Paperworks: Canada/USA

Paper has emerged as a very attractive medium for addressing these concerns. It is cohesive in its range of possibilities, enticing its maker into an exhaustive investigation of process, exploration and manipulation. 

Ignoring the traditional function of paper as an image support in favour of the exploration of its physical nature. artists are borrowing from other materials and processes to greatly extend the parameters of the medium. Evidence of these explorations is seen in papers which are now embossed, cast, hand built, poured, dipped, sprayed, stenciled, couched in multiples and hand manipulated. The wide variety of fibres and processes are yielding papers which range from opaque to translucent, mottled too uniformly coloured, and from tough or taut to soft and pliable. Paper's philic nature lends itself well to further exploration in addition to, or in combination with other materials. These composite works of paper have further expanded the potential for creative expression. 

With so many avenues of exploration open to them. many artists working with paper have concerned themselves with process and, for some, a deeper understanding of craftsmanship. Paper, historically also lends itself well to the pursuit and visual portrayal of metaphor. 

Paperworks are steadfastly gaining a higher profile in the United States as evidenced by the revival of papermills throughout the country; the introduction of papermaking into the fine art or crafts areas of universities and colleges; and an emerging network of practicing artists anxious to share their work and discoveries with one another. Numerous exhibitions are now springing up across the country, in what could be referred to, as one exhibition has suggested, a paper explosion. 

Canada, typically, appears to be somewhat less overt in its public embrace of the paper medium. This is by no means meant to suggest that innovative explorations have not been occuring across this country but rather, that what is happening in Canada might be better described as an undulating ground swell. 

Irrespective of international borders, every artist in the exhibition appears to have surpassed the mere physicality of paper in search of deeper metaphoric and aesthetic expression. The works portray an overwhelming link to the spiritual and ritual expression of the human experience. Cyclical and organic, they ellude to the temporal nature of all living things while at the same time transcending that mortality, linking us to the future and the mysteries of the unknown. 

Artists:  Helmut Becker, Jack Butler, Coco Gordon, Michelle Heon, Susan Warner Keene, Winifred Lutz, Cherie Moses, Gilles Morissette, Nance O’Banion, Anne Flaten Pixley, Carol Rosen, Czashka M.J. Ross, Sylvia Seventy, Alexandra Soteriou   

Curated by Kathleen M. Compton, assistant curator at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery with assistance from Valerie Greenfield.