membership's perks

 my paper cut scherenschnitte design with shadows

This past evening I spent a couple hours at Pyramid Atlantic Studios making, what in German is called, a scherenschnitte with black paper, scissors and a sharp Exacto knife on a cutting mat. Silhouette is something I have been fascinated by for many years and in college I did some of my work by tracing the shadows from my hanging plants cast on my small bedroom wall from the two or three street lights that came in the window. I kept coming back to shadows and the flat design that reads so easily as a portrait or a story motif in my art works. The woodcuts I have done are a sort of silhouette design with lots of highlight details. So when the members of Pyramid Atlantic Studios offered a free members workshop in German scherenschnitte on Friday night I jumped at the chance to give it a try. This art is associated with the early German immigrants who settled mostly in Pennsylvania who brought it with them from their homelands. We see it as "Pennsylvania Deutsch" style in folk art of the 17-19th centuries early American.
I haven't been doing much print making this year but this and the paper bead workshop offered a few months ago were great reminders that there are so many things to do at the Pyramid Atlantic studios with paper and prints. It was a great fun evening with about 15 other members of various degrees of drawing skills. We had a creative director Gretchen Schermerhorn and her young and lovely German intern Elena Djossou to lead us along and give inspiration and show us the how it's done. I worked from an old design, drawing my own version and then carefully cutting it out folded in half to get the mirror effect on my little heart with birds and bunnies. Now I want to try something more original. Crows in a tree perhaps? Thanks to my membership at Pyramid I have new inspiration....

 with special effects from iPhotobooth

paper cut design flat black and white.