Hi! I’m a Chinese-American artist and life-long band geek. I enjoy playing clarinet and cutting paper into cool shapes. Having graduated from James Madison University in 2018 and the U.S. Army School of Music in 2020, I currently live in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and play in the U.S. Army’s 29th Infantry Divsion Band. Because of my love for marching band, almost all my work is based on music. However I also find inspiration in nature and cityscapes, plus emotional themes of isolation and wonder. /Credit for photos above: Michael Tang

I used to hate papercutting! My parents sent me to weekly Chinese papercutting classes in 4th grade, and the only thing I ever produced was a weird-looking chicken that my dad framed and hung up in the bathroom. Fast-forward to 9th grade, and I started cutting paper again because I was bored in geometry class– using only a thumbtack in printer paper. Luckily I’ve since moved on to better materials.

Current setup:

• NT cutter d-400 (avail. in China/Japan only)
• Olfa 9mm 30° blades for detailed cutting
• Olfa 9mm 45° blades for tight curves
• Fiskars swivel knife for wide curves
• one (1) X-acto blade for stabbing enemies
• Tweezees precision tweezers
• a playlist full of Radiohead songs

I no longer use X-acto after it gave me wrist pains. The NT cutter changed my life!

Technique

In the past I liked to combine many layers of cuttings into one image because it was unconventional in the papercutting world, but now I’ve come to feel that too much glue and tape just diminishes the essence of a papercutting. A good papercutting should rely mostly on good knifework and very little on adhesives. To stay true to this, I try to keep each cutting to only 2 pieces of paper and 1 foam board for stability. For disjointed elements, I use an “overlapping” trick: