Dress LaunderetteBlog

One of our favorite artists, Graphic Designer and Scherenschnittist* Cindy Ferguson, was kind enough to answer a few questions in anticipation of her Salt Lake City show February 19th.

*Scherenschnitte (pronunced: Sharon-shnit-uh: German for “scissor cuts”), is the art of papercutting design.

I have been papercutting since September of 2006. My friend Kim and I visited my grandparent’s in a small town in southern Germany called Hermuthausen. We had just been to Salzburg where I had bought some quickly cranked out paper cuts from the museum of Mozart’s birthplace. I thought they were really pretty and that since I’m pretty decent with an Xacto blade that I could do something like this on my own. When I got to my grandma’s house, I saw this on the wall and even though it was just tacked on and really small, the details and style were so intricate and surpassed the couple I had bought at the museum in all manner of artistic craft. I wanted to make my own. You can see my first papercut here.

A mix of delicate fine lines with bold solids really makes a piece interesting I think. Kind of the chiaroscuro of papercutting. If you can make a super thin line with paper, people are always pretty impressed. For most it’s just that it’s a silhouette. If you’re painting something, you can have foreshadowing and depth. But in order to do a proper silhouette, you can’t do too much foreshadowing or it will look like a stump.

Travel inspires me. I love to get out there and see things in a way I’ve never seen them before. Even if it’s just to a ghost town a few miles out of your city. There’s something there that will educate you about the life that is lived around you.

I love to look at the work of old dead German people. If you go to this website, and click on the left on the link titled “kunstler” there is a whole slew of traditional Scherenschnittkunstler (papercut artists). I also love the films of Lotte Reiniger.

A Launderette inspired papercut? Maybe a girl on a first date with a fox. (ed. This was read with much eyebrow raising and approving head nods)

For more Ferguson scissor guidance, watch her training video here, or meet at her Winter Wonderland show opening Febuary. 19th.