Yuken Teruya Paper Cutting

Artist or Art Form	Yuken Teruya
Project Type	Paper Cutting
Name	Doris Bartelt-Fuertes
Grade	Third
Teacher/School	Crowe/KHS
Date of Presentation	10/03
Resources Used	*Books: Website:* Other: The Aldrich Museum (education department)
Project Description	*Description: The children cut out mirror image trees (which gives a 3D effect to the tree in the bag) out of MacDonalds bags or similar sized colored and white bags. They used markers to decorate and scissors for cutting. If they had plain bags, they decorated them by drawing trees leaves or other tree/forest related things that they then cut out. Some children added decorations to the inside of the bag. The bags are installed by attaching the open bag with the bottom against the wall, so the viewer looks inside the bag. Light falling into the bag through the openings formed by the cut tree/leaf/flower creates visual interest - as do the shadows cast by the bags themselves which are reminiscent of tree shadows. The Aldrich Museum let us borrow slides of the artist's work (he is an emerging artist, thus no books, posters etc. available yet). Ms. Crowe let us come in one day to talk about the artist for about 30 mins. We also talked about the project: what materials we would use, and gave a demonstration about the process of creating the trees in the bag. The next day we had 40 mins for the actual project. Materials: Bags, markers Presentation Time*: 30 minutes
Presentation Content	Yuken Teruya won the Aldrich Museum's Emerging Artist award in 2002. He is a Japanese artist, currently living in NYC. His work is concerned with consumerism and the environment in which he lives. He combines traditional art forms with modern themes. He created intricate paper cut trees from colorful Japanese fast food bags (MacDonalds). His paper trees inhabit the paperbag environment, thus the 'trash' consumer bag is recycled into a work of art.
Comments	The children liked this project, it was the project chosen for Museum Night. This project tied very well to the 3rd grade study of trees and recycling. The activity seems simple, but requires some thought: The individual paper cutting of the tree should be no higher than the opening of the paper bag so that it has the appropriate height when it gets folded into the open bag; there needs to be an uncut piece between the trees so they stand up in the bag; and the tree trunk or roots (or other tree/forest related object) must not be cut through to the top opening of the paper bag (doing so makes it unstable for display).