Paper artist Poppy Chancellor breaths new life into the traditional art of papercutting. Based in London, Chancellor’s art is anything but traditional, with brands like Nike, Adidas, and Vogue all standing in line to collaborate with her.
With more than 20k followers on Instagram, it may seem that Chancellor was destined for greatness, but it took her quite a while to find the perfect artistic niche. Originally studying illustration at Kingston University, she went on to study at the Royal Drawing School where she started making customized paper artworks for friends and family.
“I was in the final year of my Illustration degree and I got a bad final mark,” she admitted in an interview with the Bailey Nelson blog. “I had one chance to redeem myself through an additional mark for the final exhibition, and I knew I had to take a totally different approach. I’d been doing a lot of ink drawing and charcoal, so I decided to do something 3-dimensional instead.”
It was then that she had the bright idea to make a city out of shoeboxes, crafting black cut-out silhouettes of people in the windows. “You could turn the lights in the ‘rooms’ on and off,” she explained, adding: “I wanted to use a traditional craft, but with a contemporary subject matter. The art of papercutting is ancient!”
Follow her Instagram page for good, clean fun.
