PAPER CUTTING is not what I do. Everybody assumes I love paper cutting, and given that most people meet me wielding scissors at a party it’s quite understandable. I do, after all cut paper! Despite this, until very recently, I’ve never regarded myself as a paper cutter. I’d like to explain what I mean by that.
An Awkward Relationship
Having worked full time as a silhouettist for nearly 25 years it seems important to say something about my awkward relationship to the art of paper cutting.
Firstly, although silhouettes are often cut from paper, this is not what defines them. As I’ve explored elsewhere, one thing I’ve always loved about silhouettes is their multi-genre history. Traditionally, silhouette have been painted onto glass, card and plaster, as well traced, drawn and cut. I explored most of these techniques while writing Mastering Silhouettes and still offer many of them from my studio. For this reason alone, I regard myself as a silhouettist, rather than a paper cutter.
Secondly, the world of paper cutting has never really attracted me as an artist. The kind of intricate paper cuttings most people are drawn to take infinite patience and myopic eyes, neither of which I possess. Worse, many paper cuttings I’ve seen seem sadly devoid of subject matter. The attraction is often more to do with the skill of making them, rather than anything the artist is trying to communicate. Many paper cutters simply choose pretty or nostalgic subjects to work on (country scenes, owls in trees, insects on leaves, etc.) without appearing to give much thought to their choice of subject matter.
It’s simply never been my cup of tea.
Paper Cutting as an Art
There are exceptions of course. My favourite paper-cutting artist is my friend Beatrice Coron, based in New York, whose studio I visited to interview her for Silhouette Secrets. I remember the first time I saw her work, what an eye opener it was for me. Here was an artist who had found her own voice, clearly with something to say, and was using paper cutting as her natural medium. I loved visiting her studio and seeing the way she worked.
Beatrice Coron’s large, ambitious scalpel cuttings are a world away from my scissor-cut silhouettes. I came away from the interview with a new awareness of the possibilities of paper cutting, but still no real desire to explore the medium myself or learn how to use a scalpel. At the time I was beginning to formulate my current understanding that all my work must be somehow related to silhouettes, but also an acute awareness that I had no subject matter when it came to paper cutting.
Learning to Cut Poetry
This changed last year, when I met Lewis and Timothy of Morbid Books at a wedding on an island in Montenegro. They had been booked to make short poems for guests, which they were hammering out on a pair of old manual typewriters. I cut their silhouettes and they made a poem for me in return.
Titled simply “Silhouettes” I was very taken with the poem. Although rough and ready it seemed to me a more serious attempt at poetry than I might gave expected from somebody booked as an entertainer at a wedding. Poetry is not something I know much about, yet I sensed it was important.
A Silhouette for Morbid Books
When I got home, on a whim, I cut a larger copy of Lewis’ silhouette (slightly exaggerating the wide brim of his hat) and wrote out the poem by hand inside in white ink. I wanted to space out the characters to entirely fill the profile. Although the typed-out poem seemed quite short, writing it out in the this manner suddenly made it seem really long. I struggled to fit it all in. Nevertheless, I liked the result and wanted to do more.
Although I have had experience of cutting words into paper (see A Paper Anniversary Silhouette) I realised that to cut poetry inside a silhouette I would need a shorter poem. Being attracted by the “black rainbow” image, referred to by Lewis in the poem, I briefly wondered whether I could cut a silhouette of a rainbow. I searched for this term online and found this extraordinary image by an English writer living in New York.
Compared to her Spirit,
Even Rainbows Seemed Black and White.
U.K. Sidd, 2019
Compared to Her Spirit
This poem led me to make my first experiment in the world of paper cutting.
Not knowing who the poem was written about I searched my some of my recent duplicates for the profile of a woman who felt like the poem. I then drew her outline onto an A4 sheet of white paper and began arranging words within the outline. Much rubbing out and alternations later I had a composition which seemed to work.
I had to take some liberties with the letters to make them all hang together. It’s a rule in paper cutting that the finished artwork needs to remain a single sheet of paper. It’s hard to know what to do with the dot over a letter “i” for instance. Similarly, no gaps between lines, or even between words. Bending the letters fit the profile of her face was also interesting. Lower down, I allowed the letters to form the shape of her bustline, appearing to fall off the bottom edge.
Once composed, I fixed a sheet of black paper behind the drawing cut through both sheets together. I began in the middle, taking out the middle of the “o” in Rainbow. It was an easy shape to start with! I then worked outwards, cutting the various centres of enclosed letters and all the odd shapes my composition had created in between. Last of all, when I was satisfied every detail had been cut, I cut the outline profile in a single line, thus separating the two sheets of paper.
At the end of the process I photographed both the white and black copies and posted them on social media. I immediately had a response from U.K. Sidd who wanted to buy it! So the black copy went out to New York and the white copy remained in my archives.
Judge the Poet
This experience was one of those creative moments which felt like a spark going off. I felt I had found my subject and could now explore the world of paper cutting with a new energy!
Realising I needed more poems I got in touch with my friend Judge (of Judge the Poet fame) and asked for his input. He was happy to oblige and suggested a series of social-media collaborations. He sent me a set of short poems and I got to work. As often happens in creative process, I found myself struggling to equal the inspiration of the first in the series, yet a number of the came out well. I learned many things, for instance that I wanted the keep the initial layout drawings. In order to do this I began scanning them and then printing a copy onto A4 copy paper. I then used the copy as a cutting guide, fixed to the sheet of black paper, so that I didn’t destroy the original. This also gives me the option of making more than one copy, should I ever wish to.
You can see the full set of my Judge paper-cut poems in the art galleries.
As 2019 came to an end the inevitable rush in the lead up to Christmas meant I had to put the project to one side for a while, planning to pick it up again in the new year.
Lockdown Paper Cuttings
It was a very different kind of new year. Lockdown brought about a new necessity for creativity of a different kind. As all the events work ground to a halt I initially found myself initially quite depressed about the cancellation of so many events. Amidst it all, I found myself making two more of what I’ve come to call the Poetry Paper Cuttings.
Poetry which arrived on its own
The two cuttings I made this year were not based on the work of any poet, but rather on phrases that came to me I was walking in Clayfield Copse or out cycling during lockdown. I found my mind wandering back to paper cutting, and as I did so I heard – rather than wrote – short lines which suggested themselves as suitable for my new cuttings.
The first was:
Scissors cut through bone-dry paper,
And forget the smell of the rain.
And the second:
Empty black roads,
Missing white vapour trails,
Why so blue?
I’m not about to reinvent myself as a poet! Yet, somehow these lines rang a chord with me as I contemplated the changed circumstances of the world around me. I used them both the create new paper cuttings last April, taking more time with the second to combine many different styles of font into the profile.
Alice
The next paper cutting I made was a portrait of my niece Alice. Not having any more lines of poetry in my head, I opted instead to cut a series of abstract shapes inside her profile. It was the only paper cutting of this nature I ever made, yet it set in motion a whole new exploration of the relationship between drawing and cutting in my Masked Portraits series.
You can see this complete series of paper cuttings, together with some their preparatory drawing, in the art galleries. Please let me know what you think of them below.
