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

Dare-I-Go

My new body of work, composed of about 12 pieces, is titled Dareigo. It is the body of work I plan to feature at my solo show at the Old Crow Gallery next year.

It is a take on the Maine state motto: Dirigo (pronounced deer-ee-go) and is meant to reflect both the topic of the work (Maine architecture and nature), my homecoming back to Maine, and my enterprising full-time dive into the art world.

As many of you know I am a professional archaeologist with a degree, tons of experience, and everything, but 98% of archaeology in the US is conducted before major construction and development projects. There is not exactly a lot of construction and development going on right now so the job market is tight. Jen and I were let go a few months ago from our full time jobs after work dried up. It’s crushing when it’s something you are passionate about and truly love.

Well, I’ve decided until things start looking up, I’m sticking to art, which is somehow actually paying the bills (that and the fact that Jen is working full time for the Massachusetts Historical Commission).

Okay, back to the art, I really want to show you some of the new designs, but I really want the solo show to be an official reveal of the new pieces. But I’ll happily describe them.

They are about half-half nature and architecture scenes. The nature scenes come from Portland harbor, Old Orchard Beach, and the Lakes Region. The architecture pieces are exclusively historic structures in Portland including (but not limited to) Old Port, the wharfs, and the Portland Observatory.

A few weekends ago Jen and I spent Saturday in Boston and wandered around two of our favorite neighborhoods: Charles St (antique district) and Newbury St (art and retail district). There are some fantastic galleries on Newbury and truly an inspiring place for anyone interested in art (creating, viewing, or buying). It gave me a good perspective on where the market is, what is currently appreciated by galleries, and the clientele. Very interesting.

My overall impression is that gallery shows typically have only a few pieces, they are the best-of-the-best work, and the pieces are very large. I think this is mostly because big is in (people want a lot of art for their money), galleries want to look clean (not too many pieces on display), and no crap allowed.

I took this into consideration and have made some, I think, good changes to the body of work I am currently creating.

First, I have reduced the number of pieces by about half, resulting in a good trimming of the fat and a hard, but needed, self-examination of what actually is good piece, and not just my ego showing through.

Second, I have increased the overall size of the pieces, since this art form allows me to completely design my pieces before cutting, I can take a digital version of the design, crop, modify, and enlarge it before ever cutting. It also allows me to completely organize and edit the entire body of work before I begin creating it.

By enlarging the designs, I was able to include a lot more detail into the piece, which will, I hope, make them even more visually interesting and impressive.

Okay, hope that has wetted your appetite!

I'm not dead yet!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written. The past month has been busy! We moved into a winter rental down in Marshfield, MA and Jen has just stared a new job helping to save and fund historic structures at the Massachusetts Historical Commission. So much has happened, I’m going to break it up into several different posts and hopefully I’ll be posting every day for a while.

First, just before leaving Maine, we had a meeting with the Stephen Popp at the Old Crow Gallery in South Portland, ME.

It’s a beautiful historic home converted to a custom frame shop and art gallery. Steve and his wife were incredibly helpful, supportive, and offered me an opportunity to show at their great holiday show and a solo show in the spring!

This is incredibly exciting and I have already lined up about 10 pieces that I hope to finish by the show. These pieces will all be scenes from Maine with my specialty: Nature and Architecture being the main focus. I’m working on one now, my most complex piece and largest at 20x27 will hopefully be one of the centerpieces of the show. I was originally going to be making several additional pieces for the show, but Jen and I had the opportunity to go to Boston and stroll Newbury street galleries and we saw that the typical solo show usually has far fewer pieces than I was planning. Plus, the pieces tend to be larger than I typically do so I decided that it may be more impressive and challenging to whittle down the number of pieces to only the very best, and make those as large and as complicated as I possibly can.

After a full day of work, I’m about half done with the first piece, but it is coming out great. Perhaps I’ll give a preview soon…

Okay, that’s it for now, so many more things to talk about, but that’s for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Here’s what you can expect, so check back again and again: Another show! The view! New Pieces! New Setup! Working from home! Full time artist! Traveling Lecture on the History of Papercutting! And much more…

Our new space

So we've been making improvements to our "studio" in our temporary living space. We'll be moving to our permanent place in the next couple weeks, but meanwhile check it out! Joe spent last weekend building this REALLY functional and REALLY beautiful storage unit. It's large enough to house all of his huge pieces of paper, mat board, cello bags, and even his finished unframed pieces! It's the cat's meow. Ha.

Also thought I'd share the cool bulliten board system we arranged. Each person who contacts us about commissioning a custom piece gets a post it note with their name and a description of what they'd like. Then as we progress through the stages of custom work their post it moves from the "Contact" board to "Design" then "Cutting" then "Shipping." I think it's a pretty ingenious way of staying organized. It's helped us get through this last crazy bout of custom orders.

Finally, Joe completed his weeks long dream of creating a map that identified each town he's sold art to. We started with a map of North America since so few sales are international, but it's really cool to be able to visualize all the cities in all the states (and territories) that he's sold original art. That's a lot of red dots. Maybe some day we can fill them all in!

And finally, a bit of good news- We have an appointment on Monday with a local gallery who is interested in featuring Joe's work, and may even want to do a solo show! We've got to talk it over so we're trying to stay calm, but we're hopeful that it will lead to good things

Christmas in September

Ok, so even though most people would say "it's only September!" from a production standpoint it's more like "oh no! it's already September!" which basically means we need to make sure we've got appropriate inventory for those winter holidays.

We're not really sure what kind of demand there will be for art this holiday season. Last year we weren't as serious about getting art selling for Christmas, but lately we've been on a roll. Basically we're trying to make some new fun pieces, especially making sure we cover a broad price range.
One of our bigger pushes is creating tasteful ornaments/decorations. We're looking to find reasonably priced silver (at least silver plated) small squared frames, similar to those from crate and barrel or pottery barn. Then include classic winter papercutting designs, perhaps even on a colored background (either evergreen, cranberry, or blue)We'll keep you updated on Joe's designs for these, as well as the progress (and ultimate unveiling) of his new Maine themed pieces.

Oh yeah, and we finally made an offical listing for a "Custom House Papercutting" since these have become quite popular lately. So if you're in love with your house, your old house, or your friend's house, just send us a picture and Joe will creat a beautiful piece of art for you.
Enjoy!