MURAL

American artist Grant Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, along with “the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house”. It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The painting's name is a word play on the house's architectural style, Carpenter Gothic.

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The figures were modeled by Wood's sister Nan Wood Graham and their dentist Dr. Byron McKeeby. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 20th-century rural Americana while the man is adorned in overalls covered by a suit jacket and carries a pitchfork.

The Creation of Adam, also known as The Creation of Man,  is a fresco painting by Italian artist Michelangelo, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, painted c. 1508–1512. It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665. Going by various names over the centuries, it became known by its present title towards the end of the 20th century after the earring worn by the girl portrayed there. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, created in late 1831 during the Edo period. The print depicts three boats moving through a storm-tossed sea, with a large, cresting wave forming a spiral in the centre and Mount Fuji visible in the background.

The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world”. The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.

The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which received it from an anonymous donor. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as “Melting Clocks”, “The Soft Watches” or “The Melting Watches”.

My interest in papercutting originates from childhood summer holidays spent with my family in Poland. Papercuts, known as Wycinanki, influenced my first experiments and began a now life-long passion for paper-cutting. I start by hand cutting an original design and take it from there. The tools I use are simple: cutting mat, scissors, paperclips, and books to act as paperweights. I compose my images from sketches and photographs, further experimenting using digital design software.

C’mere Baby

Donna Cameron is an internationally exhibted and collected multimedia artist. Ms.Cameron's films and videos are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA) and are distributed by the MoMA Circulating Film Library. They can be viewed at the MoMA Study Center by appointment, or at Donna Cameron's channel on YouTUBE. Cameron's photography and films use a unique cinematic paper emulsion process (CPE) for which she was issued a U.S. Patent in 2001. Her moving image work is also distributed by Canyon Cinema, CA, Film-makers’ Coop, NY and Light Cone, Paris, FR.

We live in a culture that has lost our deep connection with our home: the wilderness, the Earth. In my art, I visually explore the relationships between the people of our culture and the natural world. This in itself is a paradox, because humans are not separate from nature, but a part of nature. My work reflects a positive message of hope for a symbiotic interdependence between humans and our organic surroundings.

One reason I embrace paper cutting is that although the material may seem unforgiving, what appears as a false cut may be guiding me in a better direction. I like that interplay between control and serendipity. Even if I layout a design digitally, I don’t do it in great detail. To improvise with what is developing keeps the process alive and exciting. For the same reason I like to work in collaboration with others. I never know where others will lead the conversation or how it will affect the finished piece.
 

Being a conduit is my purpose as an artist. To create something that wants to materialize is a powerful act. And once created, it has its own power to interact with those that view it.

I long have been fascinated by and explored the world of night dreams–my own and those of family and friends. Dreams, like poetry, myth and fairy tales, speak to us in the language of image, symbol, archetype, and metaphor,and often come as nonlinear narratives to puzzle, mystify, and challenge. The practice of transposing dream narratives into artforms–while leaning into their metaphoric language, creative imagery, and archetypal symbols–can be affective, clarifying, and instructive ;or, perhaps, even more powerfully, can help dreamers creatively just be with and/or be open to the nonlinear, irrational, mysterious, and magical. For many years, a fascinating theme has recurred in my dreams that involves encounters with wild animals while walking on a forest path. Inspired by the silhouette illustrations from fairy tale books of my childhood, I have adopted the medium of paper-cutting as a way to bring my dreams to form. As a way to illustrate the dream-story and to dialogue with its metaphors and archetypes,