When Janelle Washington, longtime GAP member and former Board member, explains her artwork to people who aren’t familiar with paper cutting as a fine art, she references snowflakes. “I remind them of cutting snowflake shapes out of paper when they were kids,” the artist notes. “Then I say, ‘Now think of something in a grander design. That’s all I’m doing.’ I spent maybe the first three years of my career teaching people about paper cutting who knew about it, but didn’t really think of it as a medium that could be considered a fine art.”
- June 4, 2024
Papercut artist Rosa Leff visited Lawrence for only the second time this weekend to debut her exhibit at the Lawrence Arts Center.
The arts center found Leff, who is known for creating cityscape papercuts, online and asked her to create papercuts of Lawrence.
“Not having any personal connection to Lawrence, I wasn’t sure what the story was going to be when I first started," Leff said. "And I started doing my research online and people were just so excited to tell me what they knew, and I met so many local historians like Jeanne Klein.”
Leff began working with the retired University of Kansas professor to tell the little-known Black history of Lawrence.