Sunday 18 April 2010

Shadow making and some collaboration with Witold Leonowicz




This little paper cut has been sat on my window sill for ages. It was from the "morning cup of tea" piece ... some lettering that I had had to cut as I had messed up a part of the main piece. On sunny days without fail there have been these little delicate and glorious shadows formed. However, I had put the lettering the right way round so that the paper read fingers. My husband, Witold Leonowicz, simply picked it up one day and put it upside down to make the shadows make the word!!!!


We both stopped dead in our tracks.


He loved it for the photography side and I loved it as its a new way to explore and convey the other integral part of the paper cuts I make - the shadows that they form. Most of the time I have to keep the cuts in a frame and its frustrating because its easy for people to see them just as lino prints etc. Its only seeing them in the paper flesh that gets across their delicacy and fragility. And the shadows made are just beautiful, so transitory. That element of them combined with the meanings really gets to the centre of what I want to express.


I have played a little with shadows before. Its been burbling about my head for a long, long, long time. The cut prayers I made last year was one way to get the cuts free and unframed and it was fantastic to see them hanging in the air and the projected "Amazing Grace" was so exciting to see. Its the photographing of the shadows thats finally joined up the dots!!! Hurrah!!!




This will all mean lots of collabration with Witold. We have wanted to work together for a long time and this at last might be the moment. Its very exciting, I love the thought of journeys that I dont know where they will take me....and I have been thinking much more conceptually - of making cuts that I photograph and then throw the cuts away, or lay them in the rain and the earth to decompose. That is a really really meaty thought.........



See Witold's work at www.leonowicz.co.uk

and his blog at http://leonowicz.blogspot.com

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