Not so long ago, I gave a brief PaperCutting workshop to the local Tokyo chapter of the SCBWI. It was a ton of fun to do, and I really enjoyed being able to show a little bit of what goes into the process of one of my cut paper images. Just as rewarding for me, though, was researching the history of the art form and some of its most talented practitioners.

I had always assumed that cut paper art in Japan had as long a history as the Chinese tradition (which dates back to…well, pretty much the day after they invented paper!). Shockingly, I was wrong. While paper cutouts had been used for centuries as stencils in the textile industry, mostly for creating exquisite kimono designs, it was not recognized as as art unto itself.

That changed with 滝平二郎 (Takidaira Jiro). Born in 1921, he grew up in the Japanese countryside on a farm. After returning from the war, he threw himself into artwork. His early work reminds me of Russian poster art of the time, with it’s strong, serious, proletariat farmers. As time went on, the paintings become sparser and more graphic, borrowing the strong and simple line of manga comics. Eventually, he segued into children’s book illustration, and this is where his work truly bloomed. Sometime in the 1960’s, Takidaira began to incorporate cut paper into his illustrations, laying it over backgrounds painted in watercolor and India ink. It’s fascinating to watch the progression of his work as he became more and more enamored of the paper and the cutting. In the 1970’s, we can see the amount of detail increasing until it fills the whole page with patterns of flora and the textures of Japanese life. Then, in the 80’s he cut the artwork back down to the basics, with wide swathes of black and simple, powerful compositions.

Despite the evolution in his work, one thing remained constant: the charming and nostalgic humanity that was at the center of nearly every image he created.

I, myself have been saying the same thing forever; “my paintings are always about my love of stories and people”. I seem to have committed myself to this “motto” and I realize the more often I am asked to explain it the more mundane my explanation becomes, but I have no idea how to break free from this cycle.
-Takidaira Jiro, “Worrying About My Worries” from Works

I, for one, am grateful that he never overcame his love of traditional Showa-era Japan or its people. With only a splash of color and a layer of paper, he portrayed an astonishing depth of soul and humanity.

Takidaira-様 passed away last year (2009). While I regret that I couldn’t have discovered him and his amazing work while he was still around, I was lucky to catch a retrospective of his work last month here in Tokyo. Seeing a lifetime’s worth of such work gathered together was both humbling and inspiring.

While researching his work, I stumbled over a Japanese website (since lost to the tangled strands of the Web) which claimed that Tadidaira coined the word “切り絵” (kirie, literally “cut picture”). In 1971. The same year I was born. Destiny, perhaps? In any case, I’m proud to be following in his papery tradition.

For centuries, cut paper has had a place in storytelling and folk art traditions throughout the world. From intricate Chinese cutouts to Mexico’s Papel Picado to European silhouettes, papercutting has been a vibrant part of the craft life of many cultures. Cut paper became a popular technique with childrens’ book illustrators, valued for lively colors and versatility. Recently cut paper has received renewed attention from artists, merging modern creativity and thought with traditional techniques.


In this 90-minute workshop, cut paper artist/illustrator Patrick Gannon will conduct a brief tour of the history of Cut Paper art traditions throughout the world. Modern papercutting art from various artists and illustrators will be introduced. He’ll demonstrate some of his techniques for creating this fascinating and fun art form and lead participants in the creation of their own cut paper illustrations. Participants are encouraged to bring sketches, characters, or story ideas that can be used as a creative starting point for their illustrations.

And the details:

Time:  Friday, January 29, 2010, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
Place:  Tokyo Women’s Plaza, Conference Room 2
           5-53-67 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
           (by the Children’s Castle and United Nations University)
For a map see www.scbwi.jp/map.htm
Fee:  SCBWI members 1,000 yen
         Non-members 1,500 yen
Reservations:  Contact info@scbwi.jp by January 28
Materials to Bring:  

• sketch pad or paper
• colored paper (optional)
• pencil or mechanical pencil
• eraser
• scissors
• glue or glue stick (optional)
• cutting mat (if you have one) or A4 to A3 size sheet(s) of thick cardboard
• NT design cutter / X-acto knife and blade (if you have one)

This event will be in English;
Japanese interpretation available on request.

Also of note, this is the first time I’ve ever posted a photo of myself on this blog. Try not to let it scare you off from the event.

One of my goals this year is to make sure that I don’t allow myself to be contained by any definitions or rules which I’ve imposed on myself. Artistically speaking, of course. I won’t be making a complete break with civilized society just yet. Maybe next year.

For now, I’m happy to follow my creative impulses wherever they take me. In this case, they took me to make a book. Or a binder, actually. True bookmaking requires needles and threads and something akin to sewing. In my world, that inevitably leads to pinholes in my fingertips, lots of bad words, and a big ‘ol mess. Making a binder, on the other hand, led me to learn how to use rivets. There are hammers and workbenches and hammering involved. All satisfyingly manly. Now I just need to manufacture an excuse to use power tools and I’ll be able to think of myself as burly. grr.

