“I was going to wait till I got it cleaned up and well-lit, but it’s never cleaned up or well-lit, so in the spirit of the project here you go.

This was an old unfinished wood drafting table my father in-law built for himself when he was doing commercial art before he switched to cabinet making. It’s got a really scared up old cutting mat on top as I do a lot of paper cutting with an exacto now days. It’s in a corner of my attic studio between the wall and the chimney. It’s funny I was even a little shocked when I looked at the picture how chaotic my work space is. I have a day job and a family so the time I have for my personal work is precious so I don’t have a lot of time to clean I just go into mad scientist mode and start cutting, drawing, gluing and folding.  I’ve got that collector gene too (comics, books, prints, records,toys) so that stuff just adds to the fray and accumulates all over. It’s filled with things I love and things that inspire me and all the things I need to do my work are right at my finger tips. Now where did I put that x-acto knife.”

Matt Hawkins is a papertoy artist, illustrator, cartoonist and an incessant doodler living in Kansas City. He shares his work and offers free papertoys to download and build at his site Custom Paper Toys. His work has been shown in art galleries and exhibitions from LA to Amsterdam to Tokyo. Matt’s papertoys and paper sculpture illustration have been featured in many books and magazines. Matt is the author of Urban Paper a book that features the worlds best papertoy artist.He blogs about his paper addiction as a contributor at Paper Forest.

Kate’s a big fan of Matt’s work via his “Space Hoody,” a custom Munny for the Kid Robot competition (a clear winner in my book) to his custom “Obama Action Figure” (to your left).  Dynamite!  Don’t miss anything via his Flickr photos. It officially appears Kansas City is the emerging epicenter for art, creative and free-thinking!