By Peggy Sturdivant

Five years ago an exhibit at then Nordic Heritage Museum was so amazing I told everyone I met they needed to see it. For once, even strangers did as ordered. That was the first American exhibition of Karen Bit Vejle’s masterful work in paper cutting, “Scissors for a Brush.”

Last week I got a call asking if I wanted to meet the artist in town for the installation of the Nordic Museum’s commissioned piece for their permanent collection. If I’d had to grow wings I would have flown there.

By coincidence, just last weekend, my husband and I were taking someone to task for not having seen the 2013 exhibit. Five days later I was sitting near the entrance of the Nordic Museum with Karen Bit Vejle, in front of her new work, “Twittering in the Royal Copenhagen Tree.”

We’d told the story about meeting her and her explanation on how she kept her grandmother’s embroidery scissors so sharp it felt like it had become our story. Now I was face to face with the master herself, the artist, the storyteller. A woman as lovely as her work.

“Oh, yes,” she said, when asked again. “My grandmother taught me that if you always keep the screw of the scissor toward your heart they will never become dull.”

Was it possible she was wearing the scissors on a cord around her neck that long ago opening night, those scissors with which she creates all of her art? “Oh, no,” she said. “They never leave my home. Imagine if I dropped them, or lost them.” She’d likely been wearing a pair on a chain, like jewelry. In my version of that night, she had revealed the scissors that seem to create magic.

Then I put on my interviewer hat, the one that has been missing from this space for many months. Since “Scissors for a Brush” Vejle, or Bit, as she likes to be called, has exhibited in many countries. She has been featured in China, and will be part of the Michelangelo Foundation Exhibition in Venice in September. And, oh yes…“I’ve opened my own museum.”

The Center for Paper Art is in Blokhus, Denmark, close to the North Sea and what Vejle says are the most beautiful beaches. Featuring her work and that of others the museum is the only one in the Nordic countries featuring paper arts. “Everything in it is paper,” she said. “The chairs in the café, even the cakes are of edible paper.”

Speaking of unique she pronounces the new Nordic Museum unparalleled in capturing Scandinavian atmosphere. “It’s fantastic. Seattle must be so proud. I’ve been so many places, seen other museums that tried but there was always something a little off. As a Scandinavian, this blows me away.”

Vejle told me about the new work, black paper cut into an intricate scene, encased in glass, suspended beside us. “It needs to come out from the wall a bit more,” she said, feeling the space between white wall and glass. “It’s almost right.” The piece was a full year in the making. She explained the cut-outs in the paper need to be able to create shadow on the wall, giving the work another dimension. Through more than just that shadow, Vejle wants her pieces to have “deeper meaning.”

“All my work is storytelling,” she said. “And like this museum it is about the past, the present and the future. I always pay very careful attention so that my work will be meaningful, and no matter how many times you see you will always be able to find another detail.”

As with all her work Vejle fully conceived the entire story and scenario in her mind, accompanied and inspired by the music of Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye. Once it was all in her head, and she had figured out how to connect all the details, then she drew support lines on paper. Only then did Vejle begin cutting, moving from outer frame to interior, rolling up the paper, “like a weaver.” “I cannot improvise,” she admitted. “Once you’ve cut, you can’t redo.”

There’s a name for this type of art, psaligraphy, drawing with scissors. Sometimes when Vejle’s fingers become too dry from working with paper they start to bleed and she has to stop so she won’t ruin the paper. She also did something potentially dangerous, a first, with this piece, “Twittering in the Royal Copenhagen Tree.” She created a stencil, “We only had a few minutes or else it would stick and damage the art.” The stencils will be used on canvases as artwork available at the Nordic Museum’s annual auction.

For the mouse, Bjorn, aka Frank, and all the creatures and objects that he finds in his Royal Copenhagen tree upon waking one morning, there’s a story. They told their stories to Karen Bit Vejle and kept her company as she cut them into being, the chattering, twittering birds and the grumpy crow Oscar with his gold bits. “I can tell you a few of their stories,” Vejle said in her beautiful accented English, and I leaned in very close.