Get Close: 'Art on Paper' show worth a long look

GREENSBORO -- The 40th installment of the Weatherspoon Art Museum's "Art on Paper" exhibition series does a creditable job of living up to the solid reputation established by previous shows in the series, a tradition at the museum since 1965. These shows were held annually until 2000, but have appeared biennially since then. They've been noteworthy, among other reasons, for highlighting the versatility of paper and the seemingly endless variety of approaches to art-making.

Like its predecessors, the current exhibition, on view through Jan. 25, showcases an impressive array of mostly contemporary works that use paper as a surface, collage component or sculptural medium.

The show's 75 works by different artists were selected by Xandra Eden, the Weatherspoon's curator of exhibitions. It's distinguished from the museum's previous "Art on Paper" shows by its emphases on linear or material density, intricate detail and imagery suggesting transformative processes. Much of the art is heavily worked and overtly labor-intensive despite a prevailing tendency toward modest scale, and is therefore best appreciated at close range.

Characteristic of those tendencies is Nancy McCallum's meticulous, blue-pencil drawing of a bird nest densely interwoven from curvilinear twigs and tendrils. Sea Nest, as it's titled, resonates strikingly with cut-paper wall pieces by Sky Pape and Adam Fowler, both displayed nearby. Pape's Murmur consists of free-floating vein-like forms, and Fowler's small, untitled composition of myriad downward-curving stripes, each one cut almost impossibly thin, collectively suggesting a chaotic network of loosely draped string.

The stringlike lines in Randy Wray's glitter-flecked, candy-colored Offal II form several overlapping spider-web images that are juxtaposed with an image of a disembodied bat's head. And the dense, tendon-like configurations of curving lines in Camilo de las Flores' drawing Condoleeza's Rice resolve themselves up close into a claustrophobic scene in which medieval knights and familiar cartoon characters compete for space with scathing caricatures of contemporary political figures.

The same kind of near-maddening density also characterizes Marci MacGuffie's Jesus Crisis, in which countless tiny, nearly identical spike-like shapes have been cut from the pages of a Bible, glazed with a transparent layer of silver paint and collaged in such claustrophobic density as to suggest a coat of thick animal fur. In the latter respect it makes for an appropriate companion piece to Scott Fife's Wer Wulf, a larger-than-life-size sculpture of a snarling wolf's head intricately constructed from tiny, meticulously cut pieces of corrugated cardboard.

Other "Art on Paper" highlights include works by Jiha Moon, Amir H. Fallah, Crystal Liu, J. Fiber and Mickael Elliot Broth that depict shape-shifting transformations in which familiar figures, objects or parts thereof appear to be morphing, mutating or emerging from one another.

Also noteworthy are works by Nava Lubelski, Julie Evans, John J. O'Connor, Ernesto Caivano, Ryoko Aoki, Erin Dunn, Dannielle Tegeder and Amy Myers that suggest mandalas or star-like constellations.

There's a lot to look at in the 40th "Art on Paper." The fact that so much of it demands to be viewed up close and in detail makes for an absorbing experience.

Art district show

Back in Winston-Salem's Downtown Art District, a more modestly scaled group exhibition worth special attention is on view at 5ive and 40rty. Titled "I've Got Issues," it consists of 21 works by 10 artists who employ figural imagery, in most cases for narrative purposes and sometimes symbolically. It was curated by Scott Eagle, a Winston-Salem native and an art professor at East Carolina University in Greenville. Eagle's own art was showcased in a solo exhibit at 5ive and 40rty about two years ago.

Outstanding among the works Eagle selected for the current show are Victoria Sexton's clay sculptures equating cigarette-smoking with death, Jenifer Drinkwater's realistic portraits of a bride and groom, and Jason Mitchum's painting of an automobile graveyard under a blood-red sky. Also noteworthy are Nancy Baker's painting Public Wars II, in which modern aircraft and sci-fi spaceships invade a scene of medieval combat, and her smaller Bosch-meets-Disney inkjet collages.

Other highlights in "I've Got Issues" are Tim French's illustionistic paintings of malevolent-looking, malformed humanoids and other grotesque monsters, and two more understatedly nightmarish, miniature-scale works -- a drawing and a sculpture -- both by Kymia Nawabi.

■ The 40th "Art on Paper" exhibition is on view through Jan. 25 at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, on the UNCG campus at Spring Garden and Tate streets. For more information, call 336-334-5770.

■ "I've Got Issues" is on view through Jan. 31 at 5ive & 40rty, 541-A N. Trade St., Winston-Salem. For more information, call 336-724-2474.