Papercuts

We've all folded paper and cut snowflakes, haven't we?

My first glimmer of what could be done with cut paper was when a colleague brought some back from China in 1978 when he went back to the old family home - there it's a folk craft as well as a fine art -
That, or something else, inspired me to make some - out of tissue paper, which proved hard to mount onto cards. Live and learn.

Scherenschnitt was brought over to the new world to become part of "Pennsylvania Dutch" and similar cultures.

In Jewish culture, papercuts are made exclusively by men

In Poland, papercuts incorporate rich colour -

and probably anywhere there is paper and scissors, there's a papercutting tradition.

Contemporary papercut artists include Beatrice Coron, who often uses Tyvek
Annie Vought,

Rob Ryan, who seems to be "everywhere" at the moment, even on magazines and London Underground -
Laura Cooperman,
Canadian artist Ed Pien who cuts huge sheets of shoji -
and Peter Callesen,
to name but a few, and to leave out Su Blackwell and Georgia Russell, among others.

You can be a papercutter too, if you have an hour to spare - look here for Jeffrey Rudell's instructions.

And have a look at Lotte Reiniger's animated, papercut films - from the 1920s and 30s. There are some on youtube.com.