Hard Work, No Pay

In August of 2008, my wife and I both lost our jobs. Because of this,
we moved from Florida to Massachusetts where we had better connections
and job opportunities.Fortunately , my wife was able to find a good
job, but me...not so much. Basically, we have a lot of friends in
Boston, many of whom have the same education background as me plus a
masters degree. All of us were looking for jobs at the same time so I
just gave up on even competing with them.

Anyway, this whole art
thing was actually growing faster than I expected so I took the big
chance and went full time. It was convenient, I really enjoyed it, and
for a while, it was the best paying job I had ever had.

Then winter came.

Without going into the numbers, December was rough, January was terrible, and February was about third of January!

Granted, the work level hasn't gone down. Without all the custom pieces rolling
in, I've really gone wild with my own more fine art pieces, expand my
blog and website, and experimenting A LOT.

I have to tell you, It is really, really hard to put in a 40 plus hour work week and not
make a penny for it! The combination of winter making the weather suck
and no sunlight in the afternoons means I'm almost never going outside
of the house- and we live two minutes from the ocean! Not sure if I
should be getting a second job or not. Things feel like they are
bouncing back, but in this economy, what exactly could a bounce even
be? I'm lining myself for lots of summer art shows, but if I start
working, I may jeopardize either work, for having to prepare for shows and not be able to work weekends, or give up on some of the shows, which may actually sell a piece. There are NO jobs in archaeology right now, so I'll have to go into a really saturated job market with very minimal skills. Gah, decisions!

Right
now it's just really demoralizing to not seeing any return for hard
work. I know the saying, find a job you would do for free. I have two.
Archaeology and Art. But eventually you can't be stupid about it.
Unless you are financially secure, working for free isn't really an
option. It's difficult to live on one rather minimal income, and the
stress it's putting on Jen is tough for both of us.

oh
well. You're told your entire life you can do anything you want so long
as you are willing to work for it. But when are you supposed to give
up? Are only those with enough money (whether it's their own or their
family's) to have the luxury to do what they want allowed to do
everything? I really don't want to go back to the grocery store. I've worked so freaking hard to get where I was in my archaeology career (honors, publications, recognition, etc). Now I've put in so much time with the art career. I know I'm at the beginning stages at both, I completely recognize this, but at the same time we can't last much longer without getting a paycheck.

Bleh. Sorry for the rant. I think I'll go cut a bunch of holes in a piece of paper or something:)

Introducing: I

I , 2009
20x30

So I've been wanting to experiment with scale. I've been doing farily detailed pieces that usually show a scene with trees, architecture, and other large objects. With this piece, I call "I", I have tried to see if I could put the same amount of detail into a papercut with a more Macro appearance. The piece is my left eye, so in some ways it is a self portrait.

Currently Listed on Etsy.com

Papercutting Lecture Tour- Massachusetts Libraries

As part of the Solo show this summer, I was asked to prepare a lecture to present some time around the opening of the show.

I was happy to do so, and figured if I was going to be writing such a long talk and slide show, I might as well get some more mileage out of it. I proceeded to write every, and I mean every, library between my home and Boston.

Fortunately several agreed to have me come by, so here is a list of the upcoming lectures in Hingham, Brockton, Quincy, and Cohasset, Massachusetts.

All the lectures are FREE to attend. The basic outline is a history of papercutting and its spread around the world, followed with the works of several modern papercutters. A PowerPoint presentation will provide great visuals for the talk, and I will be bringing authentic papercuttings from around the world as well as several of my original works.

March 26th: Paul Pratt Memorial Library (Cohasset), 7-8pm

April 21: Hingham Public Library, 7-8:45pm

April 24: Brockton Public Library, 2-3 pm

August: Thomas Crane Public Library (Quincy) date tbd
Also, I will be displaying my work in their gallery space for the month of August.

If any of you are in the area or know someone who will be, please come by! If you have a venue you would like me to give the presentation, please email me and we can discuss an appearance. I have limited travel ability (gets expensive), but if you are willing to reimburse for travel or charge admissions, I am more than willing to travel outside of Massachusetts for the lecture.

