Around 2011-2012 I revisited my long-standing admiration of the universal craft forms of paper cuts, especially Chinese folk festival paper cuts and German scherenschnitte. During this time I made a series of black paper silhouette portraits of some of my younger relatives, aided by templates from digital photographs.
After making a small series of colorful hand-cut paper designs, I decided I wanted more outcome from the time-consuming and careful effort of making the paper cuts. So, I borrowed an idea from a potter from Northern Wisconsin, Mary Dosch. She uses imagery cut from bicycle inner tubes to create durable patterns and graphics for her hand-built slab work. The cut tube creates a shallowly-indented 2-D image. So, rather than cutting paper, I started to cut rubber with an x-acto knife. From these I made a series of celadon trays. I may try to dig up some of what I had made, or at least get pictures of the rubber stamps themselves.
