Recently we featured Joe Bagley's hand cut paper art work and I am sure you must have loved it as like me. Today, the artist himself is with us to share his story and artistic journey with us.Joe Bagley is a Boston based paper artist. He creates amazing silhouette images by cutting a single sheet of paper using a knife. His designs' span is wide and great that ranges from places, portraits, other living creatures to unique things. He also creates fine art paper work. Get tuned into his interview below:

Joe, please introduce yourself to E-junkies.

Hi everyone, my name is Joe Bagley, I’m 26, and I am a paper artist living in Boston. I work from my studio in my apartment where I live with my wife, Jen. We are also both archaeologists and met in college where we got our BA in archaeology.

Enlighten us with your wonderful artwork.

Well, essentially I take a piece of black paper and cut a ton of holes in it to make a (hopefully) attractive design. I’m definitely not a political artist, and my main goal is to wow people with the complexity and detail in my designs. I guess my lack of a political statement is a political statement, but I digress. I create all my designs using photos that I take as references. I try to get photo-realistic results from my work as I really enjoy the challenge of making the subject look as recognizable as possible. Everything is cut by hand using an X-ACTO knife. It’s a surprisingly low-tech process, and my studio looks more like an office than an artist studio (with massive amounts of paper bits on the floor).

How did you get into paper-cutting? When did you realize that you're an artist?

The first time I tried paper-cutting, I was in first grade. My mother started a home daycare when I was born and ran it from our house until I was 15. She had tons of arts and crafts books and a supply closet full of random bits and bobs she collected. One of the books was on paper art and I copied some of the paper-cut Valentine cards for the kids in my class room. I think my favorite part was using the Xacto knife as a seven year old. It felt like I was getting away with something. I later encountered paper-cutting again when I was 10 at a summer program that had paper-cutting as part of an arts class. I really enjoyed it, and after the program I started copying all the really complex designs in the same book I had first done the Valentine designs. Eventually I realized that I could cut the really hard designs, and I also figured out the “philosophy” of how to design the piece so that everything interconnects but not in an obvious way. I kept copying designs I found until college, when I decided to try to create designs based on photos I had taken. 


Several years later I had developed my own design technique and style. I started selling through Etsy.com to see if anyone would buy them (I was a full-time archaeologist at the time) and they started selling! I was eventually laid off from my job in 2007, and faced with prolonged unemployment I decided I preferred to invest my time into creating my art and expanding my art business and sort of became an artist that way. I had always been creative and I love sketching, but I never expected to become an artist, and I never thought of it as an actual career.

''I am attempting to modernize this art-form and introduce a new audience to it". Please elaborate.

Paper-cutting has been around for about 2,000 years. It’s a traditional folk art in China, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico, Poland, and Indonesia (among others). The styles are very 2D and very folk-art in appearance. I have always appreciated them, but I feel like because I do not have the cultural background of any of those folk styles (I’m Irish), I’m able to use this medium without feeling like I’m distorting my heritage. A surprising number of people are familiar with the traditional folk-art forms of paper-cutting, so I hope they see that I have taken it to a very, very different place.

What motivates the artist within you? Is there anyone whom you idolize or draw inspiration from?

I have found over the past year that I am somewhat shamefully addicted to praise, and I really enjoy doing a show and hearing people say “Wow” and “These are amazing!” all day. I guess, I push myself to create increasingly difficult and impossible looking pieces to both raise the bar for the medium, but also to get a good reaction from people who view my work. It’s a win-win, I get the praise, and my work get’s a good reputation. Having never gone to art school, or every seriously considered becoming an artist until I actually was one, I tend to feel a bit self conscious and insecure with any success in the “art world”. For that reason, I really idolize creative people who are able to come out and do what they love, unapologetically, and with complete conviction regardless of critics. For that reason, I think people like Lady Gaga, Alexander McQueen, Jeff “It’s just a balloon animal, nothing more” Koons, Zach Galifianakis, Richard Tuttle, etc are people I look up to and cheer their success.

What influences your artwork? What subjects do you like to work on?

My medium is not very…colorful, so I have to rely on texture to create interest. I think that growing up in Maine and an ever-growing love of historic architecture has blended well with this medium. The vast majority of my large pieces depict buildings and natural scenes. I especially like stone architecture, water texture, and trees. You can see those everywhere in my work. I really like combining them too, and specifically seek out places to photograph them together. Boston is perfect for this!

What materials do you use to create your work?