This urge to defy being boxed-in manifested itself in the artwork. It takes fortitude and resolve to break with convention, and I’m happy to say that this Golden Owl and his sidekick have it. This is my goal for the coming year: to not be afraid to do my own thing, to soar above the heights previously achievable, to perch on the unperchable.

Also, to get as much gold as I possibly can. And maybe a sidekick.

Pictures of the book, and details of the artwork:

Golden Owl Triumphant(ly lounging around)

Earth-bound Owl-y Friends. Both Horned and Barn owls represented (just for you, Karen)

The Cover in it’s entirety. You can see some of the great subtle gold sheen. Mmmm Shiny!

The interior. A place to put things. Things with holes.

The SCBWI Tokyo Illustrator Exhibition will be held at the TAC Genkan Gallery from December 1st-14th.

Perplexed? Tongue-tied? SCBWI = Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. The much less mind-bending TAC = Tokyo American Club. See, that wasn’t so bad. Although I am not a member, The Tokyo American Club is a wonderful group here in Tokyo that has been exceptional supportive of the arts.

The SCBWI Illustrator Exhibition features the artwork of 10 members displayed in the Genkan Gallery. The Gallery is open to the public (although much of the TAC is exclusive to members), and many of the works will be available for sale.

Time: December 1-14; 7:30am to 11pm (Opens noon on Dec. 1 and closes 6pm on Dec. 14)
Place: Genkan Gallery. Tokyo American Club 1F Adult Lobby
           4-25-46 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0074
For information, email: info(at)scbwi.jp
Website: SCBWI
Website: Tokyo American Club

The talent assembled for the show is as impressive as it is international. I can’t stress enough how great I expect this exhibition to be, and I am thrilled to be included. The back of the postcard (with a map) is below. Here’s the list of artists whose works I will be gawking at:

• Kunta
• Youchan
• Kiyo Tanaka
• John Shelley
• Naomi Kojima
• Gregory Myers
• Keiko Okamoto
• Yoko Yoshizawa
• Patrik Washburn

First, Darren Di Lieto of the Little Chimp Society, a fantastic art portal site (of which I am a member) sent out emails warning people about “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”, an art book created entirely from plagiarized material. Not much later, I heard that the Orphan Works Bill (you can download copies here) was back. A day or two after that, a good friend of mine found that her work had been purloined and used online without permission. This is bound to get wordy, so hang in there.

Now We’re Ripping Off Monkeys???

The LCS situation is as clear-cut a case of intellectual property/art thievery as you’re ever going to find. Some sleazy, possibly fictitious publisher ripped Darren’s interviews from his site, then proceeded to go to every one of 93 artists’ and illustrators’ websites and steal enough images to fill a 300-odd page book. Which they charge 100 bucks for. Considering that most of those images were a couple hundred pixels big at 72dpi, it must be one great looking book (sarcasm alert). The story is way too long and depressing to fully recount here, and can be read over at Darren’s personal blog, Apefluff. I’m just glad to see that some progress has been made. Oh, and DON’T BUY THE BOOK.

The Orphan Works Act of 2008

Back in 2006, Congress considered the first Orphan Works Act. It died. Illustrators and photographers breathed a little easier. Objectively speaking, there is a good amount of film, music, art and writing where the creator is (and will probably eternally remain) unknown. Current copyright law keeps people from using or disseminating this work, and keeps it buried in archives. It would be nice to put work that is legitimately “orphaned” back into the hands of the public. After all, art is useless if it isn’t seen.

The proposed Act, however, would likely make the protection of legitimate copyright extremely difficult. The internet makes it only too easy to pass around an image, a collection of words, or a piece of music. Accidentally or intentionally, it can become detached from it’s author’s name. The Act calls for a “reasonable” or “good faith” search for the owner of the copyright. But who can define what is reasonable? Especially when it is in the best interest of the user not to find the copyright holder. The proposed fix for this is a sort of privatized registration system (yay! more money to some big internet company!). The problems with this are many. First, A large percentage of artists (visual and otherwise) are barely scraping by as it is. The additional outlay of, say a few grand a year to register every image, sketch and concept we create (after all, it’s our concepts and ideas which have real value) would likely make it impossible for many of us to continue in this field. Next, while requiring registration is currently illegal, these registration banks will become the de facto source to identify whether a work is orphaned or not. Failure to register a work will, in effect, orphan the work as soon as it is created. In addition, the act seems to remove the heavy fines which go a long way towards protecting copyright today, and puts the advantage solidly on the side of the infringer.

There are folks who think we’re all overreacting to this Act.
There are those who think we’re underreacting.
Jeff Trexler over at Newsarama has written an interesting article documenting both sides of the argument.
The Illustrators’ Partnership has an excellent roundup of this Act and it’s history (and their objection to it).

