Close is best known for his elegant, monumental, black-and-white painted portraits. These "heads," as Close refers to them, are based on straightforward photographs of his friends and colleagues, which he transposes onto large-scale canvases using a grid system. His recurring portrait subjects include himself and such esteemed creative luminaries as the composer Philip Glass and the painter Alex Katz, the latter whom Close has known since his graduate student days at Yale, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in the 1960s. Despite his recognition as a painter, Close is less known as a printmaker. He is even lesser known as an artist who has a long and ongoing history of creating innovative works in the medium of handmade paper. Terrie Sultan, director of the Blaffer Gallery and curator of "Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration," argues that Close's pulp-paper pieces represent important turning points in the development of his oeuvre, as well as breakthroughs in the medium of hand papermaking itself.              Indeed, ever since Close had begun working with paper pulp in 1981, his handmade paper works have gained critical and curatorial attention. For example, in a March 4, 1983 New York Times review of an exhibition at Pace Gallery in Manhattan, critic Vivien Raynor remarked that the highlights of the show were "the late works, where the grid-free heads are accumulations of patties made of paper pulp in various grays and collaged to the canvas," thus proclaiming the handmade paper compositions the most resonant of the entire show. Twenty years later, the cover image of the catalogue for "Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration" is not a print at all, but a 2001 pulp-paper composition, Self-Portrait/Pulp.             "In all the discussions with Chuck regarding works to be included in the exhibition, it was clear that although the pulp-paper pieces are technically multiples rather than prints, the works were key in telling the story of how making prints and multiples have so strongly impacted his career," states Sultan. (Other non-print multiples, namely a tapestry and a rug piece, are also on view in the exhibition.) She adds, "The introduction of pulp-paper multiples into his vocabulary is a cornerstone of the entire thesis of ‘Process and Collaboration.'"             How and why are Close's pulp-paper editions such seminal experiments? "The paperworks related very strongly to Close's overall process of creativity, and each time he learns something from a process, it has an impact on a future work of art," states Sultan who spent three years organizing the show. "Self-Portrait/Pulp was inspired by a beautiful small reduction linoleum block print that is also featured in the exhibition," she explains. "Viewers can very easily make the connection between those two vastly different approaches."              "Chuck Close Prints" features 118 works from a thirty-year time span between 1972 and 2002. Besides the pulp-paper multiples and the other non-print works, the exhibition includes a mezzotint, etchings, reduction linoleum cuts, silkscreen prints, and woodcuts. Because the exhibition focuses on Close's process and therefore technical decisions as well as collaborations with various teams of printmakers and papermakers, tools of both trades are presented. The large Self-Portrait/Pulp, which graces the cover of the exhibition catalogue, is shown next to a full set of 60 x 40 inch progressive proofs of the image, along with the stencils utilized to create the edition. Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, remarked in January 2004 that the show's presentation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was "a model of eloquent didactics." Indeed, the inclusion of behind-the-scenes tools and devices was a vital strategy to illustrate how Close's forays into pulp-paper compositions both reflect and differ from his work in other media.             Pulp paper wasn't a form that Close eagerly embraced at first. Close was introduced to the medium by Joe Wilfer (1943-1995). Founding director of the Madison (Wisconsin) Art Center, Wilfer was affectionately nicknamed "the prince of pulp" by his printmaking and papermaking students and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Close came to know Wilfer at Skowhegan School of Art in Maine, where Close was a board member and where Wilfer worked as the director of the art program after leaving Wisconsin. Close admits that he was "more than reluctant" to work with handmade paper. "I was convinced that I wouldn't have enough control. I had trouble wrapping my mind around the idea. I was really concerned about quality control issues." When Wilfer first solicited Close to try hand papermaking, the artist declined. Wilfer would not take "no" for an answer, and tenaciously asked Close what he envisioned his own pulp-paper compositions might be if he were interested in pursuing such a project. Wilfer carefully paid attention to Close's hypothetical parameters, namely a wide spectrum of the color gray, which could capture all of the nuances of his paintings and prints. Wilfer faithfully attempted to comply—working in New York at Dieu Donné Papermill which had hired him to recruit artists—in achieving the palette of gray paper pulp for Close, although Close himself hadn't actually agreed to work with him.             Close wasn't convinced by Wilfer's initial tests. Yet as Wilfer kept trying to appeal to Close's meticulous and, at the time, purely theoretical specifications, Close eventually grew convinced to at least give pulp paper a try. Wilfer knew that he and his colleagues at Dieu Donné would have to produce some sort of construction that would allow Close to work with his signature grids—a challenge given the reality that paper pulp by nature bleeds and is not neatly contained. Wilfer decided to improvise with pre-existing aluminum and plastic grills used for commercial lighting fixtures. By placing the grills directly on a carrier sheet, Wilfer adapted the color-coded, paint-by-number approach of Close's paintings and prints, substituting paint or ink with pigmented paper pulp.              