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  I just found these photos from a class I taught in 2014 through the Wing Luke Museum at the Seattle Girl's School. We explored different techniques of paper cutting and then created wearable paper objects for a photo shoot. Fun! All photos by Julz Ignacio, provided by Roldy Ablao "TeensWAY is an arts-based youth program at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle. For several weeks during the school year, students work with teaching artists to explore and create work, using a variety of mediums, with the goal of exhibiting their work in one of the galleries at the Wing Luke Museum during the summer months. TeensWAY is a free program and primarily works with middle school students in Seattle and the surrounding areas. This year, TeensWAY will be working with two middle schools and will bring workshops on-site to each location." JUSTINE CHAN MARCH 15, 2016 |
| Encountering one of Seattle-based, Japanese American artist Lauren Iida’s paper cut pieces is like emerging from a darkroom into a day blinding bright and stark with outline and shadow. The paper cuts tell stories in singular scenes from a life both familiar and strange: a woman selling a chaotic jumble of shoes spread out on a blanket, monk boys carrying umbrellas walking barefoot to school, a barber absently snipping away, a young mother bathing her child. If Iida uses color, the effect is striking and minimalistic, Sumi ink wash blooms, Rorschach clouds of aquarelle. Whether set against a black background or compressed between panes of glass, there is always an arresting quality of the comic book, a poem, a rich saturation, a chaos, and an intricate delicacy to each of the pieces—they are cut paper, after all, cut with such care. And for her, the more detail all the richer. |  “Mother Asa” 20” x 30” layered hand-cut paper, Sumi ink 2014 • Lauren Iida |
| A look back at a really fun collaboration with Seattle print maker, Bradley Calvert Taylor from 2014. We layered his woodblock prints about science with my hand-cut paper pieces about Cambodia. Several of these pieces are still available. | |
| Paper Boats Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941] Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running stream. In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of the village where I live. I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and know who I am. I load my little boats with Shiuli flower from our garden, and hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried safely to land in the night. I launch my paper boats and look up into the sky and see the little clouds setting thee white bulging sails. I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends them down the air to race with my boats! When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars. The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is their baskets full of dreams. |  I was asked by a Hillary B. of Maryland to make this commission based on a poem she has loved for many years. This was an especially fun project because instead of giving me an image to work with, I was left to my own devices to interpret the poem and conceive the image. |
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 | I realized recently that the way I photograph my work on a black background doesn't accurately convey the wonderful effect the shadow has when the work is framed between two pieces of glass. If you haven't seen my work in person you might not know what an important component the shadow is in my work. |
| A small collection of paper cutaways and postcard-sized paintings from Postcards From the Edge of My Brain (2015) are now on the wall at Sassafras Sugaring Studio in Ravenna. |  |
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| I just finished this fun little commission of a little girl splashing around in the Methow Valley. 8" x 8" hand-cut paper |  |
| "Les Uns Comprennent, Les Autres Ne Comprennent Pas" (2015) Hand-cut paper 6" x 6" I sold this piece last year to Erin S. of Seattle and she sent me a snapshot of it framed and hung on the wall. I always enjoy seeing my pieces in their new homes! |  |
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Lauren Iida
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