Bethel Park native excels in paper-cut art
Packing a suitcase has been a staple in Kathryn Carr’s life.
Socks, shirts and pants, which can all be along for the ride as well, accompany the most important items Carr can’t forget: pencil, paper, sketch book and X-Acto knife.
Fourteen years and approximately 4,000 miles after her graduation from Edinboro University, the Bethel Park native found her artistic calling for paper cutting in her Alaska home in 2008.
“I have always wanted to support myself with my artistic endeavors,” she said. “I have tried all sorts of things, from pottery to sculpture. When I started doing paper cutting, I fell in love with it.”
Inspired by Scherenschnitte, the German paper-cut art that portrays everyday life in silhouette form, Carr draws images on the back of paper, then carefully cuts away the excess to reveal the image.
“I self-taught paper cutting through a lot of experimentation,” she said. “It evolved from working with sheets of copper and printing images on that. The really difficult part was just learning the business. I took a couple of courses in college, but they don’t really prepare you for the business side of things. I’m just chalking it up as a learning experience.”
Carr has turned that learning experience into a full-time occupation, with her line of greeting cards, wholesale accounts, original artwork and her biggest project to date: an entire children’s book.
After being contacted by a publisher for Troy Howell’s “Lizbeth Lou Got a Rock in Her Shoe,” Carr began sketching.
“The publisher liked the direction I was going,” she said. “I had about nine months to complete it, but the majority of work happened in the last three months. There was just a lot of trial and error.”
As Carr most recently packed her suitcase for a trip once again, the book project might be the most meaningful one she has taken yet.
Carr will show her work in Pittsburgh during the first weekend of the Three Rivers Arts Festival in early June.
“It’s very gratifying,” Carr said. “I feel honored to have this opportunity. I have already given out copies to my family and have a lot of friends who are going to be there.”
The trip to Pittsburgh, back to where she realized her passion for artistry, will simply just be that for her – a trip – as she will be making her way up the coast for her summer months in Maine that have become a mainstay the past several years.
“This is an art form that you can travel with,” she said. “I keep my sketch book on me and jot down ideas, because a lot of the imagery comes from the world around me. Sometimes, I have actually referred back to books that I read as a child, Hans Christian Andersen’s grim fairy tales that I read around 8 or 9 years old.”
Not much stops Carr from her enjoyment in traveling and doing what she loves, other than maybe the occasional flight delays and the necessity of making sure to always have a fresh box of blades for her X-Acto.
“I have accidentally carried blades onto a plane, which could have been bad,” she said. “But paper cutting is what I was meant to do with my creative ability.”