In this TedTalks, Beatrice Coron arrives onstage in a countess cape of white lace. Looking closer, you realize it is her own cutwork, her own "fashion narrative" sliced from delicate images. As Coron states, "I am a paper cutter. I cut stories." As much a writer as a visual artist, Coron's silhouette tales emerge from the negative spaces she snips away with an Exacto blade. Visualizing the narrative on paper before she begins her process, she proceeds to "remove what's not from that story."

 

 

A spirallic, non-linear journey of various careers and travels preceded her arrival as an artist at the age of 40. A lover of words, she has invented a bilingual "spelling spider" and explores whimsical architectural forms, mindscapes, and "Freudian cities." Her series, "Heavens and Hells," included in "Slash: Paper Under the Knife," a 2010 exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, expands definitions of the artist book, and our physical connection to stories. Her subway poster, "All Around Town" shortened many of my trips from Grand Central Station to Union Square with time travel daydreams on the #6 train in 2009. Her public works in cut metal in New York, Paris and other cities around the world celebrate her conclusion that "everybody has to tell a story to make sense of the world." And if you sit long enough in shorts on her story bench in Denver, you just might thigh-brand yourself with a new legend.

 

 

 

--Kathleen Sweeney is a vlogger, web content producer (www.video-text.com), and author (Maiden USA) who teaches Media Studies and Creativity at The New School for Public Engagement. A Preferred Provider of video services for SheWriters, she recently produced the book trailer for Catherine Greenman's debut novel, Hooked.