A Form of Air and Space

The art of paper cutting has existed at least since the second century, when paper was invented in China, but the idea of it stretches much further back than that, to a time before paper, when people cut into leaves, silk, leather, and foil. In those early years, most cut art was created in the service of worshipping gods and ancestors, a fact that lends a certain resonant context to the passions of artist Anna Brones, as the majority of her paper-cut pieces center on coffee, outdoor adventure, and food—the pole stars of her very creative life. (And, it must be added, bicycles, trees, beaches, wild swimming, women.)

The daughter of an American dad and Swedish mom, Brones grew up in the Pacific Northwest in a small community where her great-grandparents had homesteaded many years before. The location was the result of a bargain between her folks, who’d met in Sweden when her father was studying there: Her mom didn’t want to live in