Wisteria

Taking things in a different direction, Joe made his first "papercutting" out of vinyl! This graceful depiction of wisteria worked really well as decoration for our display at the Saturday Art Market in St. Pete.

To tell the truth, lots of people stopped to talk about the wisteria, but weren't interested in the framed art! We're looking forward to hearing some custom orders for these all weather, large scale, papercuts!

In the works...

Finish one, time for another! Here's a sneak peak at the sketches Joe's made for his new piece. It's going to be a round piece similar to the Wycinanki piece, but this one will be entirely black and white. It's inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, as well as the traditional Polish papercutting style (again, called Wycinanki) which is cut in the round. More pictures to come once it's all framed!

Commission Finished

Joe just finished this funky commission of the Louvre for one of his coworkers. I think she is planning on hanging it in her new home office. Measuring a weighty 20x16" this is one of the larger pieces Joe has made, and I would say it is also the single most complicated. Good thing it wasn't raining when he brought it in today!

This is a really cool piece to add to his portfolio, and hopefully it will encourage others to ask for commissioned pieces too!

Saturday Art Market!

We just had our first Saturday Art Market in St. Pete, FL (!!). It eventually did rain us out, but surprisingly quite a few people showed up. There was even a sidewalk chalk artist there to help advertise and send art-go-ers to our booth.


We're still getting a hang of the whole display thing... But I think it came off really well! Surprisingly we had everything done on time for this morning, and it only took us maybe half an hour to set up





When it was time to take the display down (again...rain) we got to drive right onto the park! THAT was pretty fantastic.
All in all, a very exciting day, even if we only sold 5 dollars worth of merchandise. We got to meet some fun people, as well as see a few familiar faces. Hopefully we'll be able to go back next Saturday and peddle a few more wares.

About Papercutting: Scherenschnitte

Scherenschnitte is a German papercutting style, which literally translated to “Scissors Cutting”. It arose in Germany in the 1500’s, and is now global with centers in Germany and Pennsylvania. This is one of the most popular modern styles of papercutting with a fairly large number of artists in America creating scherenschnitte. The scherenschnitte above was made by Luise Theil Bücher.

The topics and style tends to be silhouette-based representations of people, trees, animals, and structures. It has a very folk-art feeling and can range from simple to extremely complex designs. Occasionally, depending on the design and desired effect, scherenschnitte incorporate folding resulting in bilateral (or more) symmetry. Country scenes, religious events, and domestic topics are very popular topics in scherenschnitte.

Scherenschnitte artists include Susanne Schlapfer-Geiser, who published an amazing how-to book entirely illustrated with her work, Cindy, a fellow blogger, and Marie-Helene L. Grabman among many others. Artists traditionally use scissors to create their designs, but blades have become a popular tool for cutting the designs.

Official Debut: Boston Public Garden

Boston Public Garden

5x7 framed

Available on Etsy

(statue location is approximately 200 feet from where Jen and I got married)

Official Debut: Jen

Jen

5x7 Framed

Available on Etsy

Official Debut: Compass

Compass

5x7 framed (double matted)


Available Etsy soon

Williams Park Art Show

So yesterday we checked out the Saturday Art Market in St. Pete. It was a little smaller than I hoped- maybe around 20 vendors? But the work that was there was high quality and there were quite a few people out and about buying things.

We'll definitely give it a shot next weekend and see how it goes! So FYI:

-Every Saturday
-Williams Park, St. Pete
-Corner of 1st Ave North and 3rd Street
-9am-2pm

We're working on securing another slightly bigger show for next month too. It's in the Tampa area, not quite as far out as St. Pete. We had pretty good success at art shows in the past so we're just trying to explore this avenue a little more. Hopefully it will pay off!

Art Show Season

This was us (Joe in the center, and me cut off on the left apparently staring at the ground...?) at our last art show in October. It was Seminole Park in the downtown St. Pete area and Joe was voted the audience favorite!

We've just signed up for our next show(s) at the nearby Williams Park. They're trying to breath some life into the area by hosting a weekly Saturday Art Market.

These weekly art shows sound like a great idea! Now that we've been accepted to the shows we can choose any of the Saturdays we'd like- a great deal!

We're going to check it out tomorrow and see what the scene is like- I'll be sure to report back