Dan Paulos' Paper-cut Madonnas Preserve a Vanishing Art

By all rights, Dan Paulos should be pumping gasoline to pay the rent on an artist's garret. Isn't that the mental picture we get when we hear of people who spend most of their time creating art?

Perhaps, but Dan Paulos is no ordinary artist, and his art is not ordinary art. He has a good job, working 3 p.m. to midnight as shift manager at First Interstate Bank in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he runs the computer department. But that's just to pay the bills. It pales next to his true calling: working in the delicate medium of paper-cutting, making the fragile silhouettes of the Virgin and Child that have made him known around the world as a religious artist.

The paper Madonnas crafted by Paulos have been exhibited in museums and shows across the U.S., including a recent show of 50 works at the Paul VI Institute for the Arts in Washington, D.C. His work brings in about 200 letters a month from fans and prospective customers. After 15 years of hard work, he jokes, he has become an "overnight success."

But he is most proud of his association with one particular "fan" Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with whom he collaborated on the book, He's Put the Whole World in Her Hands.

"I look at her as the perfect Christian, not as a celebrity," he says. "She's the greatest human being alive." He worked every day for over a year on the book, which is filled with Mother Teresa's quotations and his cuttings. Mother Teresa has assigned two members of her order to the project full time. The cuttings will be about the mysteries of the Rosary and the life of Christ.

Paulos works out of his large Albuquerque home, where every room is devoted to his craft. The walls are covered with his works, not surprising in light of his dedication. He works at home from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. every week, creating an average of one new cutting each day. "I don't have time for hobbies or a family," he admits. "Art dominates my life. I even work when I watch TV. I work to relax. It's also too expensive to be a hobby. If I didn't have a full-time job, I'd never be able to afford the materials. I guess I work 16 hours a day."

The artist gives away many of his works, although many bring good prices at shows.

Paulos says he gets his ideas for his cuttings from reading, listening to stories people share and from spiritual conversations. The delicate works are created with Brazilian scissors and razor blades on paper that is black on one side and white on the other. He sketches his design on the white side, then cuts the reverse of it on the black. Paulos cuts away the areas he wants to be white and leaves the black paper wherever he wants a shadow or an outline.

Each piece is so delicate that, looking back when a work is completed, the artist says he is always amazed that it could have been done without falling apart. Viewers are constantly amazed, he adds, at how the delicate silhouette can be held together with strands of paper no wider than a pen stroke although he uses no pen or ink. "I don't believe it either," he says. "I can't tell you how it works. "

Paulos' art reflects his deep faith, a faith that has taken him from his native Sioux City, Iowa, to the Brothers of the Good Shepherd (at age 17 ) for several years and, eventually to his work with religious art. He credits his interest in the field to Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, O.P., the late Seattle artist renowned for her paper cuttings, who personally encouraged him to take up the scissors and blade. He had been corresponding with her since eighth grade, when she answered a letter and encouraged him to take up calligraphy and paper-cutting. "They told me a famous nun would never answer my letter," he recalled. "But we've been wonderful friends

Cover: Our Lady of Auchwitz Pictures in the Article: The Assumption; Pieta, The Sweetest Gift, A Mother's Smile; Spanish Cristo

Letters to the Editor about Dan Paulos' Art in Our Sunday Visitor

Suggestive Poses

After reading some articles concerning the Catholic viewpoint on pornography as well as morality, I wonder now what your exact definition of either is.

I know Dan Paulos' cover is supposed to be art, but where does some art end and pornography begin? Will you explain this, please?

I do not like pornography, either, but the cover picture on that issue of OSV could, I believe, be interpreted as such at least by some people

Poignant Scene

I find it difficult to believe (actually, it seems nothing surprises me anymore) that anyone could be offended by Dan Paulos' artwork. To call the cover picture "pornographic" to me shows an oversensitivity to sex and the human body.

The poses I am sure she is offended by, the ones where the nude figures have their hands over their genital area, are expressions of the despair and humiliation felt by the victims of Nazi concentration camps.

If the picture was "cleaned up" and the gestures removed from it, the piece would lose its poignancy and its true effectiveness. Paulos chose not to prettify that scene, and chose rightly. Maybe offending such sensitive people was the best way to make them take notice.

This is not the Victorian era. Sex and the human body are beautiful things.

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