Dandelion Flyin
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Working quickly with delicate and very sharp surgical scissors,
snipping this way and that, Joyce Yarbrough of Creve Coeur cuts
silhouettes, exquisite paper sculptures - and mind you, she
does not make them the easy way using the shadow technique
as a guide for cutting. She is a purist, she says with a smile.
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Peering over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses, a veritable
Michelangelo of scherenschnitte, which the art form is called,
Yarbrough works freehand, usually without so much as a scketch for
reference (though if she is cutting an entire figure or silhouette
of a child she may work from a photo).
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Lily of the Valley
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Wild Carrot Leaf
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And although this talented artist does cut profiles of human faces
- and capture the persons appearance nearly as effectivly as a
photograph - this is by no means the extent of her repertoire.
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A look around her light, airy studio at the Foundry in St. Charles
shows a wide variety of framed silhouettes, all of them black
(the paper she works with is white on one side she cuts, and black
on the finished reverse side). Her work inlcudes a large
historical panorama with a variety of images.
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Intertwined
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Reading
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Her interest in art originated in childhood. She started drawing
before she started to school. She was drawing people and animals,
her favorite subjects, before she went to kindergarden.
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Yarbrough became intrigued with silhouettes 30 years ago while
watching someone cut them at Disney World.
Yarbrough graduated from the University of Missouri with
a degree in fine art.
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Joyce Yarbrough cutting a silhouette
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Joyce Yarbrough cutting a silhouette
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Recently Joyce has started cutting botanicals.
These are especially complex works cut from one piece of paper.
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When cutting a entwined philodendron and dieffenbachia
leaves on slender stems you have to be very careful.
If you make one mistake, accidentally clip through a stem,
and you start all over..
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Joyce Yarbrough cutting a silhouette
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Joyce Yarbrough , who belongs to the Guild of American
Papercutters, has spent many hours cutting silhouettes of
visitors to special events at the St. Louis Art Museum,
History Museum, Famous-Barr, Anheuser-Busch and elsewhere
in the city. |
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joyce yarbrough biography
