Cut Street City Beat

I have a lot of respect for artists with the patience, and attention spans, for paper-cutting. If my mind had the literal capacity to be blown by intangible thought, (that would be unfortunate, but also,) it would be splatter-bound for the spectacular work of individuals such as Peter Callesen, or Elsa Mora.

As I take on new projects, I particularly enjoy challenging myself to new mediums, or styles that I'm unfamiliar with. This keeps my creative mind active and really feeds my love of learning, while leaving me (and my client) with the grand satisfaction of having created "my best work, yet!"

So when I came across Studio Kmo's hand-drawn, hand-cut city cuttings--I was flabbergasted by the incredible detail and astonishing beauty of each piece, first off; but then--I felt strongly compelled to give it a try.

Illustration has never been my strongest skill, and I wanted to keep the cost of the piece much lower, so it would be affordable for people, well, like me! And you! (Not that it's hard-knocks or anything, but it's nice to mix up the ramen noodle diet now and then.) So to accommodate that requirement, I turned to street maps: Google for small-scale, and fold-out road maps for large-scale.

The cutting itself when surprisingly quickly, and felt (even more surprisingly) satisfyingly therapeutic. But then, I do kind of nerd-out when it comes to paper. And stamps. And ink. And design...yeah.

Those of you holding beans in your heart will quickly recognize the distinctly-shaped common in the bottom left as the one belonging to beautiful Boston. The wharf is also quite pretty, with just the ground-level roads showing.

This print  was cut on a fine quality superfine soft white paper, 8" x 8" including the boarder (6 1/2" x 6 1/2" without), and went to a lovely ex-Bostonian, expat living out in Los Angeles.

I hope people enjoy seeing these prints as much as I enjoy making them, because I'd love to see some of those cities to the right come to life.