THE OVERTURES

Time and Devotion

in the Work of Hallel Shapiro-Franklin

by Miden Wood

Every month, we’re going to do an interview with our resident artist. Hallel Shapiro-Franklin is Da Vinci Art Alliance’s resident artist for the month of September. 

“I believe art has this really unique opportunity… to allow us to exist differently in the spaces we already are.”

“I have to trust in the paper. I have to trust in myself. I have to trust that the longer I'm present with this, something will happen.” Hallel Shapiro-Franklin says this last part with a laugh. She has a knack for speaking with effervescent levity even as she’s getting right to the heart of the matter—almost as though she’s reminding you: Hey! Meaning can be fun! Just these few sentences, for example, point to three themes at the core of her work: interconnectedness, faith and time.

As a paper cut artist, Hallel begins her work simply, with a plain sheet of paper. The intricacy of the final product, however, is anything but simple. This is because Hallel, in her process, has imbued the paper with seemingly infinite increments of attention and time. Perhaps it is this temporal depth that gives the finished works their magical quality; if love is a practice of attention, then these paper cuts are documents of love.

To create each piece, Hallel relies dually on accrued skill and felt intuition. She relates to the paper in exacto-knife installments minute enough to be meditative, and permanent enough to defy any sense of control—and yet, this permanence lends her a different type of control:

“Sometimes in drawing, or in a lot of art, it's really easy to get in your head and be like, ‘Is this good?’” Paper cuts, on the other hand, are an art form wherein there is no going back. “There's a level of, ‘Okay, well that's a clear decision that I've made because there's no material there anymore… That clarification of what is and what isn't really gave me a vote of confidence.” Part of what she loves about each piece is that they represent an accumulation of decisions—again, a document of her relationship with the material over time. “There's that layer of trust; that you have to be like, “You know what? I can always respond to the choice that I made.’” It’s inspiring to think that one could find confidence in navigating permanence; that making firm decisions and then responding to the result means you are wielding the linearity of your time.

“There's that layer of trust; that you have to be like, “You know what? I can always respond to the choice that I made.’”

As for what drives those choices, Hallel’s years of experience have trained her eye: “What is the push and pull of values to get a full picture that feels like it has depth, even though it's also flat? ...I think there are times I haven't done it, but that's the joy of being an artist, is kind of having your eye fine-tuned enough to know when it's not working.”

When she mentions this during my visit to the DVAA Residency Studio, I realize that I’m shocked by the reality of her medium—precisely because, engaging with her work, I had never questioned its depth. In fact, I had completely forgotten that paper is, of all the materials an artist could choose, about as two-dimensional as it gets.

This is likely because Hallel’s materials include more than the paper itself. Each piece, often installed in such a way that it is draped mid-air, includes in its materials light, time and space. In her words, the paper is “collaborating with what's already in the room.”

“There's the piece and then there's the shadow,” she says, pointing to this extra dimension to her pieces. “Sometimes the shadow’s directly clear, and then sometimes there is no shadow and you get to appreciate the piece on its own, and the shadow moves.” One might argue that the way the shadows change over time, as well as the time implied in the meticulousness of the work, makes her pieces more four-dimensional than two.

“There's the piece and then there’s the shadow.”

Hallel’s work bleeds beyond the boundaries of the piece, into the time it took to craft it; the changing space where it is being observed; the attention and presence of a viewer engaging with it. “I believe art has this really unique opportunity,” Hallel says, “to allow us to exist differently in the spaces we already are.” Maybe this is part of the gift of a papercut: the image is composed of negative space. The surrounding world is made apparent because it is implicated, implied, pulled in to fill the gaps.

Hallel points to the piece on her work table now; specifically a section of it peppered with negative spaces mere millimeters wide. “I find this pattern really satisfying to do,” she say. “It kind of looks like snow when you're cleaning it up… It's so pretty when you're just, flicking all these little remnants.”

I have never, until now, fully considered the meaning behind the phrase, “devoting one’s time.” Hallel shows that all of art making—even the part that’s supposed to mean the art making is over—can be the subject of devotion. May we all look at the work in front of us ready to find beauty in it. May we all devote our time.