BOSTON, May 14, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- ShowUp is pleased to announce its upcoming
exhibition Cutting Edge: Contemporary Papercutting,
featuring the work of Lorraine
Bubar, Béatrice Coron, Hazel
Glass, Rebecca Greene,
Mark Curtis Hughes, and Swoon. The
exhibition opens on Friday, June 7th
and runs through September 1, 2024.
An opening reception will be held on Friday,
June 7th from 5 to 8 pm, and a
number of artists as well as curator Rosa
Leff will be present. Cutting Edge will also travel
to the Guild of American Papercutters (GAP) National Museum for an
exhibition in Fall 2024 after its three-month run at ShowUp.
Curated by Puerto Rico based
contemporary papercutter Rosa Leff,
this exhibition is an opportunity for audiences to experience the
mutability of a medium often associated with craft and tradition
and recognize its worthiness as a fine art. The unpretentious
nature of papercutting no doubt comes from its roots in folk
art. However, these masters use the accessibility of the medium to
guide an appreciation of detail: a dense crowd or the intricate
pattern of a turtle shell.
Stories are slowly revealed as the artists carve their paper
with a preferred tool: usually a blade, knife or scissors. Drawing
on their knowledge of papercutting's rich history and their
extensive expertise, they wield these humble instruments to create
detailed works reflecting the world: LA's tangled highways, the
ocean's deepest secrets, London's
busiest streets, the challenges of motherhood, and so much
more.
These works address the process of papercutting, a meticulous
excavation of one or many layers of paper, and its meditative
qualities. Glass says "...my knife follows the lines until they've
led me to the destination: sunken-relief sculptures that transport
me from everyday anxiety to the enchanting." In the end, the
shadows of the cut paper remind us that there is even more to each
story. For Coron the "shadows suggest danger but also
opportunities for new adventures."
Kicking off ShowUp's Curatorial Incubator Program (SCIP),
Cutting Edge: Contemporary Papercutting represents
Rosa Leff's first foray into the
world of curation. SCIP resides at the intersection of ShowUp's
exhibition and educational pillar, offering a scaffolding that
allows the selected curatorial fellow to scale to new heights,
while also recognizing and honoring the value of their knowledge,
labor, and their unique curatorial contribution.
Events associated with this exhibition include an opening
reception on Friday, June 7th from
5 to 8 pm and First Friday on
August 2nd. A selection of artist
talks will be hosted on Instagram Live and don't miss Craft Your
Community, a community art project featuring social practice artist
Naomi Chambers on Sunday, June 16th. For more information, dates
and registration links, please refer to ShowUp's website.
About the Curator
Rosa Leff
Between painting alongside her grandmother and watching her
father build reproduction antique furniture, Rosa Leff grew up seeing no distinction between
fine art and craft. What mattered was that things were made
by hand and done well. It is with that in mind that she
creates her hand cut paper pieces. Each of Leff's papercuts
is cut by hand from a single sheet of paper using a knife.
Her cityscapes are based on photos she's taken in her neighborhood
and all over the world. While Leff is best known for her
ability to capture thin tangles of powerlines and intricate
brickwork, she also enjoys experimenting with novel media such as
paper plates and paper towels. Leff delights in bringing a
modern, urban perspective to a traditional folk medium.
Leff has served on the board of The Guild of American
Papercutters (GAP). In addition to being a GAP member she is a
member of The Paper Artist Collective. Leff has exhibited her work
throughout the United States, in
China, and in Mexico.
Her work has been acquired by The Colored Girls Museum
(Philadelphia, PA), The Museum of
International Folk Art (Santa Fe,
NM) and The Canton Museum of Art (Canton, OH). She is the recipient of a
2021 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award, the 2021
Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Artist Travel Prize, and
the 2023 360 Xochi Quetzal BIPOC Residency. Leff resides in
Puerto Rico with her husband and
chihuahuas, Chalupa and Refrito.
About the Artists
Lorraine Bubar
Lorraine Bubar was born in
Los Angeles, California and
studied art and animation at UCLA and
Yale. She worked for many years in the
animation industry on animated television commercials and special
effects for feature films. Her short-animated films showed at many
animation festivals, including the Annecy International Film
Festival and the World Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb. She taught animation at Santa Monica College for several years. At that
time, Bubar was also exhibiting her watercolor paintings, was the
featured artist for a calendar published by the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, and illustrated a children's book, Lullaby, by
Debbie Friedman. Her love for
drawing and painting led her to get a Masters in Art Education and
a Teaching Credential at CSULA. She spent many years teaching,
drawing, painting, and printmaking to middle and high school
students and leading art projects for all age levels at places such
as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Lorraine Bubar's current
painterly papercuts, created from layers of handmade colored
papers, reflect the heritage of papercutting found in numerous
cultures around the world and capture the diverse ecosystems where
she has traveled. Her love of hiking and nature has led her to
explore the world and to Artist-in-Residencies at Denali, Zion,
Petrified Forest, Lassen Volcanic, and Capitol Reef National Parks.
