Bua

Bua Smith

Paper Cutter & Collage Maker

Bangkok, Thailand

Bua and I have many similarities. For one, we share the same birthday. A fact that came up when I asked for her horoscope while we were talking. Another similarity we have is that we love collecting things. Anything at all. From restaurant receipts to boat tickets. We don't really know what we are gonna use them for. But we just collect them anyway. You can say that we are compulsive hoarders. It was a rather funny situation as we both slowly realised how similar we were.

Bua is a well-known paper cutter and collage maker in Thailand and around the world. Ply from the first Art Vignette made introductions for us to meet when she found out I was looking for artists to photograph. Bua and Ply frequently collaborate on projects and we will talk more about that later in the blog post.

The first thing I noticed about Bua was how welcoming and accommodating she was. Arrangements were made relatively easily and Bua was really helpful with suggestions on where we should do the shoot in her house. When I arrived on the day of the shoot, I quickly realised where she got this warm spirit from. Her mum greeted me with a cold bowl of sea coconut. A refreshing respite on a hot Thai summer day. I guess hospitality runs in the family. We made our way to the patio where Bua had moved her artworks, books, stools and tools from her room where she usually did her work. I fell very quickly in love with the space. It was filled with so many plants and it was fairly breezy as well. The afternoon light that was flowing in was so soft and idyllic. Bua mentioned that the patio was her father’s pet project. He maintained and decorated the space and you could tell, it was a garden grown with love and an eye for aesthetics. She commented that she should work out on the patio more often. I agreed.

Can you imagine how long it took to do this?

Hoarding, or collecting as I’d like to call it, is almost second nature to us. I noticed boxes and bags of clippings and trinkets around and mused at how I had something similar back home. I was intrigued. We had a similar habit of keeping things. But I never knew what to do with them. So when I asked Bua what she plans to do with her collection of cut outs and scraps, and she exclaimed that she didn’t know either, I was quite surprised. She never knows what she is going to use the items for and I completed understood where she was coming from.

Despite our similarities however, Bua is clearly more creative as she makes use of her collection by creating amazing collages with them. She showed me a few notebooks from her travels with collages of intricately cut paper and scraps forming a vignette of a larger story. I was in awe of her creativeness and resourcefulness. I really love this series as it combines different aspects of the trip, going beyond simple imagery and putting some context to the image through found items/images.

Seeing the collages reminded me of when I was younger. We did not really have the internet, or access to much digital entertainment growing up and so our nightly entertainment came in the form of looking through magazines and newspapers, cutting images out and gluing them on a bigger piece of paper to form a collage. I don’t really remember what we did with the collages but it was definitely therapeutic and it passes the time.

Paper collage of a Shabu Shabu restaurant Bua visited in Japan. An interesting way to document your travels.

Keeping every scrap paper and used blade.

After showing me her collection, she started working on a paper cutting project while I photographed her. It was intense watching her. Each cut, calculated and precise. She was like an experienced surgeon. We chatted while she worked and told me that each project takes her months to complete. From sourcing the right paper, to finding a suitable design. The most tedious part was the cutting as a small mistake will set her back hours of work. Everything had to be perfect.

At the time I was photographing Bua, she was working with Ply on the cover for “The English Governess at the Siamese Court”, the latest in a series of Thai edition books translated from the original, written by Anna Harriette Leonowens. It tells the story of the lives and loves of the women of King Rama IV’s court.

Click here to read more about the process behind the designing of this cover. It is written in Thai but Google Chrome can easily translate it for you.

The English Governess at the Siamese Court & The Romance of the Harem, a collaborative book design cover by Bua and Ply.

Bua, my fellow 25th June baby, collector of things with the soul of an artist through and through.

As we were wrapping up, Bua’s dad came home and gifted us with fresh coconuts, ready to be slurped up. Another sign of the hospitality and warmth of Bua’s family. We chilled a little bit more on the patio as Bua continued working on her project. Breeze rustling the leaves of the plants. Light slowly fading. And coconut being slurped on. That moment was a perfect encapsulation of my trip in Thailand photographing artists.

Meeting these amazing humans, hearing the stories of their creative journeys, their philosophies and processes and having them allow me into their most vulnerable spaces to photograph them. I’m grateful for that. I never expected that I could do a series like this. But I took the first step and here I am. The next few entries in Art Vignette will have us travel across the border and into Malaysia. Please continue watching this space for updates and thank you for taking the time to scroll through this post.

Thank you Bua for your hospitality and being ever so patient with me. Bua is constantly posting new content on her Instagram and is currently working on her series, MY MICRO JOURNEY in Osaka. A continuation of her series, MY MICRO JOURNEY in North Kyushu. “This is my journal about food, places,climate, mood and people when I visited North Kyushu. I wonder how are they look like when looking through a microscope.” Follow Bua on Instagram to see more of her works.