I design in the computer so I can make everything perfect looking before cutting. I use a wacom tablet to digitally design the designs in photoshop. Once the design/pattern is created, I use a knife to cut everything. All of my pieces are cut from black paper made specifically for silhouette artist (like the people who cut your profile at a fair). That’s it. Computer, knife, coffee, NPR, time.

Do you remember your first paper cutting creation? What and when was it?

I know the ones I did at the summer program were two sharks, a helicopter, and a space shuttle. The designs came from the Dover Little Design Book series. I have looked for, but haven’t found yet, the exact books that started this whole thing.

Which creation of yours is the most special to you?

One of the first branch pieces I did was a combination of the profile of my wife, Jen, and branches. Here’s the finished piece unmounted (in the image below). It’s one of the pieces I refuse to sell.

'Zombie Head' and 'Couple Celebrate' are just awesome. I would like to learn more about it.

Heh. For a while I was doing custom silhouettes to pay the bills. I frankly started to hate it about six months before I actually stopped doing them, so there was some serious animosity built up by the time I decided to not deal with 15+ redesigns before actually getting the go-ahead to cut the piece. When I stopped making them, I wanted to create the anti-silhouette, so I decided a gory zombie dripping puss was perfect!

The couple designs are actually based on custom silhouettes I did for customers. When I stopped taking custom silhouettes, the requests still kept coming in, so I decided to go back and request from those customers permission to offer their design in my shop as a non-custom finished design. The kissing couple design is a couple in Kentucky. The photo that the design was based on was taken during their honeymoon. I offered a very generous payment to my former customer for the rights to the image, but it has become an excellent investment. They are also the only people I will still create custom silhouettes for, at a very discounted rate, and they come by about three times a year for me to make designs for their friends and family.

Where do you project to see your art form? What is your vision for 'Paper Cutting Art' as a whole?

I’m currently on the Board of Directors for the Guild of American Paper-cutters. I feel that the guild is focused on the more folk-styles and an older audience. I’m trying to bring a younger perspective and encourage the growing paper-cutting art-form to join the Guild. It’s an uphill battle, and I worry that there is a bit of mistrust and misunderstanding between the two. Personally, I would love to go even larger. I love my paper, but the maximum size sheets I can get is 20x30. I would love to do a larger “master”piece. Also, I would love to eventually phase out my smaller pieces and focus on the one-of-a-kind, but for now the smaller designs pay my bills. I still enjoy making them, so it’s a good situation. I feel that people like Peter Callesen have done most of the hard trailblazing as far as getting paper as a medium some respect. I hope that I can follow him to be recognized as one of the pioneers in the cut paper wave.

What are your views on E-commerce? How does it encourage an artist?

It’s cheep, and easy to use, so it’s the greatest single thing to happen to small businesses/artist. I would not be here if it were not for the internet. I had no money and no connections going into this. I was able to start an Etsy shop on practically nothing. Fortunately I do not use a medium that is expensive to purchase the raw materials, so I have been able to adopt to my changing employment and financial situation and never go into debt over my art.

Many other artists would draw inspiration from you. What message do you have for them?

Here’s the thing, I think the one thing I have to offer is that I’m doing this from nothing. Absolutely nothing. I come from a very blue-collar background; my mom ran a day care and my dad was a mail sorter. I have had more than several bouts with almost going broke and stretches of unemployment. I took unemployment and turned it into an art career. I started this career when I had to budget the purchase of a $1.25 sheet of paper. I’m not special, but I am extremely hard working, ambitious, and willing to do just about anything to get my way. I showed up at galleries and basically told them (very politely) that I was awesome and they would be fools to not show my work. They listened, but I had good work to prove my point. I was damn proud of my pieces, and don’t you dare show off your work until you are beyond confident in your product.

Don’t be afraid to tell people you are awesome, but definitely have some good evidence (art) to back you up. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, especially if, like me, you don’t know who the “right people” are (still don’t by the way, but it’s working for me). Push yourself and your work. The harder it is to do, the better the reception will be. Remove emotion from your prices, and do not overprice until you have proven yourself at a lower price point. And, probably most important, you will get a TON of good advice from a TON of people. Ignore 95% of it. The other 5% will be your career.

Joe, it has been a wonderful experience to learn your story. Thanks a lot for sharing it with us. We will you all the very best.

Visit Joe's store at Etsy.

Become his fan on Facebook.

Visit his blog at Paper Cuts By Joe.


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