Three More Paper "Wizards"!

On two recent trips to local art fairs, I have discovered three more wonderful artists who do unique and beautiful things with paper. It is my delight to share the work of Dan Bi, Kent Davis, and Angie Pickman with you!

Dan Bi told me he uses X-Acto knives to cut his amazing designs.
He must go through about a million blades a year, to have them
sharp enough not to tear his delicate paper!

Dan Bi
Unfortunately, Dan doesn't have much of a web presence--just an email address. Thus, I can only share one image with you.

I normally go to art fairs with my camera, but I never take photos of individual booths or specific pieces of art unless I have permission. Dan had a business card, but was very busy when I talked with him at this year's Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City, MO. I got out of his way quickly, and planned to visit his website for more information to share. (so much for that plan!)

Fortunately, another blogger caught him at a moment when he had more time! Many thanks to "Nancy" and her All Pulped Out blog! She posted the only online example that I could be sure was Dan's artwork (see above).

Dan uses the traditional Chinese paper-cutting art form of Jianshi (also spelled jianzhi) to create his mind-blowingly intricate designs. The tiger shown here, although it is beautiful, is not the most detailed design I saw.

Kent Davis's Albedo demonstrates that he has a
whole new approach to paper, wood, and light!

Kent Davis
I don't think I've ever seen an approach to sculpture quite like Kent Davis's. I found him at the Art Westport annual show in Kansas City, MO, and immediately knew I needed to share his work here on the blog.

He has brought a new and elegant approach to illumination, wall sculpture, and the art of creating structures of paper and thin strips of wood. These pieces are sort of an apotheosis of what a box kite would become if it could glow, and take on amazing and complex new forms.

I've included a couple of images here, but they only give a small taste. For more of Kent's amazing art, spend some time on his Luminous Inspirations website! The pieces I've shown here both use white light, but he also has done some beautiful work with colored lights, that are well worth viewing and enjoying.

I love the elegant shapes in Kent Davis's Smoke.

Angie Pickman's Find Light Wherever You Go gives an
example of her elegant knife-work.

Angie Pickman
I've been admiring Angie's work all year at various local shows (most recently Art Westport), and it is high time I shared her work with you here!

I love the "design" feel of her cut-paper work, where color is used strategically in a limited palette, to maximum effect. Pickman's subjects are usually somewhat mystical, and always seem to reference nature in one way or another.

Pickman's Permeating Sentiment draws on several of her
frequent subjects to make its statement.

This work may trace its roots in part to traditional silhouette pieces, but she has far transcended them.  I like to get up close and observe the detailed precision of the cuts. Like Bi, she must go through case-lots of blades in the course of a year. Unlike Bi, however, she has a website, Rural Pearl, to which I can send you! She also has an Etsy Shop, and sells prints as well as the orignial cut-paper designs.

I think you'll enjoy the variety and beauty of her work, but I also hope you'll admire the skill and the strong sense of design that imbues her work.

PHOTO CREDITS: As noted, I am in the debt of Nancy and her "All Pulped Out" blog for the Dan Bi photo (you may want to explore her blog further--there are some interesting things on there!).  
The photos of Kent Davis's Albedo and Smoke are both courtesy of his website, Luminous Inspirations. As I mentioned above, there are many more designs on the site, including some that use colored light. 
The photos of Angie Pickman's Find Light Wherever You Go and Permeating Sentiment are courtesy of her website, Rural Pearl. She has many more wonderful things to look at there, so please take a look!

My first limited-edition paper sculpture

I've only completed one AP of Common
Cliff Dragon--Male so far. Here he is at his
August Art Night show debut--just before
his new owner took him home!

Common Cliff Dragon--Male is a small, relatively simple piece, but it breaks new ground for me. It is my first-ever limited edition of a multiple-original paper sculpture.

I've been working up to this for a bit more than a year and a half, since the first edition in the Mail Piece Project. My emphasis area for my undergraduate art major was printmaking, and most of my earlier fine art career was taken up with producing and helping to sell reproduction prints by myself and other artists, so the idea of a limited edition has never been strange to me.

During the first several years of doing paper sculpture, however, I couldn't see how I could possibly create a limited edition of them. Then I started the Mail Piece Project. Those pieces were more pop-up than paper sculpture, but as I worked on them I began to see more clearly how I could incorporate another "first love," ink drawing, into the process, and make printouts with archival paper and ink.

L-R: The White Dragon (2007), A Nest in the Wildwood (2008-9), Denizen of the Winter Trees (2009), and
Patterns in Turquoise (2011), the final piece in the "Snowflake Dragons-TNG" series.

To explore further, I needed a subject I knew well--it is only helpful to take on so many challenges at once. A dragon was a natural choice for me.

My first-ever paper sculptures, The White Dragon (2007) and A Nest in the Wildwood (2008-9) featured dragons. When I was figuring out a pattern prototype I started with a dragon in Denizen of the Winter Trees (2009). When I was figuring out how to manipulate color in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, I did my first experiments with "The Next Generation" of "Snowflake Dragons"(2011).