Blogging, the Internet, and “Borrowing” Art

Finally, and perhaps most complicated is the case of Papiers Colles and the images stolen from her blog. Not so long ago, I got into a discussion with a number of creative friends about the failure of current copyright law to protect us in the digital age. At the same time, the internet has re-defined fair use. The current copyright system is both too weak and too restrictive, depending on the situation. The majority of people involved with those discussions have chosen to apply a Creative Commons license to their online works. I use one on Flickr. Generally speaking, I don’t mind bloggers borrowing my images (particularly when they blog about my artwork) so long as they credit me and provide a link back to my site. Just don’t use it for commercial purposes. I also do not allow derivative works. I’m still ruminating on how to apply this to my blog and portfolio site.

The BIG question for artists is how to protect our work from now. I am considering a number of unpleasant options.

I can remove the large images from my site. This would keep people from seeing the textures and detail of the work, and could result in a loss of sales. I can paste a copyright notice on the artwork itself. It’s an inelegant and ugly solution. Or I can continue on in the current vein, hoping that the benefits compensate for any losses due to copyright infringement.

I am beginning to envision a future where the only way for creators to protect their intellectual property is through copyright enforcers; big guys we send out to smash the kneecaps of image thieves.

It’s been a week of heavy lifting for myself as well. In addition to working out this piece and coming up with some concepts for some personal work, I tackled my taxes. My Japanese taxes. In Japanese. A language which I have not quite mastered for everyday speech, let alone accounting practices. Luckily, you can go to the area tax office here where they will point to the correct box to put your numbers. Of course, you do need to have those numbers in order before you go in, or they’ll just send you right back home again. I think iWork and Numbers (for all the bits missing from a 1.0 software release) is the best purchase I’ve made all year.

Plus, preparation has been rocketing along for an exhibition or two that I’ll be blogging about soon. Oh, and don’t forget that my webhost will be moving my server tonight, starting Friday, March 21st, at 9PM PDT, and it is expected to last up to 12 hours, until Saturday, March 22nd, 9AM PDT. Cross your fingers that nobody drops anything important and I’ll be back online soon.

Back in art school, I used to spend crazy amounts of time doing value sketches and fine drawings onto Bristol board, then tracing those onto multiple pieces of tracing paper. The process has been streamlined since then. I do teensy thumbnails now, blow them up and finesse them in photoshop, then do my final drawing directly onto a nice, thick tracing paper. Not only does the art stay fresh and lively, but I also get to sleep more than two hours a night. The final cut paper art is about 90% done, and should be up tomorrow (yes, I know I’ve promised that before, but this time I mean it!).
Illustration Friday

Right now, these are the types of products you can find for sale: original art, calendars, button-badges, and books. In the near future, I plan on adding postcards, prints, more button-badges, and anything else my little imagination can conjure up.

Here’s where you come in: I’d love to hear your ideas or suggestions for future items. Which pieces would you like to hang on your wall as a print, or wear as a button? I’m completely open to suggestions for new types of things to paste my art to as well. So don’t be shy!

Okay, now for the bad news. My webhost has seen fit to move a bunch of servers from one clust…y’know what? I don’t really know what they’re doing. Theoretically it will result in my website being more stable and zippier. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, it will mean about 12 hours where my site will be down, unavailable, dead-to-the-world. Downtime starts Friday, March 21st, at 9pm PDT and is expected to last until Saturday, March 22nd, 9AM PDT.
Give or take.

My dream garden, on the other hand would be wide, wild, and chock-full of swinging monkeys. Oh sure, I like to stroll through traditional Japanese gardens. There’s no arguing that they are stunningly beautiful and serene accomplishments. However, I’ve always found myself at odds with the assertion that the Japanese garden is at harmony with nature, or that it somehow proves that Japanese culture is more in touch with the natural world than western culture. Maybe it’s my upbringing as a farm boy, living on the edge of a state-park where I spent a large part of my childhood running from bears (and wild dogs, and coyotes, and wild turkeys, and chickens…chickens are vicious, man!), but to me the Japanese garden is an attempt to reproduce nature on a human scale, reduce it to a manageable size, and thus to control it. It’s the same impetus that leads to the kawaii-factor. Everything is easier to deal with if it’s small and cute. Having said that, Rikugien is mind-bogglingly beautiful, and does wonders for the soul.

Most damning of all, traditional Japanese gardens have no monkeys.

You may remember Mark McKenna’s Banana-Taill from previous posts here, here, here, and here, and a bunch more. I’ve been doing some more monkey art for him recently, and this is a taste of where it’s all heading.

Illustration Friday

Remember way back when I posted about this paper-toy-doodad-bird-thingy I made? Remember it was based on Josh McKible’s original “Paperbird” design? Well, Those tricky Paperbirds have morphed into NaniBirds, and a whole new batch has hatched over on the new www.nanibird.com website.

Hop on over to that nest to download (yes, for FREE) the template for Skybird, or more than a dozen other extremely nifty birdies by a whole flock of talented people. Since the last post, Skybird has grown a pair of itty-bitty birdy feet and, now that he’s found his voice, is sure to ruffle a few feathers. He’s certainly spread his wings, so to speak.

Hurm. That’s all the silly bird references I can come up with right now. Feel free to suggest more in the comments. And yes, I promise there will be new work online soon.