, which costs $12.99 per copy and comes with a paper cover in your choice of colour. The book layout is created by using a browser-based interface, which takes a bit of experimenting with to get a feel for, but is fairly easy to use.

A big reason I chose Snapfish over other photo book services is because they have a Canadian website and reasonable prices for shipping to Canada. I had my books within a week of ordering, and the shipping cost $10. I’ve used Blurb Books in the past and their shipping costs were higher and the order took longer to arrive.

The print quality is excellent, and the work looks good and reads well despite the small size of the pages. I’m very happy with these little books and will definitely use Snapfish again to make more printed collections of my work.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been preparing for my upcoming solo show in July at the Ranger Station Gallery in Harrison Hot Springs. The exhibition is one part of the annual Harrison Festival of the Arts, which includes an art market, workshops, and plenty of live music.

It’s this musical aspect of the festival that has led me to create more instruments from paper. My friend Siobhan, a musician as well as a visual artist, loaned me a violin and a tambourine to use as reference. The violin proved to be a much trickier object than an acoustic guitar to puzzle out and reproduce as a three dimensional object in paper.

The tambourine was relatively simple by comparison. What I like best about making instruments from paper are the problem solving skills that kick in as I try to puzzle out how emulate some piece of the object normally carved from wood, or made from metal.

I will be making one final instrument for the show, a mandolin. I’m really hoping it will be easier to reproduce than the violin.

First there was Art. Next was Make. Now here is also the word Create as cut paper typography. Little did I realize when I started that this would become a series, but creating words is a bit addictive.

As with the previous two words, Create was freehand cut from a piece of 8.5″ x 11″ red card stock.

All of the cut paper typography work is available as a print, iPhone case, and more through Society6.

I’ve been busy working on exhibition proposals for possible shows in the next two years, and it’s been a great excuse to project farther into the future with my work. I really want the paper cut work to be three dimensional and my initial explorations led me to the structural/sculptural pieces I shared last month. But I also started thinking about ways to play with layers, and shadows within framed work.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Wisps, 2013 – 12″ x 12″ cut paper in cradle panel

Using the inside of a wood cradle panel as my frame, I sanded and painted it with a light wash of white. I cut the three strips that make up this piece separately from the one piece of paper and all are attached by a tab of paper at the top and bottom. The middle piece is slightly deeper in the frame than the others.

These are just some quick photos so the lighting isn’t quite right, but this way of integrating the paper cuts into the frame creates more depth. This is important to me because I wanted room for the paper cut pieces to cast interesting shadows, which will vary depending on the lighting.

With each new exploration I feel like I’m getting closer to where I want to be with the paper cutting work.