Paper Engineering at HSAD

Summer Workshops 

Another brilliant day of messing about with paper at the Haliburton School of the Arts. We went to town with sculptured popups and platforms. Everything from colourful creatures to architectural abstracts and flights of fancy and fantasy. 

I'm always amazed at the fabulous ideas that pop up at these workshops. 

The energy was high and the work was inspiring!

Unfortunately, something went wrong with my camera and I was disappointed to discover I had lost many of the photos I took of the work that was created. 

Sculpted creature

Architectural Platform

Hand-painted paper Abstract

Frog on a Lily Pad Platform

More Hand-painted Paper

Abstract Platform

Sun Sculpture

Weekend Workshop at META4 Gallery

A stellar crop of PopUps from a fabulous group in Port Perry this Saturday. It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun learning how to make these nested parallel folds and platforms. Everyone took their piece in a different direction with lots of great ideas. They kept me on my toes and, as always, made me think about new directions for my own work. A big Thank You to the owners of META4 - Jen, Birgitta, and Bonnie!

Small Things

I set myself a small project a few nights ago that I completed in an evening. 

A couple of weeks ago I was showing my work to a book artist, who in turn showed me her work. She told me that her time was at a premium, so when she wanted to make something, it had to be done within a couple of hours. I put off projects because I start thinking everything has to be epic - but nothing gets done unless I have loads of spare time - which I don't! So I took inspiration from the 'quick and dirty' method - 2 hours and it's done. There's a lot to be said for making fast artistic decisions and using what materials are at hand. It's also a really great way of using up some of those beautiful scraps that I can't bear to throw out. And at the end, it's so much more satisfying to have a little concertina popup book in hand, than to say I binge-watched yet another series of detective shows on Netflix...

Student Work

This March, I was invited to teach a five-day PopUp workshop at Cawthra Park Secondary School with Grade 9 and 10 Visual Arts students. I worked with them last year, too, and I have to say that they're an awesome group of people to work with! They take what I teach them and run with it. We used coloured paper to make concertina books with end boards. Every day I showed them a different kind of paper-engineering device. Their themes were Figures, Heroes, and Space (inner or outer). I didn't see the finished books until I was invited to the Spring Artfest - an annual showcase of student work. Their books just blew me away - so many creative ways of exploring the given themes and such a high level of skill and talent. Each book different - playing with a variety of colour schemes, delicate hand-cut designs, humour, inventive engineering - they humble me. Above are just a few samples of the students' work, to give you an idea of how well the books turned out. 

Results like this make it all worthwhile!