Papercutting with the Boys and Girls Club

I had the honor to work with some fantastic kids at the Boys and Girls Club in my home town of South Portland.

I gave a brief talk about the history of papercutting and passed around some authentic pieces from around the world (papel picado, Jian Jhi, silhouette, etc) then the kids got to create their own original papercut. There were almost no rules, so they really got to express their creativity.

Here are some highlights of the two-day workshop

Branches

Joe's been busy lately - whipping up new pieces and actually lining up a lecture tour about papercutting too (cool, right? more details on dates and locations forthcoming...).
He's now finished a new collection, "Branches," and since it's his BIRTHDAY (woo hoo!) I thought I'd post some images from his new collection so he could sit back and relax.
Lots of sizes and styles to chose from, and they look pretty terrific as a set too!
Have a good Tuesday everyone

Introducing: Love Your Bump

Custom Nursery Papercuts

I was recently asked to provide a silhouette design for a very pregnant woman who wanted to record her body's transformation. The design was absolutely beautiful and it sparked an idea. Why not expand my business into an entirely new niche?

In a flurry of activity (it helped that Jen, my wife, and I were snow/iced in for the day) we created an entire new website and etsy shop.

Here are links to the website: Love your bump!
and a link to the new etsy site: Love your bump! Etsy page



As a bonus for all you great people who view this blog, I will give a $5 rebate on any Love Your Bump! order if you or anyone you send my link to mention that you read this here on the blog.

Let me know what you guys think of the new site and etsy page and if you have any suggestions for additional nursery papercut products.

Thanks for your time!

Old Crow Gallery Winter Show

Hi, we almost forgot to report on the gallery exhibit Joe did last month at the Old Crow Gallery. It ran from early December until Christmas, and we went to the official show opening while we were in Maine before the holidays.
You can see from the pictures how packed it was! The owners did a great job of getting people in the door, and in turn Joe ended up selling a lot of art!Very exciting for us, and we look forward to working with them on Joe's solo show this spring!

Starbucks Exhibit

It's been a long time coming - it's taken weeks of discussion with the manager and the artist who previous was displaying her work - but Friday night we got to hang up six pieces at our local Marshfield, MA Starbucks cafe.

We divided the pieces into two spaces- the first was in the main seating area where we hung three larger older pieces. I thought the Native American and the Maya pieces would work well with Starbucks' multi-cultural feel. They're currently offering several Latin American coffee blends so the theme works well.

The other space was in the hallway toward the back of the store, and featured three smaller pieces that were inspired by the monuments and architecture of Boston. Many of the residents of Marshfield are visitors from Boston or commute there daily for work.

If anyone is interested in stopping by the address is

784 Plain Street
Marshfield, MA 02050
It's a half hour south of Boston off of Rt. 3.

It's a great opportunity to have my work get local exposure, and it should be up through the holiday season and possibly longer.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Media!

Hi everyone,
I recently was visited by a local reporter who did an article on my work for the Marshfield Mariner, a small local newspaper. It has a video of me yapping about papercutting and a photo of me cutting out one of the papercut ornaments. Thought I'd share and give a face to the mysterious email person.

Holiday Ornaments!

I am happy to announce that I have finished designing my line of Christmas ornaments. This year, I have designed three pieces, which I will create a limited edition of 17 ornaments for each. I hope to make a series of ornament each year, this being the first.

Each papercutting is hand cut from a sheet of white card stock and adhered to a colored background (Reindeer-red, Sleigh-blue, and Pine-green). They are then initialed and dated on the front, and fully signed and numbered (x of 17) on the back. The frames are painted a beautiful shiny silver with a hand-tied silver and white ribbon hanger.Each ornament frame measures 3x3" with 2.5" papercutting inside. They are $20 each with $5 priority shipping. You receive the papercut, ornament frame, thank you note, and beautiful keepsake box (with hand-tied bow!).

I have created a new web page on my site for the ornaments with a bunch of photos:

http://www.papercutsbyjoe.com/ornaments

Just to toot my own horn, I'm pretty darn proud of the bow I tied in the box photo. Just wanted to share that.

~Joe