the second cut

“Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important.” ―Alan Sakowitz

I've dedicated the second papercut to my good friends, Cheryl and Nick. I'm hoping this papercut brings each of you happiness =) !

Most of us linger somewhere in the future. We plan for tomorrow, but never embrace the present. When I feel like I'm rushing, I ask myself, "Why do I feel overwhelmed? There's a whole 60 seconds in a minute. Relax and breathe." So, I close my eyes and take a breath. Try it. You'll feel good.

Since my first papercut, I've been experimenting with different ways of cutting and piecing paper together. I've felt that the last papercut taught me a lot about patience. Every cut must be smooth and well controlled. If you rush it, you'll face countless unwanted bloody papercuts {hands & paper}, jagged edges, and tear-moistened papers {yes, tears}. Overall, my experience with papercutting has been quite relaxing {other than the tears and blood of course}; from sketching my ideas to cutting and gluing papers together. I'll be quite honest about my process though. In the beginning of my second iteration, I thought I had everything planned well. I was going to implement the feedback from Angus and Milene, and have a brilliant and well-planned papercut {at this point, I'd like to thank everyone who has influenced my crazy and artful imagination}. So, after I finished sketching, I began cutting on the fresh sheet of smooth cotton cover stock. Did I mention how beautiful the paper is? There are colourful splashes of dots everywhere!

Here's a close up, just to tempt you.

I realized one thing...I messed up connecting the letters to the paper. When you want the eyes, bowls, and counters of a letter to be a part of your papercut, you need to make sure the letter or whole word is attached onto the paper. I thought I had this planned, but I messed up by cutting both the stroke and the letters' filling. So, I had to improvise. 

Here's a close up of my mess up.

This is when the tears and tissues came out. Took me five minutes to recover, but I brought up my hands and started planning again. I played with different compositions and worked with what I had. I pieced two pieces of paper together. I then cut up the sides of one sheet to give off the effect of the type bleeding off the page. I ended up placing the pieces of the letters' fillings within the empty spaces of the words. I'm really happy with the result too!

Some of my trials and errors.

Having completed the first and second papercuts, I began thinking about the relationship between hand-made and machine made papercuts. I'll be honest again, I was almost tempted to laser cut my designs. My fingers were in pain. Blood leaked and shot out of almost every part of my hands {apologies for the graphic language}. But, I held my temptations and did my part. I felt very satisfied with my work and impressed with my ability to adapt to changes {proud and not afraid to flaunt it}!

Anyways, let's get back on track. During my process, I kept thinking about some of the values we have today: efficiency and effectiveness. These two words are what I hear all the time. I think that the papercuts produced before the industrial era {read my history section for reference} had exquisite line quality. Since machines provide efficiency, would people still have hand made their papercuts if technology such as the laser cut was invented? Would they rather value efficiency rather than effectiveness? How did artists who hand-made papercuts endure the pain in their fingers from cutting endlessly?

I've also been thinking about the roles of artist/designer and craftsman. The papercutters before the industrial era were both the artist/designer and craftsman because they thought up and crafted the papercut. Since the industrial era, there have been two groups of people with different roles in creating an object, the artist/designer and the factory workers. The artist/designer develops the idea for the artifact while the factory workers construct the object. There are two problems in today's production process. Although today's artist/designer has basic knowledge of the production process and tools needed to create the artifact, they don't have much technical skill to form the artifact. The factory workers are each taught one or few skills; once combined with the skills of other factory workers, the artifact is created {Koplos 2}. Although it is cheaper in production costs to have a factory worker with limited knowledge of the production process, they don't have enough skills to be identified as a craftsman. Therefore, the identity of the craftsman is lost.

During my experience with hand papercutting, I felt a bit disoriented at first, but I've become a bit more familiar with it. Alike many creative processes, I've encountered problems in this project and learned to adapt to them. I think that's one of the missing points in today's production process. There's a lack of value in the creative process. We're so accustomed to obtaining things so easily and quickly that we forget to embrace the processes we experience. So far, I think this project has helped me value not only my own creative process but also my peers. The creative process considers mind and body. We think and we do things to overcome problems. I've collaborated with four very valuable people in this project so far. In our creative process, we've talked about our problems and thought up solutions to overcome them. By sharing our experiences together, we've begun to develop stronger relationships and value in our creative processes.

That's all I have to say today. Thanks for being a part of my creative process thus far.
Stay tuned for the third papercut!

 Victoria

Here's my before and after!

 Sources:
Koplos, Janet and Bruce Metcalf. “The Roots of Studio Craft.” Makers: A History of American Studio Craft. Chapel Hill: University of Northern Carolina Press, 2010. 1-8.

"Papercut." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 5 Jun. 2014. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T065206>.