Yesterday when I received an email update from Elsa (Elsita) Mora, one of my favourite bloggers, I was excited to learn she now has a second blog. Elsita is a full time artist and one of the most creative and multi-talented women you could imagine. She is originally from Cuba but now lives in Los Angeles where she creates everything from ceramics to jewellery, illustration and papercutting. She even designed and made (and embroidered) the dress she wore to accompany her film producer husband to the Oscars!
Elista has a wonderful way of viewing the world and her posts are a delight to read, and of course to see, as they are accompanied by her beautiful artwork. She uses her art to engage and teach her children, and is always doing projects with them or making things for them. More than anyone I have seen, she seems to truly live and breathe her art. One of the most inspiring things she has done is the blank book project. Over a period of 2 weeks Elsita, her mother Margo and her daughter Natalie collaborated on a visual diary, creating a few pages every day. The diary is a not only a record of Margo's visit, but it's also a lovely visual dialogue between the three generations of women, and something I'm sure Natalie will cherish. Here is Elsita's explanation of the first thing they completed together:
And here is the beginning of our first project!!! I draw 9 circles on three sheets of paper; one for my Mom, one for Natalie and one for myself. The idea was to create characters using the circles as their heads. With this little creative "exercise" we wanted to teach Natalie how people express their personalities in different ways. If we give sheets of paper with 9 circles for creating characters to 1 million people we would get millions of different characters and that's the beauty of diversity. Imagine how sad it would be if we all did things in the same way or if we all had the same ideas. We think that it is important for children (and adults) to understand that every person is unique and that is a good thing that we should celebrate.
You can see the characters here.
But I digress!... Elsita's new blog documents her latest passion for papercutting. Her gorgeous imagery and the incredible detail of her delicate and intricate papercuts blow me away. She has complied a huge list of papercutting resources including reference books, etsy stores, papercut artists, videos, tutorials, articles, and supplies. You can visit The Heart of Papercuts here... I think I need at least a whole day to just scratch the surface of all that info and those links.
Image Source: Elsa Mora
