The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking at Georgia Tech presents Pure Pulp: Contemporary Artists Working in Paper at Dieu Donné, an exhibition designed to convey the range and vitality of artmaking with paper over the course of 40 years at Dieu Donné, the renowned New York City papermaking studio.  The exhibit will be on display through Aug. 5. Established artists such as E.V. Day, William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, Do Ho Suh, and Richard Tuttle are represented alongside emerging artists such as Firelei Báez, Ian Cooper, and Natalie Frank.

“The Paper Museum is thrilled to share this exhibit with the Atlanta community. The twenty artists in the show have explored a traditional material – paper—with innovative methods and processes,” says museum director Teri Williams. “Exhibits like Pure Pulp provide a lens to show that handmade paper continues to be relevant, and inspiring, to artists working today.”

The phrase “work on paper” is a known quantity. It brings to mind paper used as a material on which to be drawn, painted, or printed. At Dieu Donné, the emphasis is on works in paper, meaning that paper is not a substrate but rather is the medium itself. Using little more than fiber, pigments, water, and methyl cellulose (a natural adhesive), paper provides a multitude of unexpected possibilities as an artistic material, and artists and papermakers work together in the Dieu Donné studios to explore a seemingly limitless range of outcomes.

This exhibition brings together artwork created in the Dieu Donné studio by twenty artists who have participated in the organization’s prestigious residency programs. The artworks range from intimate two-dimensional studies to large sculptural works, all made from a form of paper pulp. The artists have varied practices outside of the residency but are united through their exploration of the possibilities of this versatile medium.

Artists whose work will be included are: Firelei Báez, Ian Cooper, David Kennedy Cutler, E.V. Day, Melvin Edwards, Natalie Frank, Jane Hammond, Jim Hodges, William Kentridge, Jon Kessler, Glenn Ligon, Suzanne McClelland, Arlene Shechet, Kate Shepherd, Molly Smith, Do Ho Suh, Mary Temple, Richard Tuttle, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and B. Wurtz. 

For some, the collaboration with the studio’s papermaker translated enduring themes and aesthetic into new material. Sculptor Ursula Von Rydingsvard, for example, maintained the dark organicism of her monumental works in cedar and graphite. For the untitled works in the show, she laid black pigment on linen and embedded scraps of her own textiles in extruded deckled edges to create the first two-dimensional works she has ever exhibited. Other artists took the opportunity to venture into new territory. Do Ho Suh departed from large-scale sculptural installation with his “thread drawings.” For Blueprint (2013) and Staircase (2013), he stitched thread into soluble gelatin laid onto a freshly pulled sheet of cotton paper pulp, then dissolved the gelatin in a mist of water and bound the threads to the pulp fibers to create a gestural line shaped by the water current and the placement of his hand.

“The only predictable thing about the works in Pure Pulp is the medium,” says Williams. “Abstraction, pop art, portraiture, collage, book art: this show has a spectacular piece to whet every appetite about the possibilities of working in paper.”

The Museum is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is located at 500 10th Street NW. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged. Closed all Georgia Tech holidays.

Pure Pulp was organized by the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Exhibition tour organized by Dieu Donné, New York, NY.