Cut Paper Versions of Handwritten Letters and Found Messages

By Alison Nastasi

Oct. 25, 2011

Interested in the traces that people leave behind, Oakland-based artist Annie Vought transforms people’s “emotional artifacts” for the gallery walls. She meticulously recreates personal letters (sometimes her own, but often not), notes, doodles and other found correspondence by dissecting them into cut paper creations. Enlarging the hand-scrawled letters onto a new piece of paper and carefully removing the negative spaces with an X-ACTO knife, Vought’s works are intricate, fragile remnants of times when kids passed notes in class before texting each other on cell phones (though she has worked with text/typed messages too). In certain instances, the works feel vulnerable due to tiny pins fastening them to walls and the delicacy of line work. Other times the letters’ misspelled messages and curious narratives are persistent and unapologetic, refusing to be hidden like a secret in a desk drawer. Either way, these are beautiful reminders that letter writing is truly a lost art. See more of Vought’s works in our gallery past the break.