The Five Year Note

The other week I was switching things around in my studio and decided to change some of the items I’ve had on my bulletin board for years. It’s a mix of things like invitations for shows, postcards with images I like, and bits of ephemera, leaves, and feathers. Everything has been up so long and unchanged that I’ve ceased to really see them anymore.

Laser cut letters

Included in these items was a note I’d written in September 2010 during a professional development workshop for artists. We were asked to tell ourselves what we would like to have accomplished in five years. I hadn’t looked at this note in some time, and I was surprised to realize that the full five years had almost passed since writing it. It’s 2015, and the future is now!

I had mixed feelings about reading the note, but overall I felt good. I’ve achieved many of the things I’d hoped for, while others are no longer important. One thing that stuck out from the note was my expressed desire to be working as a full time artist by 2015 and no longer need to work at something else part time. The reason this stuck out more than anything else is because I read this just as I’m starting a new part time job (which I’ve very excited about, by the way…) and shifting gears a bit from art as my full time focus.

Making art is my passion but it’s difficult to make a living at showing and selling (especially in the small Vancouver market). I’ve also found I need more than just art-making to keep me happy and stimulated, hence all the volunteer events I’ve worked on over the past few years. Now I’m at the point where I need the organizing and events to bring in income, because doing things for “the love” doesn’t pay rent and fill bellies with food.

I’m in a period of reassessing and reevaluating many aspects of my life, including how I pursue my art career. I’m allowed to change my mind, and what’s important now may not be five years from now. Finding the note was a good way to check in on how far I’ve come, how things have changed, and also how much I’ve managed to accomplish. But there’s still much to do, and I’ll be writing a new note to my future self to help guide me.

Purely Paper Exhibition Photos

The opening reception for Purely Paper last Thursday evening was a packed affair. I was pleasantly surprised the show drew a large enthusiastic crowd to the North Shore to see the work.

Here are a few photos of the exhibition (mostly so my mom can see it), to give you an idea of what it looks like. It’s a good mix of work by the five participating artists – Joseph Wu, Connie Sabo, Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi, Anyuta Gusakova, and me. It’s a beautiful show and I could not be more pleased to be a part of it.

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

Purely Paper

There are a few more photos in an album on Flickr. The exhibition continues until April 11th, 2015.

Kirigami Demonstration at Cityscape Gallery

I’ve been invited to demonstrate paper cutting as an activity during the North Shore Art Crawl this Saturday at Cityscape Gallery. I’ll be teaching visitors how to create simple symmetrical kirigami designs through cutting and folding, exactly like the examples I’ve included here.

I was doing research into spring-themed designs and came across these ones for sakura. Of course I had to make one of my own.

kirigami-sakura

Kirigami paper cuts

Kirigami paper cutting demo
Cityscape Community Art Space
Date: Saturday March 7th, 2015
Time: 1pm to 3pm
Location: 335 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver

Spring Flowers in February

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While the rest of North America is buried under oodles of snow, the West Coast glories in an early spring and an abundance of flowering trees same can be said for some of the flowers in Ireland. The downside though is that some of these trees are flowering weeks or a month too early, and that part is alarming. I worry for the long term health of these lovely trees.

Spring flowers in February

Spring flowers in February

Spring flowers in February

Spring flowers in February

Spring flowers in February

Spring flowers in February

I love spring.

Purely Paper at Cityscape Gallery

Purely Paper is coming soon…

purely-paper-poster

A paper art exhibition featuring large scale installations, sculptures, drawings, origami and 2D & 3D paper cuts.

Participating artists: Joseph Wu, Rachael Ashe, Mehran Modarres-Sadeghi, Connie Sabo, and Anyuta Gusakova.

March 6 – April 11, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 5, 7:00-9:00pm
Cityscape Community Art Space
335 Lonsdale Avenue
North Vancouver
Visit the NV Arts Council website for more details.

Meditating in Paper

I shared the backlit rear view of this piece at the end of last week, and now here is the front. I’ve been making variations of this style of work a few times over the last few years, but this is the most perfect and largest version to date.

Meditation

The first photo above was taken while the work was still in-progress, and the last photo in this post is the completed version. You can see refinement in the completed shape because I was working towards a circle, which is about 13 inches in diameter.

Meditation-3

Meditation-5

Meditation-4

I think of creating these pieces as an act of meditation, but there is something about looking at one that is meditative for the viewer. Even though I’ve made pieces like this several times I think there is more to explore, so I know I’ll be making more in the future.

When the Back is More Interesting Than The Front

Yesterday I was about to start framing up a finished 3D paper cut piece, but needed to document it beforehand. I took this photo of the back of the piece with my desk lamp shining through the middle. It has a dramatic effect on the appearance of this piece, and makes the pattern even more mesmerizing.

Untitled

One of the things I keep thinking about and would love to explore this year is creating paper cut light boxes. I know just the person to collaborate on this with (but have yet to reach out…)

I’ll share the front of this finished piece next week. It’s sitting in my dining room looking pretty wonderful at the moment.

Wave Paper Cut Commission

This is a small commission I completed for a client a couple of weeks ago and was waiting to share it until after it was given (and received) as a gift.

The requirements were for the paper to be cerulean blue, for the work be to made into a card that could be framed later, and for the design to be ocean-themed. It also needed to be turned around on short notice so I used an existing design I’d created for a previous commission.

Wave commission

Wave commission

Wave commission

I like this wave design enough to now consider creating it as a paper cut “print” for my Etsy shop. What do you think?