PLAYING WITH PATTERNS AND PAPERCUTS

We're nearing the end of our residency at Guildford Cathedral and have been focusing on creating hand painted textiles for origami forms and a series of paper cuts.
We hope to use the paper cuts to create a series of products that include a pictorial alphabet book of Guildford Cathedral and an architectural kit of parts of the building. We have created an initial prototype of the architectural kit of parts, based on the tower with the Guildford angel. This was recently tested within an art workshop for children, held at the Cathedral, who made their own paper tower that they then customised (top image). The idea for this originated from research we undertook into paper architectural models at the V & A Museum of Childhood. We discovered that there is a tradition within Spanish cultures for celebrating the building of a Cathedral or religious building with a paper toy model for people to make. It seemed fitting to bring this tradition to Guildford Cathedral since our residency is coinciding with new building works supported by the Heritage Lottery.
The paper cuts of the angel and the stag are the starting point for the alphabet book of the Cathedral. We hope to turn these paper cuts into screen printed images and experiment with using geometric patterns we have found within the Cathedral architecture and interior to create a series of decorative illustrations.