Yuuki Visits the Hospital

The Canada Day long weekend began in a less than promising fashion when I had to rush Yuuki to the bird hospital on Friday morning. As soon as I uncovered his cage I could tell he wasn’t functioning properly, and he appeared to be experiencing what I interpreted as a seizure. I packed him up and took him across town to the Night Owl Bird Hospital where they took him in straight away for an assessment.

It appears the little guy had a stroke, and was experiencing an irregular heart beat as well as liver problems. The doctor felt he would recover and wanted to keep him over night. I really feared the worst and kept dreading a call saying he’d passed away.

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This is Yuuki on Friday afternoon a few hours after he arrived at the hospital. He was very sleepy and out of it.

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Twenty-four hours later I visited him at the hospital again and he was much more his usual lively self. The doctor decided to keep him for observation and treatment until Tuesday, just to make sure he’d be alright.

Yuuki

It was a relief to bring him home yesterday. He’s doing better, though I have to keep him in an enclosure that restricts his movements and he has many medicines to take throughout the day.

I’ve been calling him “old man Yuuki” for the last while and now he really seems like an elderly gentleman with these health problems. I have no idea how much longer he’ll be around, but I plan to appreciate him while he’s here. That’s all you can ever do with someone you love.

Paper Cutting in a New Dimension

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.

Paper cut and folding in my Sketchbook

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.

Paper-cut and folding
Paper-cut and folding - detail

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

A Fruitful Experience at Vancouver Maker Faire

I’m exhausted today after spending the last few days sharing my work and talking with people at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire. This year I had two tables set up, one to display my work, and a second as an activity table with books for people to work on.

Vancouver Maker Faire

Vancouver Maker Faire

I taught a few people how to make paper flowers on the first day, then switched to encouraging book page folding on Sunday. By the end of it there were four books on the go that became collaborative projects with pages folded by many different people. A few people started their own book and took it home with them to complete.

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I really loved seeing parents sitting down with their kids to try different things with the books or pages, like this little girl and her father. I showed them my new favorite paper cutting technique and they made a tiny lantern from a book page.

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A few kids did origami with the scraps of book pages. I was really impressed with the paper crane folded by a young girl, as it’s a fairly complex set of folds that I find difficult to do. She made it look easy.

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Vancouver Maker Faire

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These final four photos are the collaborative altered books folded by many hands. They’re a wonderful mishmash of different folds, cuts, and sometimes crunched up pages. The books I had on hand were a donation from the librarians at Bull Housser, as they’ve been in the process of decommissioning some of their law books.

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I love being part of Maker Faire because it feels like a celebration of community and creativity that breaks down the silos. I will definitely continue to be a part of this event every year, and look forward to watching it grow.

A HUGE thank you to Boris, Monique, and James for their support and assistance in running my booth over the weekend.

Mapping Circles to Triangles

I thought I’d share some quick snaps of the overall piece made from maps I shared a detail of last week. The individual pieces are connected together in long strips but the strips aren’t yet attached to each other. I still want to play around with composing the overall form and figure out how many paper cuts it makes sense to include. I feel there is an infinite number of ways these triangle pieces could be arranged and composed.

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The picture below is what remains of the maps after I’ve cut all the circles. I’ve set these aside to use in some future collage. I love how they all look layered together.

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I’ve been working on a few other projects and haven’t been able get any further with this. Hopefully I can get some focused time in the studio later this week and will share more.

Vancouver Mini Maker Faire Arrives This Weekend!

Vancouver Mini Maker Faire is just FOUR DAYS AWAY and my personal excitement about this is through the roof. I attended the final Town Hall meeting a few weekends ago, which brought together many of the participating Makers for a walk through of the location at the PNE.

The Forum building is HUGE (!) and it’s going to be filled inside and out with evil robots, crafts, eco-art, farming, steampunk, a fire piano, 3D printer village, hacking, glass blowing, stone carving, not to mention altered books, and…..well you get the idea. (Check out a detailed list of Makers on the web site).

If you’re at Maker Faire please drop by my booth for a visit. I will have a display of my work as well as an activity table available for people to make things from book pages.

Vancouver Mini Maker Faire
Dates: Saturday June 23rd to Sunday June 24th, 2012
Time: 10am to 6pm (both days)
Location: PNE
Tickets: Visit the Maker Faire site to purchase tickets in advance »

1000 Artists’ Books is Here!

And it’s a really nice book, packed with pages and pages of book art in its many forms. I like the selection of images on the front cover because they really challenge the idea of what a book should look like.

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You can find my piece, Forgotten Knowledge, in a tiny corner on page 284. I am thrilled to be included, and hope someday I can have a three page spread devoted to my work as Brian Dettmer has in this book.

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If you’re in Vancouver, ask for this at Oscar’s Art Books and support an independent book store.

Rearranging the Landscape of Maps

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All the playing with paper last week is leading somewhere interesting this week as I continue to work with maps. I’ve been cutting many circles and transforming them into triangles, which then in turn attach together to become a larger form. The play of shape, form, with the colours and textures of the map paper are making for interesting things.

Work in progress - Cut maps

Work in progress - cut maps

I haven’t included a photo of the overall work, but it’s about 33″ x 27.5″ at the moment and is made up of about one hundred cut circles. The bottom photo here hints at where I hope to go with this, and intersperse small paper cuts throughout.

Playing With Paper

This week I’ve been brainstorming ideas for upcoming proposals and projects, which has led to playing with paper in new ways. I broke out some of my books about working with book pages for ideas. These are some of the things I’ve ended up with.

Book page house
Book page house

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Paper tubes made from origami paper and bobby pins

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Circles and triangles, and recycled maps.

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It’s these last two photos that hint at the latest technique I’m going to obsessed with. It’s exciting to discover EVEN MORE things to create from paper.

A Murder of Paper Crows

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Last week I began working on an installation I’ll be presenting at Illuminares in July. I was pleased when my proposal was accepted because I love the lantern festival, and it’s a big step to move from an observer to a participating artist.

Paper crows

As you can see by my work-in-progress photos, the theme I’m focusing on is the crow. I’ve created a flock of fifty birds so far, each one individually cut from tyvek using four different card stock templates as guides.

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I chose to work with white paper because it will illuminate better than black, but I was also inspired by the rare albino crows. Imagine a whole flock of those and you get the idea.

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I still have a lot more work to do on this project, including making twenty to fifty more crows. I’m really enjoying the process of bringing this idea to life and how it’s evolved from my initial idea.

Save the evening of July 21st in your calendar if you’d like to see this installation in person.