a detailed perspective of, ‘I am crossing the ocean with two others on a pice of paper’ by annie vought, 2012 all images courtesy the artist

annie vought has set to designboom images of her newly developed pieces for her existent collection of handwritten, cut-out correspondence. the oakland, california residing artist considered the countless email, SMS, instant messages and twitter posts received in her life, and instead chooses to reject digital message forms. in her cut-out correspondence series, vought recounts various hand scrawled notes, letters that she have found, written, or received by first enlarging these correspondence onto a large piece of paper. her carved reinvention of the immediate communications then has the negative spaces surrounding each character carved away, revealing a network of interconnected letters in vought’s exact-o-knife penmanship, with the word choice, spelling errors and human quality of the original author.

the artist says of her work, ‘through the computer I am in touch with people I may never have seen before and I can respond in real time to a loved one. but with the ubiquity of this access and convenience, we are losing the tangible handwritten letter. handwritten records are fragments of individual histories… the author is often revealed in spite of him/herself. a letter is physical confirmation of who we were at the moment it was written, or all we have left of a person or a time‘.

‘I am crossing the ocean with two others on a pice of paper’, 2012 30in x 38in hand cut paper

an alternate close view of ‘I am crossing the ocean with two others on a pice of paper’

‘the handwriting and the lines support the structure of the cut paper, keeping it strong and sculptural, despite its apparent fragility. in these paper cutouts, I focus on the text, structure, and emotion of the letter in an elaborate investigation into the properties of writing and expression. penmanship, word choice, and spelling all contribute to possible narratives about who that person is and what they are like. my recreating the letters is an extended concentration on peoples’ inner lives and the ways they express their thoughts through writing.’ -annie vought

‘I took the girl to walk in circles’, 2012 23in x 28in hand cut paper

‘it sounds fantastic on the floor.’, 2012 23in x 28in hand cut paper

‘PS your so cool’, 2011 38in x 32in hand-cut paper

an image of the artist at work by klea mckenna of in the make