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RR 84 Tangeman Gallery/University of Cincinnati New American Paperwork’s 14 November- 21 December From 14 November through 21 December, The Tangeman Fine Arts Gallery will present an engaging Holiday exhibition entitled New American Paperworks. This exhibition curated by Jane Farmer, for the World Print Council is sponsored by The Champion Paper Co. And The National Endowment for Arts. Twenty contemporary artists are showcased in this exciting exhibition. The following article was excerpted from the catalogue introduced by Jane Farmer. [[Image]] Robert Rauschenberg, Pit Boss. Handmade paper, bamboo, fabric, 33 3/4” x 26” X 4”. The material (paper) is beautiful and precious. Though cost is cheap yet quality is high… Stretching out when it opens and rolling up when put away. Able to contract or expand, hide or expose.. To covey your affection to a distance of ten thousand miles away. With your refined thought written at one corner. Fu Hsien (234-294 A.D.)1 Today all of the civilized world takes paper for granted as an everyday fact and necessity of life. At the time of its development in China, however, paper was nothing short of a miracle. Indeed from the very outset of its use, the Chinese valued paper as much for its intrinsic aesthetic and spiritual properties as for its utility in communication and the storage of information. At a time when so many of our functional objects are mass produced, the return of the unique object made with natural materials and perhaps more interest in aesthetics than in utility is another example of the boundary crossing and expansion which characterizes recent American art. More and more artists in their work are trying to capture the vanishing human space and materials. More than ever artists are sensitized to the inner language of their materials.2 The use of paper as a medium appeals to artists today for several reasons. It allows a swing away from impersonalized art towards the involvement of the hand of the artist in the creation of his/her own work. It is a new, very flexible, and plastic medium that allows considerable cross-media experimentation, yet it has associations with nature, history, fine art, and the varied traditional uses of paper for functional and spiritual objects. Paper has an aura of authority and a democratic simplicity about it. As the humanity of paper appealed to esoteric Buddhism, so too do the simple, pure technique, the natural materials, and the meditative nature of the process of papermaking appeal to the intellect of today’s artist. Paper offers a large palette of visual and physical characteristics to both artists who make their own paper and those who use paper made by others. Once paper is freed from its role as a substrate its tremendous potential becomes evident. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of paper is the absence of precedent for its use as an American [[Image]] Charles Hilger, Black Bamboo. Handmade paper, graphite. art medium, and relative freedom from expectations and personal or cultural prejudices it offers artists. After a decade of exploration by artists, patterns in the use of paper as a medium have begun to emerge. We can now see that paper allows an artist to move through layers that would otherwise be occupied and obfuscated by the baggage of process, media definition, art historical expectations and the artist’s own expectations. Working with an interdisciplinary medium the artist is able to get in touch directly with a very deep self - to communicate ideas that are free from these expectations usually loaded on more defined media. The material itself relates to this type of expression. For many artists the initial interest in the formal flexibility of paper as a medium ultimately affects their approach to the other media in which they work. The artists represented in New American Paperworks have clearly discovered paper to be part of a solution to this need for a new visual language. 1Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 138. 2Friedlaender, unpublished journals, October 7, 1978.