Meeting with Charles
What a delight, Charles Burns the silhouette artist visited today. We talked about the Profiles project and ways we might collaborate. He was enthiusisatic and offered several valuable ideas - more about these in due course. As he sat in our office, I asked him how long he took to produce a cut silhouette, his answer was, "would you like to see"? He then promptly produced my silhouette, exclaiming that the first one of the day was always made a little slower than subsequent works. The whole thing was, nevertheless, over in an amazing 90 seconds! He then produced two more silhouettes of colleagues sitting close by. My silhouette was produced in 'hollow point' style, the other two were conventional cuts. In hollow point work, the artist removes the centre of the paper they is working with, to leave the profile.
Hollow cut silhouette (the cutter removing the centre of the paper to produce the portrait)
The residue of the hollow cut (see to the right) besides the portrait
The residue of a standard silhouette, the cut out section being presented to the sitter