Cutting Edge: Contemporary Papercutting

June 7 - September 1, 2024

Cutting Edge: Contemporary Papercutting features the work of Lorraine Bubar, Béatrice Coron, Hazel Glass, Rebecca Greene, Mark Curtis Hughes, and Swoon. 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 modern 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. 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.

Press Mentions

Editorial Board. “What To See at New England Galleries This Summer.” Boston Art Review. June 18, 2024. Link

Fish, Andrew. “Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions in August 2024.” Art Spiel. August 8, 2024. Link

Friedman, Dina Rose. “Cutting Edge: Contemporary Papercutting at ShowUp.” Association of Women Art Dealers. July 10, 2024. Link

Selected Exhibited Artworks and Install Shots

Rebecca Greene, In Flight (2023), Cardboard in found frame

Béatrice Coron, Fashion Bugs - Enigma Coronada (2020), Hand cut Tyvek

Hazel Glass, A Golden Fable (2023), Hand cut paper

Béatrice Coron, Fashion Bugs - Hydra Yoruba (2020), Hand cut Tyvek

Rebecca Greene, Monal (2019), Cardboard on found frame

Hazel Glass, After Dark Our Dreams Collide (2019), Hand cut paper

Hazel Glass, Font of the Limestone Oracle (2021), Hand cut paper

Mark Hughes, Life During Wartime (2022), Hand cut paper

Mark Hughes, Circus Envy (2024), Hand cut paper

Mark Hughes, Genet's Journey (2022), Hand cut paper

Béatrice Coron, Fashion Bugs - Apoidera Regina (2020), Hand cut Tyvek

Lorraine Bubar, Suiho en Sepulveda Basin (2019), Paper

Installation and event photography by Mushen Kieta

About the Artists

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. 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.

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 two years in China. She 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 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 watch her TED talk.

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.

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 Graft Gallery.

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.

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, and asking how art can fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in towards 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 its conceptual limits and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists. However, her expansive practice defies genre. As a classically trained printmaker, she has innovated new approaches to create large-scale relief prints, screenprint editions and intricate papercuts. The deep consideration of form is inseparable from Curry’s vision of the transformative role of public art in communities. Her critical engagement with issues of social and environmental justice have positioned her at the forefront of the emergent discourse around socially-engaged art practices. Her commitment to expanding the possibilities of art to repair trauma and foster personal and collective healing continues to drive her substantial contributions to contemporary art through her work with portraiture, sculpture, installation and most recently, stop-motion animation.

About the Curator

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 Canton Museum of Art (Canton, OH), The Colored Girls Museum (Philadelphia, PA) and The Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM). 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.