CUT OUTS

I've been flat out at work lately, but I decided to set aside Saturday for some long overdue crafting time. Works on paper were the order of the day, and I particularly wanted to make use of these lovely cardboard mounts in assorted sizes and colours that I bought locally from Factory Frames.

The plan was to design a couple of small editions of single poems for Pania Press, the first of which is a poem by Jack Ross called 'Lounge Room Tribalism,' inspired by the painting of the same name by Graham Fletcher that hangs in our lounge:

Bronwyn and Jack at home - photo by Katharina Jaeger

First, I typed out the poem on a delightfully wonky vintage typewriter my brother Greg bought for my birthday:

Lounge Room Tribalism

(for Graham Fletcher)

Faux sauvage

that was the

term we coined

for our in

terior

design phi

losophy

unholy

amalgam

of Gauguin

and Magritte

a strictly

rational

naive

te subord

inated

to the cor

ridor that

you can't take

beside the

window look

ing iut on

that wild lawn

Then I started playing around with this assortment of coloured paper cut-outs that Graham gave me last year. He made them while he was developing his first series of Lounge Room Tribalism paintings in 2009, but he only used a few of them, and asked if I'd like to have the rest. Some of the shapes are inspired by Polynesian statues and carvings, others look like insects and sea creatures, and some are just strange amorphous shapes. Seeing the glorious Matisse cut-outs at the Auckland Art Gallery recently inspired  me to dig out Graham's paper cut-outs and have a play.

Here are a few text and cut-out combinations I've put together:

That was a great Saturday!