I'm happy to announce my Seattle paper cutaway exhibition schedule for 2014...

Feb 27 - June UNIVERSITY HOUSE, Wallingford
May 11 - WEST ELM, South Lake Union
May 17 - September 14 THE LAKESHORE, Rainier Beach 
July - CAFE VITA, Pioneer Square
November 21 - January 23 GAGE ACADEMY OF ART, Capitol Hill
November-December - CORNISH COLLEGE OF THE ARTS Alumni Gallery, South Lake Union

More details to follow!

(Excerpt from the article by Athima Chansanchai) See the video and read the full article at Microsoft's THE FIREHOSE blog

"Because Cambodia is a significant passion of hers, she’s often on Skype connecting with people she’s met there and contacts who are helping her projects. One is her first children’s book, which teaches English to Cambodian children through culturally relevant content. She’s also creating a reading room, after the Khmer Rouge genocide decimated Cambodia’s language and culture in the 1970s.
She paused the pursuit of her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts degree in 2008 to travel to Australia and Southeast Asia. Trying to get to Thailand, she ended up in Cambodia, and she fell in love with the country, its culture and its people.

The former oil painter learned how to design furniture – and clothes. The multi-talented Iida, a Seattle native of Japanese descent who is petite by western standards, was an XL in Cambodia, so she had to have her clothes custom made ($5 a dress). The impoverished young seamstresses she found weren’t being regularly paid, so she started a social enterprise, a clothing company that found instant customers in other expats who were in the same predicament – and it thrived. Iida provided a safe place for them to stay and work, and was able to pay them a fair wage that helped keep the company afloat after she left the country.

The connecting thread of her varied interests is her documentarian nature. “When I travel, I have these experiences and I want to them share in an artistic way.” She shares them as an instructor too, teaching how to make paper cutaways at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. 

(From the Cornish College website, article by Mark Bocek)

Apparent odd couple Lauren Iida and Bradley Taylor prove their new collaboration makes perfect sense, shining a new light on Cambodia.

After a look at their separate work, it seems odd that Lauren Iida (AR ’14) and Bradley Taylor (AR ’12) would end up as collaborators. Iida’s work is centered on her work in Cambodia, intricate paper cuttings taken from her personal photos. Taylor’s work is made up of witty, heavily cerebral woodcuts that parody scientists and scientific movements. Yet there it is. The result can be seen starting at 6 p.m. February 6 in their exhibition at the Wheelhouse Coffee shop with the arresting title The Exhibition on Observations of Elliptical Imaging and Quantum Stratigraphical Content. “TEoOoEI&QSC” runs through February 27. There is a reception at the Wheelhouse from 6-8 p.m. on February 6.

Meeting Iida and Taylor, the good sense of their collaboration becomes apparent. First, they point out that Lauren’s paper cuttings and Bradley’s woodcuts share an intricacy and a stark, black-and-white look. Too, there is an easy-going quality to the pair of them which suggests they don’t spend a lot of time squabbling over things. The laughter comes easily as they talk about their work. According to Iida, the superimposition of Taylor’s science-driven imagery on her scenes of life in Cambodia have led to a new way of looking at the future of the country and its accelerating development.

Rolling things back a bit … Lauren Iida is at Cornish finishing her B.F.A. after taking three years off to travel in Cambodia. Although she’s graduating for real in 2014, she presented a video of her experiences in the formerly Khmer Rouge-decimated land in last year’s B.F.A. show. Her fine-tuned eye for detail was on ample display in that video, and it is no less present in her still photos. But Lauren wanted more from her stills. She decided to take the imagery to another level by producing incredibly intricate paper cuttings of them.

While Iida was in Cambodia, Bradley Taylor was finishing up his degree (AR ‘12). Immediately on graduation, Bradley was snapped up for representation by the SAM Gallery. He also joined the staff at Cornish as Print Lab Studio Supervisor. Taylor’s prints are hard to describe. They are accomplished, sophisticated works, and above all, awfully funny. He creates what he calls “lies” about science, a form of high parody, really. His prints encourage the viewer to assess the narratives presented by science and also its cult of personality. Worthy of mention: a Taylor work hangs just outside the board room in Cornish’s Main Campus Center.

Iida gave her photos to Taylor, who transmuted them with his imagery into woodcuts. Thus, in the mash-up, a villager pedals down a country road with a telescope on the back of her bicycle, a pagoda takes on the characteristics of a rocket ship, and so on. Iida then created a paper cut overlay the Taylor riff on her photos. Mixed up in this way, the resulting collaborative works create images in poignant counterpoint, while at the same time suggesting a hopeful future for Cambodia.

Once she has graduated, Lauren plans to move to Cambodia to take up her practice in art and to teach. She is also working on a children’s book that will be published in English and Khmer, with illustrations by her and a selection of other Cornish alumni.

The Exhibition on Observations of Elliptical Imaging and Quantum Stratigraphical Content February 6-27 at Wheelhouse Coffee, 2113 Westlake Ave. Seattle, WA 98121. The Wheelhouse is open weekdays 6 a.m. - 6 p.m.  •  Saturday 8 a.m. - 4 p.m.

January 30- March 15, 2014Bocz Salon 
1523 6th Ave 
Seattle 98101

Images hand-cut from paper of the beauty industry in Cambodia and Thailand from market-stall hair dressers to barbers posted up against pagoda walls. 

I'm also showing a series of tiny dresses sculpted from Cambodian newspaper. Each is approximately 8 inches tall and framed in a shadow box. I started making them in response to the recent garment factory protests in Phnom Penh. The garment factory workers are asking the government to raise the national minimum wage from $80 USD per month to $160 USD per month resulting in several violent government crack-downs, mass arrests, and the death of at least 5 people. 25% of the sale of these dresses will be donated to LICHADO, The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.