Untitled
|
Deborah Baird was first introduced into papercutting in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
She was a member of a historical group called Old Fort Wayne. The women's
group practiced a number of old crafts like colonial cooking over camp fires,
needle point work, and other things inside the home.
|
In January, they taught a class on Scherenschnitte for valentines day
because everyone made their own valentines. That is when I first learned
about Scherenschnitte.
As a part of the class, they had a very extensive bibliography, so
I started looking up some of the books.
|
Untitled
|
Untitled
|
Fort Wayne is a very German town so many of the books on the bibliography
were written in German in the library. But I read them. It wasnt until I went
to the Collections 2002 in Montreat. It was there that I became aware of the
possibilities of papercutting. I now had an idea of what other papercutters are doing.
I concluded that I was cutting in isolation for too long.
|
I do not limit myself in styles. I want to never be recognized with one particular style.
I like to do circular mandelas. I do portraits from photographs of famous people. I like
to do elaborate portraits (not your traditional silhouettes). I also like to do animal
portraits, different breeds of dogs.
|
Untitled
|
Untitled
|
I want to do more papercuts that have more movement in them.
Papercuts are normally very static.
The more movement that is in them the more that it lends themselves to illustration.
I try to do papercuttings that show movement and progression of time.
I also write childrens stories and I do poetry and I want to do illustrations for my own writing.
|
I have been inspired by Sister Clarice. Everybody in GAP has inspired me,
but Sister Clarice has inspired me more than anyone else.
I have a little book I got at Montreat that Sister Clarice made.
It is small and includes the entire alphabet.
Each page is a different letter of the alphabet.
And each letter is imbedded in a picture.
It was so simple and pure and sweet.
She did such gracious art with simple statements and purity.
|
Untitled
|
Untitled
|
I came to papercutting partly because I am a quilter.
I love black and white and I also love color.
I do a lot of black and white, but sometimes I burst out in color.
The wilder and the brighter colors the happier I am.
|
features
deborah baird biography
