I have a group show coming up in March of next year at Hot Art Wet City. Recently I came to a decision about the work I want to create for this exhibition, and so I started a new paper cut sculpture.

I want to have three of these triangle sculptures for the show. The one pictured here is the second, and the first I shared previously on my blog. Each will be cut in a different pattern. I want to show these inverted but I need to figure out how to make a stand for them.

Part of my plan for these sculptures is to translate them into another more durable material using laser cutting. I’ll be digitizing the individual pieces before I finish and assemble the completed sculpture. I think this will look amazing in wood or metal.

The second series I began working on a week and a half ago (along with the one I mentioned previously) is a revisit to the land of circle cut layers of paper. It’s a darn good idea and I decided it needn’t end with white rabbits.

The first animals that came to mind were snails, owls, and crows because they are amongst my favourites. I cut a somewhat sloppy owl face that I will probably redo, but the snail is simple and perfect.

Progress on the snail paper cut layers was coming along nicely until I accidentally dripped blue ink onto the piece. That’ll teach me to not to leave work on the floor while other work involving ink is going on.

What are your favourite animals? I’m open to suggestions, as long as they suit the circles.

The saying goes, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”. But what should an artist do when a piece of art with hours of work already invested into it starts turning to lemons?

I don’t often find myself in this type of situation because I am a process-driven artist and I don’t have a specific result in mind from the start. I am interested to see how something will evolve as I work. But once in awhile things still go awry.

The two cut paper vessels that I’m sharing in this blog post began life as a single piece of 19″ x 25″ black paper. My intention was to make a large rectangular structure I could hang from the wall. The more I worked on it, the less I liked it. I realized I was happy with the paper cutting but the structure was too boring. It also reminded me too much of a decorative designery thing for candles that someone would buy from Crate & Barrel.

I decided to salvage the situation by cutting the paper in half with the idea I would create smaller individual structures from each piece. I couldn’t leave it as one piece because I’d already scored the paper for folding into a rectangle.

I’d left an uncut edge along one side of each piece so I could attach a piece of paper and create a bottom to the structure. The first strip of cut paper became a wide cylindrical shape. It’s about eight inches in diameter and nine inches at the tallest point.

With the second strip of cut paper I decided to aim for an irregular structure. I had the piece of paper curve around three circles as the bases and wound up with what you see here. It was an experiment, and the end result is a bit wonky but interesting.

As a side note, the paper I used for these was a bit lighter than I normally work with and I think it may be a bit too delicate for creating more structural pieces. Working with black was also a nice change from all the white I’ve been doing lately.

Thank goodness this piece was flexible enough to salvage and transform into something else. I think what I’ve ended up with has turned out to be much more interesting than my original idea.

I realize as I work on these structural paper cut pieces that I am exploring two very different things and trying to make them work together. It’s one thing to make a paper cut design that will be displayed as flat and in a frame, and quite another to translate it into a free-standing sculpture. I’m also trying to work out how to make interesting structures from paper that can support themselves when most of the material has been removed.

With this latest piece I was trying to take a slightly different approach than the previous work I finished last week, but I ended up creating the same structure, just with a different paper cut design.

The variation I attempted with this was to score the bottom and sides to create folds in the paper. I don’t quite have enough understanding about how to do this, so my folds didn’t work the way I thought they should. I was also going to taper the structure at the top and attach it together but threw that idea out the window as well.

I want to play around with structural explorations on their own without doing all the work of cutting paper, just to properly educate myself. But the paper cutting makes a big difference to the integrity of the piece, how it holds together, and its ability to stand.

Just in case you’re wondering, the finished size for this one is 8″ high, 6″ wide, and 3″ long. I hope I can eventually make something even larger.

After I finished the paper cut pyramid last week I began to work on a second piece with a different approach to making something three dimensional. Instead of creating the structure from a single sheet I used scraps of paper cut into triangles of different sizes, two as sides, and one as a bottom piece. I wanted to cut the design first and then attach the paper together afterwards.

I spent a lot of time cutting paper and not so much on determining the structure, but I wanted to see how well pieces of paper can support themselves when most of the material is cut away. It sags of course, especially on the sides that are unattached. I would need to include more structural support if translated into a larger scale.

It’s a lovely piece, and I think the shadows are an integral part of it.

For the next prototype I will do less with paper cutting and focus more on structure just to see where this will take me. Stay tuned.