Nature’s Angela Silouette Pickman
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Nature’s Silouette Angela Pickman Curated by Alex Priest Omaha Public Library / Michael Phipps Gallery April 05 - April 27, 2014
Nature’s Silouette
_ Angela Pickman’s whimsical paper cuttings extract emotive narratives through universal tropes. Nature’s Silhouette explores her most recent research and work in a series of 26 black and white alphabetic works, a wide range of naturalistic themed cuts, several playful puppet shadow boxes and her most recent zoetrope. Taken together, they articulate a pure artistic voice of playful minimalism. Based in Kansas, Pickman is an artist and illustrator working under the moniker “Rural Pearl”. Her work began to develop more fully in 2003 after seeing the exhibition The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a 1926 cut paper stop-motion silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger. After this, according to Pickman, “something clicked.” She was able translate her vision of simplicity and nature into the standardized forms of paper, “cutting away of all that is unneccessary to reveal the subject in a simple, bold form.” Since then, her tools have remained the same an X-Acto knife and paper. Nature’s Silhouette fits within the long tradition of paper cutting; culling her fascination for
_ eccentricity and honed simplicity. Additionally, these hand cut works pursue alternative themes of rapid succession animation, seen in her most recent zoetrope, and iconography of the Midwest landscape. Like her intricately cut paper, a sense of control and restraint remains constant throughout Nature’s Silhouette where the layers of hand cut paper envelop naturalistic narratives as a gateway to introspection.