This year I’ve returned to an important part of my process that I hadn’t been utilizing as much over the past year or two. I’ve been starting a new piece by first making a prototype of the idea. My approach with this one was to scale way down from the size I wanted to do as a finished piece, in this case 5″ x 7″ rather than the eventual 25″ x 38″.

This is Yupo Translucent, a synthetic tree-free paper I’ve been wanting to explore in my work. I decided to use it to make a layered installation piece, that I’m hoping will also incorporate backlighting. (Fingers-crossed!)

The tiny prototype allowed me to get the idea out of my head and into reality so I could confirm it would work the way I imagined.

I created this towards the end of January and have been steadily working away on the larger nine layered piece since then. I finished it over the weekend and can’t wait to share it in an upcoming group show featuring paper artists later this year. Stay tuned!

In some ways I feel like 2019 is a bit of a do-over for all the things I’d planned to do in 2018 that got washed away by the flood. Printmaking was high on the list of goals last year that was no longer possible without a studio to experiment in.

I kicked off my studio time in the first week of January with lino printing a pattern using very colourful inks on Canson paper. This was in preparation for a paper cutting and pattern mixing experiment on a large scale, and I wanted custom paper to do it with.

I printed each circle by hand, working quickly and carefully to line things up. I created it as a one-off print because I wanted something colourful and patterned to work with to see how well it would interact with the negative/positive of cut paper.

I drew a whole bunch of patterns on the back of the paper, choosing to use repetitions of geometric shapes, and a few of my favourite Japanese textile patterns. I was trying to keep them as simple as possible for the sake of the experiment because I knew cutting would take the longest.

I filmed a hyperlapse video of me working on one of the final sections the other day. My cutting process is different with these because I can make a cut to multiple pieces before shifting the paper into a different angle. With my unique patterns created through spontaneous process, I complete each shape before moving onto the next one.

I’ll share the finished pattern mixing piece in another blog post.

For the past few weeks I’ve been slowly working on the first in a series of new paper cut pieces. The work has been slow because for the first time ever I am drawing the design first before cutting. I usually generate the designs by cutting directly, with minimal pre-planning. It feels like a big shift in the work, and it definitely makes it way more time consuming to produce.

The bits and pieces pictured here are details of this new work exploring pattern mixing, using the Japanese designs I learned to draw over the summer. The full size of the work is 25.5″ x 19.5″, cut from Canson Mi-Teintes paper. It’s been an awkward project to work on a I try to maneuver it around the easel while drawing or cutting, and not wreck the parts I’ve already completed. (It happens sometimes).

It started out as an experiment to explore an idea I’ve had for ages, and I’m hoping it will end up as a successful piece of work.