If you love decorating with old things, and old artwork in particular, custom silhouette art is a wonderful way to bring a charming antique or vintage vibe to your home. Not as the old pop song “Silhouettes on the Shade” would have it, but framed and on walls, mantels and shelves, tables and picture rails, in cabinets and bookcases—anywhere you would place prized artwork you want to feature.
Antique and vintage silhouettes are not hard to find at antiques shops, flea markets, fairs, estate sales or in families’ attics. But master scissor artist Karl Johnson, considered America’s premier silhouette artist, and his Cut Arts Studio can provide personalized, original modern silhouettes of your family members and loved ones, including pets. Just attend one of his community or store events, schedule a special event with him, or send Karl photos of those whose likeness you want to capture.
Silhouettes Through History
Silhouette making is a very old art. Indeed, some would say it’s the world’s oldest visual art form. Silhouette (simple profile) paintings of various Stone Age animals appearing in the caves at Lascaux in France date back approximately 16,000 years, and other silhouettes cut from black paper very similar to those we might hang in our homes today hark back at least several centuries.
In fact, the word “silhouette” comes from the name of an 18th-century French treasury chief, Étienne de Silhouette, who was famous for his frugality and parsimonious approach to the national budget, so much so that “à la silhouette” came to signify doing anything cheaply. At this time, before photography, a popular art form was a shadow profile cut from black paper. It was a simple, inexpensive alternative for people who couldn’t afford more decorative and expensive forms of portraiture, like paintings or sculptures. The word “silhouette” came to be applied to these portraits cut from black paper.
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Modern Day Silhouettes
Paper-cutting artists could quickly and inexpensively create likenesses of people, pets, even public figures, and in the U.S., silhouettes were very popular from about 1790 to 1840. But today there are perhaps only half a dozen traditional scissor artists at work in the U.S.
Karl, founder of Cut Arts Studio and a renowned, successful silhouette artist for over 30 years, is a third-generation scissor artist who learned the art from his father. He began cutting silhouettes at about 10 years old, and he attributes his skill, in part, to the fact that he has vision in only his right eye. Not having binocular vision forces Karl to judge the shape of an object and its distance by examining its shadow, letting him capture silhouette images in remarkable fashion.
Since he began cutting silhouettes at Dollywood and other amusement parks, fairs, stores and venues in about 1985 to earn money for tuition to the Art Institute of Atlanta, Karl estimates that he has freehand cut hundreds of thousands of silhouette images to date. Back when he began silhouette art and now, his mission has always been to create as exact a likeness of his subject as possible.
Stellar Silhouettes
Today, in 2019, Karl still makes portraits with the same scissors (never sharpened!) his father used and eventually passed on to him many years ago. Karl’s work hangs in the homes of many Hollywood notables including Oprah, Katie Holmes, Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Duff, Tom Cruise, Drew Barrymore, to name just a few, and it’s been featured in numerous magazines, movies and TV shows.
The only real change in his silhouette art over the years has been in the subjects’ hairstyles, clothing etc., as fashions evolve. And the main change in Karl’s art and business is that these days, in addition to cutting silhouettes for everyday people everywhere and for many different stars, his vision includes diversifying and expanding his basic shadow profiles into other media. He now offers his images not only as original silhouettes, but also as gift cards, cutting boards, stationery, prints, custom scenes and other cut art, garden and other kinds of sculptures, as well as jewelry. And he schedules appearances at weddings, birthday parties, showers etc. Check out Karl’s website for his availability: cutarts.com.
Want more simply beautiful ideas? Check out this post on a How to Pair Artwork on your walls.
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