Cut Paper Art letters - Mud Cloth Patterns

I am thinking of designing a paper cutting art letter series. There are other paper cutting artist that create beautiful paper cut letters like  Suzy Taylor and Rachel Ashe.


My inspiration will come from African mud cloth patterns. I am drawn to the geometric patterns like stripes, dots, triangles and swirls. I am currently working on a pattern that will be different in each letter but have the same feel.

I found this wonderful post at Design Sponge that give the history of mud cloth in case you are interested and they have a link to a site that allows you to create your own virtual mud cloth design.

Enjoy!

Cut Paper Art Silhouettes - Zora Neal Hurston

I am working on a paper cutting silhouette series that will include prominent black artists, writers, poets, speakers, leaders, etc. When I created the poets silhouettes (see here) I wasn't even thinking of doing a series. Over time I realized that people use quotes from famous people to encourage and to uplift them. This is what I want my art to do for people. I got a lot of interest in the first two, so I decided to design a couple more. 

My next two will be Zora Neal Hurston and Ralph Ellison. I am using the bold portion from Zora's essay:

AT CERTAIN TIMES I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty?Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

 -Zora Neale Hurston, "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"

This essay speaks to me because I live in a time where black beauty is being shunned even more by the norm but there are movements on the rise that state #blacklivesmatter #blackgirlrock #blackoutday. These movement are necessary like when James Brown declared, "I am black and I am proud." It helped foster the winds of change for African Americans, to be proud of who they are and where they come from. If we as a people aren't proud, no one is going to proud for us. African Americans are still being greatly discriminated against but how Zora beautifully puts it... "It merely astonishes me. How can they deny themselves the pleasure of my company."

How can they?...

( I will update with pictures soon.)

Zora Neal Hurston

Inspiration Tuesday - Creativity and Self Doubt

Lately, I have contemplating about being an artist.What is an artist?  Am I an artist? Do I have a voice? Is is being heard? I have a lot of questions that I am working through.

When I started drawing in high school, I was not the best. I enjoyed the challenge of creating and sketched daily.  I didn't have anyone telling me what I was doing was wrong. That my figures weren't proportional, my lines weren't straight, my shading was on the wrong sides, but I felt like an artist... I loved my work.

Until, I started showing others my artwork. Adults... Grownups... I got responses like, "That's nice but....."  "Have you seen (enter another artist's name here) work? They are so talented. "

All I could do was to mumble, thanks... This is when self doubt crept in.

Self doubt stayed with me through college as I tried to understand my art classes and what my teachers were instructing me to do. I loathed being criticized by my classmates and teachers. I barely got through art school. In my fashion design classes my fashion drawings were never skinny enough, never sexy enough, never bold enough.  I could never get a handle on gouache. I hated figure drawing. I tried to make my teachers happy so I could just pass the class and graduate.

Self doubt hung around until I had a break through as an 30 year adult in graduate school. I got to a point where I learned to take criticism. I had to, I was in a career where criticism happened a lot. I learned to dissect peoples words. I learned to find my own voice through the many other voices. I learned to stand and stop letting others define who I was... as an artist.. as a fashion designer.. as a human.

I did so much better in graduate school. I believed in myself. There was still heavy criticism in my classes but I could take it now. I could also say, I don't agree... or thank you I will take that into consideration. I could go home and breathe better. I still wasn't the best and wasn't highly favored but I didn't care. I came to an understanding that everyone has opinions but that doesn't mean that they are right.  

Right now, I am venturing out as an artist, creating paper cuts and silhouettes. An art form that I didn't learn in school, an art form where I am self taught. Right now, I own my own business. I am self taught in this also. I am coming to grips with the questions in my mind. I am learning to answer them in my own time while remembering not to participate in self doubt.

 Self doubt will destroy all that you work for, it will cripple you and weaken you. I've got to much too do and too much to say for this to happen.

I have to keep on being... being an artist, being me.

How do you get past self doubt as an artist?