Oregon Art Beat; #1005; Virginia Flynn

Yeah. I saw it. You don't do that. See what happens. Okay. That is true. Yeah. So we've already talked about your mentors and what you like about them. And we talked a little bit about why black and white works so well in terms of telling stories. But do you see yourself as a storyteller? I see myself as a storyteller for my pictures. I definitely do. Not in a verbal sense, but more through pictures. Yeah. I think I do. But you definitely like wordplay. You said you could do idioms and forever. I could do idioms until the cab's come home. I hear them, you know. The morning, for instance, someone sent me an email and she said, I'm going to be over in your neck of the woods. And I hardly even read beyond in your neck of

the woods when I started seeing that visually, you know. And where does that come from, that expression? I just find it, you know, it's sort of just delighted and enchanted by that kind of language. And let's talk again about why black and white works so well in terms of telling stories. Black and white works so well. It just gets rid of all the noise, you know, actually, as I think of it, it just reduces it to the most simple, basic shape, which delivers the story, you know, the shape, and the gesture, and that's it. That's what makes you good at what you do, though. I mean, you say anybody could do paper cut. Anybody could do it. I mean, really, anybody could sit down with a knife and a piece of paper and cut into the paper and remove pieces and hold it up, and they would have a paper cut. Now, they couldn't do

images the way I do images, but they would have a different style, you know. There's a slew of paper cutters out there, and I was not aware of that. I was making paper cuts, and I thought, nobody makes paper cuts. I'm the only one who makes paper cuts, you know. I wasn't really literally thinking that, but I wasn't aware of anyone else doing them. And I met someone who pointed out that there was a woman in New York making beautiful paper cuts, too, and here's her website. And I went and looked at it, and then I was stunned. You know, there was this whole other world. There was someone like me, you know, in New York City making paper cuts, and hugely prolific, too. I mean, she was just, you know, cranking them out, like crazy, and they're wonderful. And from there, I found out that there was a whole guild, the guild of American paper cutters, and they're

everywhere, you know, all over the United States, and, you know, in Europe, and I mean, just everywhere, Asia, across the history as ancient, you know, it goes all the way back to, I think, China, is where the first paper cuts came from. It doesn't work for me very well if you're leaving them there. Sorry. Okay. So how would you, okay, so you've got this whole breadth of paper cuts, and we just looked at three completely distinct, common thread. All of them are still yet to stay from you. So how would you describe your work? What is your work? My work is, some people might say that it's whimsical, however, I like to think of it as folklorish. I feel like they, that I can't really

pinpoint a culture to some of the images that I create, you know, and I think they do tell a story, and I don't know what the origin really of where they, I don't know. Oh, that's all right. But if someone, if someone, okay, see, this woman is shit. Did you hear that? That's okay. What, the woman in New York, her stuff is different from yours. If you had to call her up and say, should we wait until the phone finishes reading? It will ring maybe four or five times. Oh, somebody calls you up and says, you know, I'm this artist, this woman is in New York. Yeah, and she says, what, what are you doing? What, what are you doing with paper cut? How, how's yours different? Well, I actually developed a relationship with a woman in New York. When I

got the project, the public art project, I hardly knew where to begin and I knew that she had done some public art projects that originated through her paper cuts. So I emailed her and she was very accessible. I mean, she was just right there with good advice and the courage to go on, you know, and it will be okay and everything will work out. So, and she has seen my work and we agreed that we have, you know, similarities for sure. I suspect that there are very few people though who would be able to make a dog that was vicious enough to go after your dog. But yet, to be able to capture the fact that the dog is, your dog is any him on and that there's something likable and helpful about your dog, that's about the mean dog. Well, my dog, everyone thinks of my dog as a saint, but he does have this side to him, you know, that

always keeps me on, on my guard, you know, when I walk him. So when this, one other dog comes along, I know that there's some real tension that goes on between you two with them and I have to take in the rain. What I've seen is you're able to somehow translate that into something as simple as lines on a paper that you turn into something that's black and white. Yeah, okay, yeah, I can do that. I can do that. That's good, yeah. What, what, how did it feel when somebody called you up and said, we're interested in taking your work and making it public art as metal sculpture? I, in the past, I have applied for public art projects and it's a whole great big long process and I have never been successful, you know, I've never made it like to the first cut even. So when someone called me and said, they saw my work and there is a project that calls for public art and they would like me to do it. All I can say is that I saved the message, you

know, I think the call came I think in November or December and I still have the message on my phone. It was so... What is the word? Affirmate. It was so affirming. Yes. And then the challenge was to make my vision of the project mesh with the vision that they had. Was there a lot of back and forth? There was some back and forth. Not a lot of back and forth though. You know, they liked that. I mean, right away they liked, you know, the direction I was going and so... You said you'd always thought that your, you thought your work should be done in metal. Why? I have always looked at my work and I have felt and people have looked at my work and they have felt that it could go another level and another level would be possibly

glass or metal. And the thing about metal is it's more dimensional, more sculptural. And especially if it's going to be illuminated like this particular one is because there's something about the shadow play that excites me. You know, I love the shadows. Sometimes even more than they actually cut when you hold the shadow up to the wall. I mean, the cut up to the wall and you see the shadow shimmering, you know, on the background. I like that. That mystery. Depth and mystery. And you know, I've heard that sculpture is really a lot about negative space, that you know, what is and what isn't. And that's exactly what your stuff is. It's what is and what isn't. It's the negative space. Oh yeah. Yeah, I like that about it too. I like the something that tickles me about cutting into paper and taking something away. And it's the taking something away that creates what is there,

you know, that play delights me. That's great. That's great. Do you have any questions, Todd? I bet you we didn't go six minutes.