Choosing the best visual strategy to advance a particular feature’s storytelling arc is one of the greatest joys — and challenges — for a magazine editor. At Bucknell Magazine, we’re fortunate to have a talented consulting art director, Lauren Sanders, who helps us bring our stories to life. For our fall feature “COVID in the Coal Mine,” we sought conceptual art that could visually relate the complicated tale of the American health system’s struggles during the pandemic in a way photos of those interviewed would never allow. Lauren suggested a type of art with which we were unfamiliar — cut-paper art. Helen Musselwhite, a paper artist who lives in Wales, was our choice for our maiden voyage into papercut land.
The images below portray the progress of the three pieces of paper art we commissioned — a full-page opening to the feature and two smaller spot-art pieces.
