Paper bends, burns and ages, but nothing is tougher. It is the ageless conveyance of wickedness, wonder, sinners, saints, cons, culture, Plutarch and poets.
If it is to remain, it must be put down on paper.
“Paper Because” is a minimalist but magical exhibit in the campus gallery celebrating five artists and their personal relationships with paper. Something so taken for granted is a foundation of mankind’s evolution, struggles, memories and future.
Chinese invented paper, an Italian took it to Europe and a German figured out how to print on it. Folks that want to “go paperless” may be inviting Armageddon. Without paper there would be no Renaissance, no Age of Exploration and no United States. No kidding.
Paper is cheap, portable and forgiving. It needs no electricity, Wi-Fi, bandwidth or keyboard. Writers and artists can try, try again as many times as they like.
Bhavna Mehta shared a personal and pivotal piece of paper that transformed her life. “My Father’s Letter” built upon a personal correspondence from her Indian father urging her to follow her artistic dreams freely and without worry. Mehta, in a display of irony, showcased her spiritual gift of freedom using black paper cut into words against a white backdrop like an encouraging ransom note.
A staunch advocate for women artists of color, Mehta said women need to put themselves out into society and push back against centuries of exclusion. Our world needs more enlightened men like her father, she said, and more women with the confidence to do what they want, not what they are told.
“Show up for each other,” she said. “Show up for yourself and other women of color.”
Words of peace by great thinkers like Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Gandhi, King, Dylan, Lennon and Mandela are recorded on paper like ageless entreaties to mankind’s better angels. So are the toxic screeds of hatred and destruction by Genghis Khan, John Birch, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Trump that have time and again opened the gates of hell. Paper is the most blank of canvases, waiting for the right artist to color it with inspiration or a despot to despoil it.
Acts of war consume vast amounts of paper, as the brilliant “War Scroll” by photographer Douglas McCulloh demonstrates with stark clarity. McCulloh spent the better part of two years researching the known wars of recorded history. He typed them on to a 30-foot-long scroll of toner paper that stretched like a ghostly blanched serpent through the heart of the gallery. It was an awesome and awful reminder that war has been and remains a constant blood stain on the soul of humanity.
Sadly, McCulloh has not updated the savage list since 2009, lest it be a foot longer.
It would be a mistake to think McCulloh’s dark creation sprang from a dark soul. He is a cheerful artist who speaks the language of optimism. Money may be a necessity, he said, but it does not have to be a driving force.
“We have to live in this world to find meaning, happiness and fulfillment and search out all the good human beings,” he said. “If you chase meaning and you chase art, then the money will sort itself out.”
Mehta concurred. Artists, she said, have a special power to create works that transmit emotion and conjure empathy.
“Visual artists can talk about difficulties,” she said. “So can writers, dancers and musicians. People who make things often have a gift for explaining things.”
Great art, like that in “Paper Because,” does not paper over our differences, it documents our commonalities.