For his first pulp-paper multiple, Close decided to use Keith, an image he had used before for two prints—a mezzotint and a lithograph. Using a watercolor rendition of the same portrait that he had composed with rigid, square-like paint strokes, Close then punched out holes where the strokes were, and compared each hole to twenty-four different shades of gray on the Kodak scale. Each shade was numbered; in-between shades that didn't exactly fit the Kodak scale were improvised. Then, each corresponding gray was numbered on every opening on the grill. The studio staff then placed the appropriately colored paper pulp in each of the openings, using a squeeze-bottle.              Sometimes Close would alter a still-wet composition after the papermakers had finished an edition, adding more of a sense of the handmade to the compositions. For example, Self-Portrait/Manipulated (1982, edition of 25) features a more abstracted rendition of the artist's face than the earlier pulp-paper Self-Portrait and the later spitbite aquatint Close produced using the same image. In the manipulated pulp-paper version, Close's glasses are nearly illegible, as are his eyes. The squares of paper pulp that were initially set in neat lines according to the grid system have been pushed around. Some squares lean at angles and others smash up against each other as if invading another's boundaries. The presence of the artist's hand is unmistakable. The result is an idiosyncratic placement that comes close to, but doesn't quite achieve, the seamlessness of Close's photo-based paintings that also utilized the same grid as a guide—and intentionally so.  In her 1983 review, Raynor likened Close's pulp-paper work to "a kind of Impressionism...a respectable cross between abstraction and realism." Indeed, from close up, Close's face seems to be blurred and cloudy in Self-Portrait/Manipulated. Yet when one walks farther away from it, the representation becomes more legible. It's as if the eye knows how to decipher the concentration of the fuzzy, rounded shapes and focus on what they represent. In fact, a curious realism starts to emerge the longer one views his early pulp-paper multiples. MoMA curator of prints Deborah Wye observed in her catalogue essay accompanying Close's 1998 retrospective, "\[there is a\] humanizing quality...in the handmade paper version of Self-Portrait, in which the gridded squares have lost their rigidity through the manipulation of pulp and mold themselves around facial features to create seemingly fleshly contours."              Ever the inventive mind, Close was inspired even by the detritus of his papermaking projects. When excess paper pulp dribbled onto Dieu Donné's studio floor, it dried into crusty, curvy forms a few inches in diameter. Ruth Lingen, who worked on the pulp-paper production with Close and Wilfer at Pace Editions, recalls, "Chuck noticed the dried chunks of pulp that were stuck to the floor, and as he thought about them, he got the idea that he could make something out of them. So he asked Joe Wilfer to make some up for him...they called them cow pies! Joe made them up in all the shades of gray, and gave them to Chuck." These custom-made pulp-paper chips made their way into a collage portrait of Close's daughter, Georgia (1982). Close created this unique work by gluing the pieces onto canvas, in which each chip corresponds again to his carefully coded and numbered grid-based composition. Unlike his other pulp-paper works, this collage has a three-dimensionality that is reminiscent of a painter's impasto on canvas, in which strokes of paint take on a dramatic presence. The irregularity and seemingly random placement of the pulp-paper disks lend an eccentric flair to the image's texture. Yet because the chips reflect Close's carefully calibrated scale of gray, they are able to simultaneously contribute fine detail to the image. Close masterfully rendered subtleties in Georgia—the shadows on the girl's forehead, chin, and neck, as well as the delicate interplay of light shining on the crown of her head—all with material recycled from pulp-paper waste.             In Close's MoMA retrospective catalogue, the late curator Kirk Varnedoe described this prolific era of Close's early 1980s hand papermaking practice as "a period of wandering in the wilderness, in prolonged experimentation with more free-form fabrications, by fingerprints and with irregular wads of paper slurry, that yielded some arresting individual works..." Varnedoe qualified that observation by remarking that Close had emerged with "no firm, sustained new path," yet the very freshness of each work indicated an energetic sense of artistic adventurousness, as well as the versatility of paper pulp as a lively, vibrant medium. Attesting to the enthusiasm Close had for papermaking, art journalist Judd Tully remarked in Portfolio magazine in 1983, "Close's new large portraits, executed in paper pulp…break fresh artistic ground. Paper pulp and new techniques seem to have inspired Close not only with new ideas but also with new energy: in the previous fifteen years, Close has only produced only five editions in various print media; in eighteen months, he...\[has\] completed fourteen editions."              In "Chuck Close Prints," Sultan includes several of the 1980s pulp-paper multiples along with didactic material such as plastic grills, other stencils, and colored pulp-paper swatches. Looking at the works and observing the textures, one senses that these are the most sculptural of Close's works. Different from his paintings and his prints, the pulp-paper multiples reveal an obvious mark of the artist's hand.              