April 2010

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Walkin’ On Sunshine

April 22, 2010 in News | 1 comment

A Bright and Sunny Day tattoo of cut paper art by Patrick Gannon
A Bright and Sunny Day cut paper art by Patrick GannonI have no tattoos.

I’m not sure why, really. I dig art and design and squiggly spiral lines. You would think the ink would be right up my alley. It’s the commitment. The permanence of the thing. That much ink and intent absorbed indelibly into the flesh. It defines you, at least at that one moment in time. It’s a flag stabbed into the earth declaring, “This is me. This is where I stand”.

Which, when I think about it, is pretty much exactly the same thing I do when I cut and glue and make each new piece. Except that I never run out of canvas. And if it turns out really bad, I can stick it in a drawer and hide it from the world.

All of which is a long way to go to talk about this leg. The leg is from Brooklyn, NY, USA where it is still attached (I assume) to Jared Roberts. It’s tough to express how flattering it is that Jared liked my work enough to carry it with him all the time. Thanks, Jared, for a huge compliment!

The tattoo, by the way, is based on A Bright and Sunny Day, a piece I did a little while back about a little dude who likes to eat clouds.

As for me, I’ve been keeping busy by making sure I didn’t get kicked out of the country. Oh, and I’m working on making a couple of big pieces. Bigger and more complicated than I’ve done in a while. I’m very excited and a little scared. Which is usually a fortuitous formula for making art. Also working out some plans for upcoming shows and whatnot, all of which I’ll be talking about when the details are concrete. Read the rest of this entry »

The Look of Scissors

April 14, 2010 in Exhibitions & Events, Japan, News | Add your comment

はさみの音 - The Sound of Scissors photographs
The way things usually work is as follows:

I plan and scheme and schedule for a couple of months before each Tokyo exhibition, working out the time needed for every piece of art and pre-show preparation, making sure to give myself plenty of time for accidents both happy and grumpy. Then, somehow I’m pulling an all-nighter right before the show, putting the finishing touches on one more piece I Just Had To Do. The morning of the show, basking in the victory of completion, I pack up every item and head out. Every item but one.

That item is inevitably a camera. Hasami No Oto (The Sound of Scissors) at Niji Gallery last month followed this pattern pretty closely. However, in days past, I would somehow manage to forget the camera (or to charge the battery) each and every time I dropped by the gallery. This time I remembered it on the last day. Probably because my vigilant wife accompanied me.

Sadly, that didn’t mean that I was conscientious enough to actually use it. The poor little thing sat in my bag all day, mewing like a forgotten kitten, waiting to achieve it’s snapshot-snapping purpose. And I ignored it. Luckily, my friend Mayuko Fujino, another artist at the show, had just accidentally bought a humongous digital SLR and was experimenting with it all day. You can see the fruits of her labors right here.

So, a big thank you goes out to Mayuko for sharing the photos with me and letting me share them with all of you. I hope those of you who couldn’t make it to the show feel as inspired by the wide variety of cut paper artwork as I was. Enjoy!

はさみの音 - The Sound of Scissors photographs

Tripping Over Perspective

April 5, 2010 in Art - Recent Work, ` | 8 comments

Tripping Over Perspective cut paper art by Patrick Gannonsize: 8 x 10”
medium: cut paper on wood

Given “Travel” (the theme of the recently wrapped-up Sound of Scissors), most folks would picture the glittering lights of Paris, the sun-baked desert pyramids of Giza, or the stone noggin chorus line of Easter Island. Then they would draw that picture. I, however, am not most people. By which I mean that I never get to go to any of those cool places. Instead, my mind wandered to the kind of travel that I do get to enjoy.

Evidently, the kind of travel that I enjoy begins with me dipping my head into any convenient hole or hollow whereupon it is rent from my body molecule-by-molecule, cast through time and space, and finally bonded to the underside of a nebulous, floaty, precipitation-prone bundle of gasses.

On the other hand, I coulda been thinking along more metaphorical lines when I was sketching out this moody forest scene. Something about how different experiences force us to re-evaluate the things we’ve always taken to be universal. Perhaps travel inside ourselves. Maybe even a short trip through the metaphysical astral plains. Y’know, that sorta high-minded nonsense. Read the rest of this entry »