Why Papercutting?

Growing up, the grandparents I was closest to were Polish and Lithuanian.  My mom grew up in a very Polish neighborhood in Saginaw, MI, and while the demographic was becoming more diverse when I was young, there were still Polish and Lithuanian friends and relatives to visit throughout the area.  However, I didn’t learn Polish and knew very little about my own heritage.  Honestly, I wasn’t interested.  Living in a completely Caucasian area of MI (farther North) I found that I was attracted to everything outside of my limited experience.  I loved all things African and (East) Indian.  My high school art projects featured people with rich brown skin and colorful clothing full of patterns and layers or cities with onion dome architecture.

These are both drawings from the late 80s.

After graduating high school, I moved as far away as possible to the West Coast and got myself enrolled in a non-traditional college along with many other privileged, idealistic white kids trying to understand how to improve the state of things (and a handful of non-white students.)  Most of my classes were about culture and social politics; Native American Studies, Islamic Art and Culture, The Politics of Representation, etc.  I continued to fixate on cultures very different from my own, convinced that mine held nothing of interest.  In my view, I came from a small-town, white background, where my culture consisted of cheap beer, potato chips, Country music, deer hunting, and a vigorous fear of outsiders.  In one of my seminars, I received feedback from fellow classmates that I needed to take a closer look at my own culture and find value there.  They pointed out that my focus on exotic-to-me culture was a form of racism.  I took it to heart, and thus began a two-decade-plus search for my own cultural identity.

European and Scandinavian culture hasn’t always been easy to embrace.  It means aligning myself with people whose history is punctuated by the violent conquest of more peaceful communities.  It seems that the migration to colder climates resulted in a sort of ruthlessness, hardness, and desperation.  However, by exploring the folk traditions of my heritage, I found a softer side that celebrates connections to nature.

Traditional Lithuanian Tree-of-Life papercut.

In 2012, I discovered Polish and Lithuanian papercut art (Wycinanki in Polish) and I found it enchanting.  I bought a how-to book and began to practice cutting paper with my own twist on the designs. 

One of my first papercuts from late 2012.

Papercutting is something I’ve been doing once in a while, keeping my projects stashed in a file, but not showing them publicly.  I kept researching my Scandinavian/Baltic heritage through myth, legend and folk arts, and the imagery began to creep into my mosaic work more and more. 

Matryoshka - glass mosaic.

Then, in January 2015, I had surgery and had to take two months off from mosaic.  I spent most of my time researching Lithuanian mythology and practicing papercutting, which I could do comfortably while sitting in a recliner.  My thought was that I was creating design concepts for mosaic, once I was well enough to get back to the studio.  However, I had become hooked on papercutting, and I continued to create these designs with gusto.

In March of 2016, I finally took a papercutting workshop from Alisa Lahti in Seattle.  I discovered her while attending the Seattle Polish Festival, and have been following her beautiful work since then.  The class was excellent, and I now use appropriate paper and techniques to get more detail and delicate lines.  I’m still a baby at this medium and I often spend hours cutting a design, only to inadvertently cut off an essential element, or realize that my positive/negative spaces didn’t work the way I anticipated.

This is the papercut I made in Alisa Lahti's workshop.

I call the above design Zemyna, after a Lithuanian Earth deity.

By working in papercuts, I have reduced my designs down to essential lines, simplifying and distilling my style.  Through this practice, I have connected with my ancestry in a positive way, as well as finding my unique voice as an artist.  In the interest of brevity, I’ll write about why I find depth and meaning in folk arts another time, but this post is focused on papercutting specifically.  

This is a wall in my stairwell showing just a few of the papercuts hung together.

I love how they look together.  They are more visually consistent than some of my mosaic work, where I explore several different approaches and materials.  However, I am determined to stay focused on this style, so that my mosaic exhibits have the same thematic consistency (but with texture, color and durability.)

Mosaic: Eostre made of stained glass, beads, ball chain and glass tile.

So many people coming to Arts Walk this year were surprised to see a different medium from me, and asked, “Why?” that I felt compelled to write it out.  That may have been my first and last papercut show in Olympia, but I’ll keep making them.  I love it!

*2018 Update: I'm still doing papercutting on the side, and one was recently made into a metal banner that is installed on Capital Way in Olympia, WA, where the Capital campus meets the South Capital neighborhood. (The original design is still available, too.) I've shown my Wycinanki work more in recent years and I taught a workshop last summer at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the OR coast. I'll be teaching it again in Auburn, WA on June 23rd. It has great potential as a print or to be cut from metal or wood as public art or even garden art.

*Amazing paper artists to follow:  Alisa Lahti, Q.Cassetti, Andrea Dezso (I linked each name to the website.)