We’ve been continuing to explore paper and form with Lisa Takahasi in the brilliant Playper! sessions in the Online Art Group.

In our December session, Ernst Röttger’s book, Creative Paper Craft, continued to guide us as we we broke away from the constraints of 2D working, and slowly and meticulously worked on cutting and folding a striking 3D paper city from just a single sheet of paper. The process was a little tricky at first, as each cut has a huge impact on the final result, but once we got the hang of it the impact (as you can see from the photos) is so satisfying and striking!!

We welcomed the new year in January by thinking about positives and negatives. Inspired by a chapter in the book focusing on cutting out and folding back, we experimented with these techniques, using the opposing words of ‘flowing’ and ‘jagged’ as our starting point. This process allowed our perspectives to be challenged and surprised, and whilst asking us to be responsive and instinctive with our compositions.

To round things off one of our brilliant participants introduced us to the concept of Notan Art – “a design concept meaning “light-dark harmony,” focusing on the balance between positive (light) and negative (dark) space, often created using paper-cutting techniques” – a perfect reflection of what we’ve been working on. 

Our final session with Lisa is on Wednesday 4 February, before welcoming our next artist from 4 March – watch this space for details.

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Join us for creative sessions, delivered online by a range of exciting artists. Keeping creativity as accessible as possible – either join us live or watch back in your own time.

New members can join at any time, and to help us keep the sessions running, we kindly ask for a small donation of £5-£50 for access to the group. However if this isn’t affordable for you, please let us know – we never want cost to be a barrier to taking part.

First Wednesday of the month 6.30 – 7.30pm on Facebook Live, plus a library of recordings.
Contact for more information and bookings: admin@somersetartworks.org.uk
www.somersetartworks.org.uk

Images: group members and the lead artist

With thanks to funding support in 2026 from Arts Council England