For the last few months I have been very busy working on an exciting commission for the V&A Dundee to create a giant pop-up book in collaboration with designer Martin Baillie.
When I was approached I knew the clean lines of crisp paper silhouettes would work beautifully to express the forms of a selection of iconic Scottish design icons, but creating something on the scale that was being proposed felt daunting. I was very relieved, therefore, to be working in collaboration with Martin, with his excellent design and construction skills.
The brief for the project was to create a large pop-up book in pure white paper to be taken out on events on the run up to the opening of the new museum as well as smaller kits in full colour for participants to create their own pop-up museum.
Making the silhouettes for the book on such a large scale would need a strong support, with each side being about A1. I decided early on in the project that I wanted to use views of the new V&A Dundee building as the supports for the pop-ups. these were cut from thicker paper and attached to the base with a strong double-sided tape. The technicalities of pop-ups demand that the angle on each side of the centre fold be the same, and it is this way of constructing a pop-up that translated itself into the smaller kits for participants to create, where we added guidelines on the base paper to assist construction.
Working with Martin I first of all made a model at A3 size and experimented to see how the very disparate objects could work together and how the technical folds could be arranged. This was then scaled up for the giant book and kits.
As a paper-cut artist I was confident the silhouettes would work well attached to the strong support of building shapes. Martin had a plotter to cut the large shapes which I then hand finished and this new method of working took some adjusting to but I soon learnt how to adapt the paper shapes and texture them to create more individual effects. However, for some of the objects it soon became clear that I would have to use some other method to express the inner shapes and forms. The answer to this came from my collection of antique folk art, a Georgian pin prick picture of a lady carrying a basket of flowers. Her face and hands are painted in watercolours, but her whole dress is a mass of tiny pinholes meticulously applied to give a surface like damask or woven cloth.
I had been experimenting with using pin pricking on my paper-cuts and loved the way it gave a texture and magical effect when back-lit. You can also get very different effects by pricking from the back or front of the paper. The object in the pop-up which most leant itself to this technique was the Orkney Chair. I used thousands of holes to suggest the woven back of the chair and hood, changing the direction of the lines of holes to give the woven effect. It is an unforgiving technique as mistakes cannot be rectified but once you get into a rhythm it is quite satisfying to watch the patterns develop behind your needle.
The pinpricking was also used to give detail and shading to several other objects in the pop-up, and the addition of reinforcing strips behind some objects such as the lips pattern dress were shaped to work as shading when back-lit.
Working in a collaboration has been a new experience for me. It was a huge relief to have someone to work with on such a large project, as I am used to working alone on things. Even with two of us working on this project it was challenging to get it all finished in time for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, but on the day itself I felt very proud of what we had achieved as the book was launched at the photo call.
I’m happy that the giant book with it’s delicate interior and the pop-up book kits we made will now begin their journey to inspire others in the run up to the opening of this amazing new museum.