Deborah “Tilly” Baird, of Lexington, KY, was a longtime active member of the Guild of American Papercutters, and an active artist and teaching member of the Kentucky Kut Ups, a regional papercutting and arts group.
Tilly’s Story in Her Words
I was first introduced into papercutting in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was a member of a historical group called Old Fort Wayne. The women’s group practiced a number of old crafts like colonial cooking over camp fires, needle point work, and other things inside the home.
In January, they taught a class on Scherenschnitte for valentines day because everyone made their own valentines. That is when I first learned about Scherenschnitte. As a part of the class, they had a very extensive bibliography, so I started looking up some of the books.
Fort Wayne is a very German town so many of the books on the bibliography were written in German in the library. But I read them. It wasn’t until I went to the Collections 2002 in Montreat. It was there that I became aware of the possibilities of papercutting. I now had an idea of what other papercutters are doing. I concluded that I was cutting in isolation for too long.
I do not limit myself in styles. I want to never be recognized with one particular style. I like to do circular mandalas. I do portraits from photographs of famous people. I like to do elaborate portraits (not your traditional silhouettes). I also like to do animal portraits, different breeds of dogs.
I want to do more papercuts that have more movement in them. Papercuts are normally very static. The more movement that is in them the more that it lends themselves to illustration. I try to do papercuttings that show movement and progression of time. I also write children’s stories and I do poetry and I want to do illustrations for my own writing.
I have been inspired by Sister Clarice. Everybody in GAP has inspired me, but Sister Clarice has inspired me more than anyone else. I have a little book I got at Montreat that Sister Clarice made. It is small and includes the entire alphabet. Each page is a different letter of the alphabet. And each letter is imbedded in a picture. It was so simple and pure and sweet. She did such gracious art with simple statements and purity.
I came to papercutting partly because I am a quilter. I love black and white and I also love color. I do a lot of black and white, but sometimes I burst out in color. The wilder and the brighter colors the happier I am.
–Deborah “Tilly” Baird, interview
Mention of Tilly from First Cut, vol. 18, no. 2 (2004), p. 12-13
Kentucky Kut Ups
The Kentucky Kut Ups is moving right along with the upcoming exhibit at the Lexington Living Arts & Science Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Checks for the entry fee and shipping should be made out to the GAP, not the Lexington Living Arts & Science Center. We’ve already received some publicity in the quarterly newsletter published by the Living Arts & Science Center of the upcoming exhibit. I hope
everyone is working hard to submit a piece for this exciting opportunity.In addition to the exhibit, Debbie ‘Tilly” Baird will be conducting a one-day workshop (title yet to be decided) during the exhibit, and I will be doing a children’s workshop. There will be an artists’ reception the opening night that will coincide with a local gallery hop of several art galleries in the downtown area. This is a well-attended event in Lexington so we expect a good crowd. We’re still putting the show together and we’ll keep everyone posted.
Tilly and I correspond frequently by e-mail but have not gathered for a meeting in some time because of our schedules and the weather. That should change soon when the weather breaks and we get down to finalizing the exhibit. Best wishes to all from the Kentucky Kut Ups!
—Debbie Vaught Cox