In her sculptures in handmade paper, that were shown indoors at the Abingon Art Center, and site-integrated installation on the grounds of the Center, Lutz offered an unfolding series of poetic moments held together through the tactile, visual, and emotional relationships within each particular artwork and via the conversations that the works had with each other. I began outside with Once Was, Lutz's site-integrated project completed in September 2012 for the opening of this exhibition. Lutz excavated a pathway around a long-ago, filled-in pool dating back to when the property was a family estate. It takes on major themes—history, the passage of time, the battles between man and nature. It is romantic, evocative, and visually gorgeous. Vast in scale and intimately experienced, Once Was reclaims a place and creates a new understanding of it. It is subtle enough that, at times, you are not aware that you are in a work of art, yet the human hand is everywhere. Once Was shares those qualities with the sculpture exhibited indoors. The Abington galleries showcased roughly twenty pieces from 1985 to 2007, all largely of handmade paper and generally of multiple parts. The works were thoughtfully installed, situated to make use of the unique architecture of the intimate rooms. Always evocative and never mimetic, the works bring to mind the specificity of nature. There is surprise and wonder throughout— every surface and joint is intentional, none can be eliminated and nothing is missing. In the installation, light became an element which permeated a form or was captured within. There were conical elements, lit apertures, pulling us to peer into them. The works cannot be understood from a distance—you need to get up close, engage with your body, and look carefully. Lutz makes evident the passage of time with her thoughtful engagement with materials. The exhibition included two sculp between perception & definition: the work of winifred lutz Janet Koplos, with additional essay by Richard Torchia, Mina Takahashi, and Carol Franklin. Jenkintown, Pennsylvania: Abington Art Center, 2013. $35.00. 100 pages, 9 x 12 x ¼ inches (softcover), 75 color plates. Also includes artist statements, oral history, narrative chronology and curriculum vitae, bibliography, and annotated descriptions of the exhibition works by Winifred Lutz. tures that incorporate Ailanthus saplings bent in their growth cycle by interaction with a stone wall. The tree curved around the wall (man imposing his will on nature) yet as Lutz incorporates the branches in her work, she turns the equation around, transforming the manipulated nature in her hands. In Inverted on a Stone/Yellow Tongue, the relatively large scale of the branch creates a protected and intimate space for viewing a tiny yellow form made of pigmented flax and wood glue. It is a magical and unexpected element seeming almost as if a winged creature momentarily landed on the wall, transient and ephemeral. Process is not what I think of first when I see Lutz's work, but her inventiveness is pervasive. The repetition of certain elements brings their construction to mind in the series Correspondent, Not Equivalent. Lutz cast paper components over found forms (from nature) which are then echoed in different materials—a kind of fraternal twin—as she did in The Core and The Companion. Process is at its richest and lushest in Basin with Strings. The work's earthy texture on the outside of the vessel comes from being made of rotted flax paper. As a papermaker I have often stared at my own unintentionally moldy sheets with a combination of fascination and dismay but have never attempted to use them. I was thrilled by the visceral incorporation here. Lutz's conscious harvesting of mold is similar to the different levels of excavation she makes use of in her outdoor installation Once Was. In all of her works, Lutz points to a force of nature and makes us aware of the continuum of time by causing a momentary pause. The crusty vessel form in Basin with Strings is enclosed by an icyblue skin hovering over a mysterious glow. Lutz used a non-fibrous material (copper leaf in this case) to radiate light from within the form, enabling a material you can't see to transform one you can. This was a real discovery for me. And the presence of the free-hand watermarking on the surface of the translucent abaca skin brought me back to the making of the paper itself—water is consciously evident. This work is about consideration rather than perfection. It was tethered gently to the wall in an unexpected way. Rather than being suspended, with gravity defining its form, the sculpture hovered in mid-air via four taut strings. It quietly held the corner of the room, offering itself to the viewer while simultaneously remaining closed off. The idea of the found object is turned on its head in Lutz's work. Be it the incorporation of a tree trunk, the casting over a particular rock, or a half-used bag of cement found on a walk in the woods. Lutz responds to the hardened bag of leftover cement as if it were a natural form (like sea glass in a way). Lutz repurposes this industrial product, transformed by nature and time, as a weight to anchor a suspended shadow casting of itself in A Bag of Pre-Mix. The hanging bipartite piece is bodily, organic, vaginal, cavernous—both open and closed. Lutz's placement of A Bag of Pre-Mix in front of a fading me- tallic wall was apt and site sensitive. The transformation is complete— like the weathered cement bag, the worn, painted wall was beautiful and glowed in a way reminiscent of her use of metallic leafing inside and behind her handmade-paper forms. There was a sense of loss and sadness to that wall, evidence of a different time and function, that formed the backdrop to A Bag of Pre-Mix, while at the same time engaging in a conversation with the work. Unlike many other sculptural works in the show Vertical Balance (2004) did not appear as if it could have existed in the natural world. It is clearly constructed to make us continuously aware of its fragile structure. That the volumetric paper form is perched, almost on the edge of a cliff (a fine line) and closest to eye level caused me to hold my breath as I moved in close to encounter the work. I became intensely aware of my body in relation to the delicate nature of the form and construction. This was an important exhibition of a significant body of work. It was both too small and too short in duration but there is a beautiful catalog with wonderful photographs, many annotated by Lutz, and with substantial essays by the curator and critic Janet Koplos, Hand Papermaking editor Mina Takahashi, artist and curator Richard Torchia, and landscape architect Carol Franklin. These authors make important contributions to an understanding of the work and its context. It was a great accompaniment to the exhibition and will have to suffice for everyone who was not able to experience it in person. In the catalog, a brief introduction to the site-integrated installation Once Was speaks about how "nature erases the order of built things." Nature creates, man intervenes, nature transforms, and Lutz notices, then sets up a dialog and a space for interaction by shifting our perceptions of both the natural and man-made world. It is not that everything goes back to its original state, rather that time and outside forces—be they growth in nature, the function of a site over time, or the effect of a devastating hurricane in an urban landscape—create a series of conditions that a deeply intuitive artist, like Winifred Lutz, consciously and in collaboration with her unconscious, responds to.

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