In 1988, Close suffered from an aneurysm that resulted in a damaged spinal cord, tragically leaving him with what is known as "incomplete quadriplegia." Able to move his upper arms and experience limited leg movement, Close was able to paint after seven months of physical therapy. Collaboration became more than an artistic experiment. "I really like the physicality of working with paper pulp," Close says. "I can push it around, and do a lot of surprising things with it. It is a flexible and engaging collaboration—much more so than I had originally expected."             Close's initial reluctance toward handmade paper has clearly given way to an enduring dedication to the form. Twenty years after his first experiments with the late Joe Wilfer in handmade paper, Close continues to work in the medium, now in collaboration with Ruth Lingen of Pace Editions Ink and Paul Wong of Dieu Donné Papermill. The most ambitious pulp-paper edition to-date, the 2001 Self-Portrait/Pulp, is given much wallspace in the current exhibition. Next to the finished piece, the seven progressive proofs and their corresponding brass shim and Lexan stencils, each 60 x 40 inches, are displayed to visually explicate the sequenced layering of paper pulp in the making of the work. Details are added and depth is created with each layer of carefully positioned application of pigmented paper pulp. The final image is a subtly topographical map of Close's visage, both pointillistic and realistic at the same time, yet neither. Close's likeness is immediately familiar from the earlier self-portraits on view in the show: the glasses, the beard, the straight-ahead gaze, the neutral mouth. Yet the transformation from a strict grid-based composition to a more free-form rendition of the "head" is a variation on the theme that is utterly astonishing in its innovative composition. As Faye Hirsch wrote in her March 2004 Art In America essay on "Chuck Close Prints," "The exhibition's five pulp-paper multiples are unprecedented in complexity and inventiveness: alone, the soldered brass grill used to make the pulp-paper Georgia (1984) is among the quirkiest art tools of recent invention," referring to a later version of the 1982 collage of the same title.              Working with paper pulp over the years, Close and his collaborative team met many challenges. Says Lingen, "While working on Phil during the 1990s (even though they were an edition from the 1980s, they were finished up years later—very difficult pieces…), I was in charge of mixing the 24 values of gray pulp to make a perfect gray scale from pure white to pure black. That in itself is a challenge, because you're starting with white pulp, which dries very differently from how it looks wet. Also, if one gray is just slightly off, when you adjust it you have to adjust up and down the scale by 3 grays or so…it takes forever!" Close's papermaking team faced more difficulty when creating the extremely complex 2001 Self-Portrait/Pulp. "Making the translations from print to pulp was very difficult. The print was done light to dark, and the pulp-paper piece was done dark to light, so breaking up the shades of gray and figuring out which stencil to put them on was really difficult," Lingen recalls. Yet, looking back, Lingen further notes, "The actual making of the stencils and the brass shims (while time-consuming) is not really that difficult. It's the figuring it out that's tough!"          Self-Portrait/Pulp is also posing unique challenges for the venues that are hosting "Chuck Close Prints." "Both Chuck and I are very engaged in the installation plans for each institution. We work in close concert with each \[venue\]'s coordinating curator to make sure that each installation fully realizes the themes and ideas of the exhibition," Sultan explains. "So far, each participating institution has really dedicated 100% effort in finding solutions to various challenges." For example, when the show was on view in early 2004 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met's curator of 20th Century Art Nan Rosenthal ordered the temporary removal of the wall moldings in the galleries to accommodate the stacked installation of Self-Portrait/Pulp's stencils over their corresponding progressive proofs.               Thanks to Sultan's and Close's ongoing collaboration with curators at the various host museums of "Chuck Close Prints," the true spirit of Close's dedication to editioned works on paper is conveyed strongly with each successive run. The extremely well conceived and meticulously presented exhibition makes the argument to contemporary art audiences—who generally associate Close more with his paintings than with his prints and pulp-paper multiples—that his editioned works are as important as his unique paintings and integral to understanding his process as an artist. "There remains a residual attitude, even among the very educated, that prints and multiples are somehow "lesser" works of art than a painting—an attitude that neither Close nor I share," says Sultan. "That is the very reason we developed the exhibition." Richard Schiff points out in his insightful essay for the "Chuck Close Prints" publication that "pulp paper is not a ground but the image itself—image and process at once." The exhibition emphasizes this fact by throwing the spotlight on the pulp-paper multiples, giving them a prominent place in the conception of the show and its catalogue.              In fact, according to Close, the pulp-paper compositions have infused his paintings with new energy. "In the studio, working with handmade paper, I am met with constant creative challenges. I not only enjoy the fun of the process, but I also can see new options—such as composing in layers, or literally ‘building' an image—that I can apply to my paintings."