Tim Budden’s papercuttings tell stories with shadows and light. The Wales-born artist’s spellbindingly intricate artwork is on display at the Suho Memorial Paper Museum (樹火紀念紙博物館) until March 24.
Before moving to Taiwan, Budden was a sculptor who created puppets and set pieces for theatrical performances. He also drew a critically acclaimed comic strip about a group of badgers living unhappily alongside humans.
After arriving in this country, Budden says he was uninterested in traditional Chinese art forms until he stumbled upon a book about papercuts created by retired women in China. He was struck by the similarity between the papercuts and the black-and-white line art he had used in his comic strips.
Photo courtesy of Suho Memorial Paper Museum
“They used papercuts to tell the story of their lives,” says Budden. “They were like cartoons, but 3D. You can touch them and hold them.”
Like his comic strip, many of Budden’s papercuts deal with the sometimes uneasy relationship between a place and its inhabitants. While his comics were about conflicts between badgers and the humans who threatened their safety, Budden’s papercut artwork offers a foreigner’s perspective on life in Taiwan. Many revolve around the adventures of a small child named Daniel, who is a composite of Budden and his young son.
“I’m not from Taiwan and I’m trying to understand this culture. I feel like a child, trying to understand more: ‘Why are they doing this, what is this for?’” says Budden.
Photo courtesy of Suho Memorial Paper Museum
Motifs seen in Budden’s complex, lacelike artwork include butterflies, steam wafting from hot bowls of beef noodle soup and cockroaches.
One work shows moped riders being swept away by torrents of water during a typhoon. Budden was struck by drivers who continue to speed recklessly even after roads have flooded and television news segments in which reporters put their safety at peril to venture into hazardous conditions and tell viewers the obvious (“It’s raining!”). Another papercut recounts the time Budden and his friend were forced to climb a tree to escape an angry wild boar after getting lost while hiking in Jinguashih (金瓜石).
Most of Budden’s papercuts are created from red or black paper backed with silk and have to be carefully planned in advance so the delicate designs will not tear or warp once they are completed and hung. One work, Butterfly Blast!, which features so many of the winged creatures that Budden has lost count, took six weeks to design and about 10 to 12 days to cut.
Photo courtesy of Suho Memorial Paper Museum
Budden is now experimenting with a more freeform technique inspired by colorful beach rocks and leaf skeletons he found during a trip to Hualian. He begins by spilling acrylic paint on paper and blowing on it through a straw so the colors run together.
“When it dries, you get these fantastic patterns,” says Budden. The random shapes and lines inspire the different shapes Budden cuts into the paper. On first glance, it is hard to discern what each individual detail is supposed to depict. When the papercuts are hung up and a light shone through them, however, the artwork casts strong, defined lines against the wall, allowing viewers to pick out butterflies and 24 different kinds of beetles.
“You can see one image when you look at papercutting and something completely different behind it,” says Budden. “Shadows for me are full of secrets.
Photo courtesy of Suho Memorial Paper Museum
ets.”
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s