Rise & Skate is an amazing papercut installation created by Denver-based illustrators and artists Harikrishnan Panicker and Deepti Nair. To produce this life-sized piece, Panicker and Nair hand-cut sheets of Mowhawk fine paper with great precision and careful attention to detail. Each sculpted page was then installed, layer by layer, into a wooden light box with an LED backlight.
The pair collaborated to produce the 6×6 foot window display as part of Bordo Bello (“Beautiful Board” in Italian), an annual skateboard art show created by the members of AIGA Colorado. This year, the event brought together the work of over 1,000 artists–students, professionals, and nationally recognized names–whose work normally wouldn’t share the same gallery walls. The playfully surreal, silhouetted scene, which featured a giant skateboarder taking over the city of NYC, greeted visitors on their way into the main exhibit at the AIGA National Design Center Gallery in NYC.
Panicker and Nair documented the extensive cutting process, which took more than 60 hours to complete and can be seen in the timelapse video below.
Harikrishnan Panicker’s website
Deepti Nair’s website
via [Lustik]