Bubar's paper pieces have been exhibited in galleries locally and
internationally, including Germany, Lithuania, Switzerland, Tasmania, Japan, and the Shanghai International Paper
Art Biennale.
Hazel Glass
Hazel Glass creates intricate
windows into abstracted worlds. Her Paper Strata sculptures began
as a studio experiment in 2015, and have since taken her around the
world through dozens of exhibitions and publications. Though Hazel
has called many places home over the years, she only ever really
meant it about Portland,
Oregon.
Mark Curtis Hughes
Mark Curtis Hughes (b.1987) is a
UK based Paper artist. Originally from Leicester, he studied Printmaking at the
University of the West of England
in Bristol. Mark began
papercutting in 2010 as part of his process for making woodcut
prints and gradually the paper took over. Mark was a secondary
school art teacher for ten years in Central London and he now teaches at
Wellingborough School in Northamptonshire. Alongside his teaching he
has built up his papercutting practice and exhibits nationally and
internationally.
Papercutting is like excavating an image, it's an exploration
and there is something very ancient and weathered in the completed
piece. For Mark, the act of making is as important as the outcome,
by the nature of unearthing the image, and the improvisation which
goes into it, it is impossible to anticipate what the image will
look like until it is complete.
Mark's work explores the layers of complexity in the city,
ranging from chaos built on chaos to the little pockets of calm.
His work tries to capture the nature of interaction, navigation and
passing moments within the confusion and depth of the urban
environment. This world is all about flashing images and singular
moments, recorded or remembered as papercuts they are uncovered and
become artefacts.
Béatrice Coron
Béatrice Coron explores visual storytelling in artist books,
paper cutting and public art.
Born in France, she was a
shepherdess and truck driver among others, then she worked in
tourism and lived in Egypt and
Mexico for one year each and in
China for two years. She then
moved to New York where she
launched her career as an artist in 1984. In all these places she
collected many stories.
Her work can be seen in collections such as the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center and her public art in
New York, Chicago, Paris and Hong
Kong among others. To catch all in one place.
Rebecca Greene
Step into a world where the discarded finds new life and
nature's allure meets human ingenuity. Boston native Rebecca
Rose Greene is a visionary prop maker and set dresser
renowned for her contributions to iconic productions like 'Knives
Out' and 'Little Women."
Through her fine art practice, Greene transforms forgotten
remnants of modernity into enchanting anthropomorphic pieces, each
one exuding a profound sense of human connection and inspired by
the beauty of wildlife. A current artist-in-residence at the Boston
Center for the Arts, visitors to her studio can explore the
captivating realm of Rebecca's work, where creativity thrives and
nature's splendor is lovingly preserved. Greene is currently
developing not only her professional and fine art practice, but
also her work as a changemaker in Boston's art scene as a board member of the
nonprofit Piano Craft Gallery.
Swoon
Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and
filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of
public artwork.Through intimate portraits, immersive installations
and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20
years exploring the depths of human complexity by mobilizing her
artwork to fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in
toward a more just and equitable world. She is best known as one of
the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in
a male-dominated field, pushing the conceptual limits of the genre
and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists.
Her recent work has been focused on the relationship of trauma
and addiction. Through community partnerships that center
compassion and the transformative power of art, Curry draws on her
personal history growing up in an opioid addicted family as a
catalyst for connection and healing. Over the past 10 years, she
has founded and developed collaborative multi-year projects in
Braddock and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Komye,
Haiti, that address crises ranging
from natural disasters to the opioid epidemic.
She is currently developing a full length narrative movie which
will bring together drawing, immersive installation, stop motion
animation and her collaborative work, with the traditions of
storytelling through film.
About ShowUp
ShowUp is a 501c3-designated art activism focused nonprofit
exhibition space in Boston's South
End. Founded in 2019 by Christine
O'Donnell as a sister nonprofit to Beacon Gallery, it has
taken over the gallery's mission and programming and continues to
refine the social-impact work started in 2017. It both practices
art activism by exhibiting underrepresented artists and features
art activists. It strives to support artists and an engaged art
community working for social impact through its "Three Es":
Exhibitions, Education, and Engagement.
Our Mission
ShowUp is a groundbreaking contemporary art exhibition, education,
and community-building space, creating an innovative environment
for underrepresented artists' voices and visions.
Our mission is to
CONNECT artists to local communities and beyond
AMPLIFY artists and their voices
PROVIDE artists tools for self-sufficiency
EMPOWER artists and curators to experiment, learn, and have
meaningful exchanges
Learn more on our website and Instagram.
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