"Body" drawing

So it was back to the dragon-drawing board for this new effort. I started out knowing only that the image area should be about 5X7" and the subject should be a dragon. Then I let my pencil think for me, for a while.

The result was a pencil drawing of a dragon crouched on a fairly sheer cliff face.  I used tracing paper to trace first the wings, then a full view of the cliff face (no void, even though that meant much of what I drew would eventually be obscured by the body and wings--I wanted a certain flexibility in positioning). The original pencils provided the base for the body's ink lines.

I inked the tracings and scanned them, then added color using Adobe Illustrator and my new Wacom Bamboo Tablet. As I worked with the colors, the idea of a neutralized gray-green cliff background and splashy red-and-white coloration for the dragon began to develop. But what could possibly induce a species to develop the kind of coloration that would make it stand out brilliantly from its background?

Wings, with color added

Yes, I know: dragons aren't a real species. But if they were, they'd follow the same evolutionary patterns as real species, and I'm deeply enough steeped in science to know that most creatures--even those at the top of the food chain, such as tigers, leopards, and wolves--generally have some level of camouflage that helps them visually blend into their surroundings.

The main exceptions I could think of were birds and fish. In some of those species, the males display brilliant colors, both to attract a mate and to decoy enemies away from nests. One look at this dragon's wings should tell you I see him as more bird than fish! Goes along with the whole "feathered dinosaur" thing, in my mind.

Okay, so now I had a "logical" rationale for making him the colors I wanted to: he's in mating plumage. Maybe the rest of the year he goes around in drab gray-green, but during this one season he sports a complimentary color scheme like Christmas. And just to make sure the rationale is clear, I added a border and "scientific" information about him (If anyone reading this knows Latin, please check my usage!).

Even sporting red feathers, my cliff dragon was too well
camouflaged against the left-hand background.
I gave him deeper shadows in the background at right.

There still was the matter of the cliff rocks, and I went back and forth on this for a while. Even with all the red on him, he still tended to blend into the background a bit more than was helpful for an artwork (although I'm already extrapolating what kind of predator might prey on common cliff dragons. He wouldn't want to stand out so much that Dragon Eaters could even more easily spot him, or it could be a very short, unhappy mating season!)

My husband didn't care about Dragon Eaters. "I'd make the background completely black," he said. "That'll make him 'pop!'"

I tried a really dark gray screen overlay over the rocks, to see if I could live with it, but I couldn't dismiss thoughts of the Dragon Eaters, and it didn't look enough like the kind of lighting and background colors that worked with this dragon's coloration to suit me. Finally, I came to the compromise of giving him darker shadows to outline some key "edges." That way, I wouldn't feel required to put a pin through his back and claim he was a collected specimen in a shadowbox.

Scroll up and check to see if you think the darker shadows did the trick!

Finally, after all this, I had something I could cut out, sculpt, and assemble, sort of in the way I did with the roses I showed a few weeks back. The rocks are 3-D, as well as the dragon. To me, the sculpting is the most fun part, because it's a little like making magic happen.

There's only "AP #1" (the first Artist's Proof) so far. My little cliff-dweller is possibly still in development. I don't know if there will need to be more proofs (I sold AP #1 on its first outing, before my husband could see it), nor have I figured out an edition size. Even when I can print pre-made flat images, I still have to cut out the pieces, sculpt them all, and assemble each one by hand--a fairly time-consuming process, even though I can do it while watching Nature or Bones on TV. Perhaps I can take a reading on some of these questions if people leave comments (please? I'd love some input!).

The View from Above

I'm fascinated with the complex clouds I can see from a plane. 

I’ll fight you for the window seat.

For me, it’s about the only thrill left in air travel. Day or night, there’s often something to see from a new perspective, and it’s way more interesting than most in-flight movies (nighttime travel over thick cloud cover is a shameful waste of an opportunity, in my opinion).

Sometimes Nature paints with bold colors.

I love to look down at the patterns on the earth in clear weather: on the intricate patterns of landforms by day or the light-spangled darkness at night.

Even fairly thick clouds can offer amazing vistas of layers, canyons, or majestic peaks, and one of the most breathtaking spectacles I’ve ever seen was a nighttime electrical storm, as our plane skirted its edges.

Whenever I travel by air, my camera is always near at hand—and though it often isn’t equipped to capture some of the “best stuff,” I have sometimes managed to capture interesting images I can take back to my studio.

I couldn't resist this image, taken near Salt Lake City, UT.

Even those that don't make the best "photographer's choice" kind of image can offer me a wealth of subject matter. I'm always looking for ways to render them into paper sculpture in new and interesting ways. Perhaps I'll have pieces to show sometime soon!

PHOTO CREDITS: I took all the photos in this post, either on the outward-bound leg of a journey from Kansas City to San Francisco on July 13, 2011, or on the return trip July 18, 2011. These photos may be used under a Creative Commons license as long as they are not altered, and include an attribution to me and this blog.