Paper Cuts

By Cristina Martinez

March 23, 2023

Life can take us on many paths before we find the one we want to stay on. No one knows this better than Béatrice Coron. A French-born artist, Coron used to be a truck driver, a cleaning lady, a tour guide, and more before she finally became an artist. From art books to wearable paper crafts, Coron's portfolio is vast, and she doesn't let a new medium scare her away from an opportunity to convey her next story.

A lot of her work is about nonlinear storytelling, a collection of images that when added together make a full story. One of my favorite of her pieces is On the Moon, a metal door top in Arizona. I like this work because of all of the different natural elements; the various plants and animals are all in cohesion with one another. I love art that is able to bring me into a new world. I also love reading, and the imagery of books and the figure reading on the moon prompt my imagination.

Another piece I really enjoy is her All Around Town commission for the MTA. Since I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY I really enjoyed seeing all of the different parts of this work. There is so much going on, but altogether it forms the story of NYC. I enjoy her large works like this because you could sit in front of it for hours and still discover something new.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go into her studio and experience her work for myself. At first thought, paper cutting seemed to be like a type of art that would be really easy, but in practice, the work is pretty difficult. The first piece we did involved ripping up a piece of origami paper to form the Chinese character for happiness. Next, we chose our own subject and did what she called " ...". We were given magazines and newspapers and chose our own image to trace and cut out into a piece of Tyvek, a type of paper that is both lightweight and strong. I chose to cut a picture of some cherry blossoms. It was a very interesting process, and definitely one I would do again if I have access to all the materials. After I chose my image and started cutting it was really easy to get into the zone, full concentration, and just working on finishing my piece.

I consider myself to be a perfectionist in a lot of areas, and art is one of them. That's why I don't do art too often because I am so hard on myself about the results. Because this was a new experience, it was easy for me to allow myself to make mistakes and learn what worked for me. Because I chose an image with a lot of smaller details I had to figure out what to cut and how much detail I was able to add to the piece. Because there is a lot of detail I had to leave behind, going for larger forms instead of smaller ones, I also had to abandon my sense of perfectionism. It was sort of liberating, to just try my best and get that encouragement and praise from my peers for my work. Since it was new for all of us, it was amazing to see what everyone was able to create, all of the different styles and subjects.

While I don't think I could ever achieve the level of paper cutting that Béatrice Coron is able to achieve this was an amazing experience. Her works are a compelling form of storytelling and her ability to convey these stories through something as simple as a piece of paper is amazing.