Dancing and Chatting

The roots of paper cutting go way back in history to the time paper was invented in Chinas. This is a fragment of a 1000+ yr old paper cut discovered in a tomb; it was preserved by the dryness of the air. It is of monkeys (or the monkey god) joyfully dancing around flowers.


This image became the inspiration for my cut, "Dancing and Chatting" (unfinished). It shows my Dancing Boys and Gals in a circle dance. Some are having a good time while others are not. Each pair is talking, hence the red speech bubbles. For this cut I thought of all the things I overheard at clubs whilst a reckless young man. I was never any good at dances, discos, clubs - whatever you want to call them - I couldn't move in any kind of rhythmic fashion, I couldn't hear what people were saying, I didn't have a warm inviting face (I was concentrating on trying to 'dance'!), and the smoke just gave me asthma attacks!

"Don't pick on me." "What?!"

"Look at you." "This isn't for me."

What do you remember talking about?

As a follow up to my Moleskine post read about Aimee's adventures with hers. Her amazing moleskine / journal is fantastically colourful and varied - just what a molskine is for! Check it out!

Silk 'n' Moleskine

I've always liked the feel of a new sketchbook with it's fresh smell and the potential of so many blank pages. My choice has always been a Moleskine sketchbook as it is the prefect artist's objet d'art - perfect size and beautiful paper (check here for more info on artists who use Moleskines). The first thing to do was to put my mark on it, so I glued a silk paper cut on the front. Now my Moleskine is sitting here, in front of me, waiting for the artist's first scribbling. But this artist is afraid lest he might despoil the purity of the white paper! WhatamIgonnado?!!


The new Moleskin is on the right. On the left is a collage of an exploding Dancing Boy made with scraps of silk paper. Why exploding you ask? To be quite honest I have no idea!