Since the 1960s Wisconsin artists have been exploring the possibilities of paper pulp as a medium. They have perfected the traditional techniques of sheet forming and gone on to explore personal inventions in pouring, casting, encasing, embossing, and layering, in an effort to express themselves in a non-traditional format. As a result, this recent exhibition included often skillful but always unpredictable works of art. All of the artists featured have had at least a temporary association with Wisconsin, hence the word "connection" in the show's title. Some artists who use paper pulp engage in the creative process of integrating structure and image. The far wall of the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum's first floor gallery was dominated by Roland Poska's Deckle-Edge/Sun Prayer Series/Sweeping Cloud Structure, one example of this integration. In this wall-hung diptych poured paper in shades of pink surround an inlaid sun in red, yellow, and hot white. Embedded pieces and strips of pre-formed, painted paper, folded and sandwiched together in muted tones of patterned blue, green, and gray, frame the central image. The resulting assemblage is a glowing depiction of the sharp contrasts found in nature. The natural landscape is also the subject of Caroline Greenwald's much smaller, conventionally framed Ice Wave on Lake Michigan. The artist mounted stark white, free-formed paper with entrapped threads on an indigo rectangle of gampi paper surrounded by silver shoji paper. Kirsten Christianson combines flax in two of its incarnations. She sandwiched dried flax plants between squares of her flax paper in four nearly identical packages, strung together with wisps of copper wire. Such combinations of materials are found in many works in the show. Tom Grade's assemblage Mo Po Dzong combines black painted sticks wrapped in red, orange, yellow, and metallic gold stenciled and stitched paper. Found and fabricated objects, painted or wrapped in paper, fill out the fragile-looking structure. The complexity of the overall image makes one pause for careful examination. Viewers also needed time to assimilate the multitude of objects and images in Paul Wong's Burning History. This site-specific installation was accompanied by a wall-hung explanation and two photographs of earlier, larger versions of this work. Wong filled almost half of the second floor gallery with a lesson in five thousand years of Chinese history. He accomplished this feat with folding chairs, beer cans, ladles, sieves, and teapots, all laminated with translucent paper pulp and arranged on the floor. He covered the walls with layered, transferred, and appropriated photocopy images on rectangular sheets of paper. The two "rooms" of the installation were defined by a curtain of rectangular, image-covered sheets of paper suspended from a bamboo rod, also covered in paper. The curtain had a doorway that allowed viewers to pass through the paper wall and become participants in the work. Ming Fey's Peach was perched on a spot-lighted pedestal. This two foot oval form has a hard skin of deliciously blended shades of orange, red, pink, citrus green, magenta, and yellow, topped off with a brown stem. Exuberant energy, color, and pattern are the subject of Bill Weegee's three untitled eight-foot triangular columns. One was deliberately tilted into the wall. Although Helmut Becker's works, Gong and Spoke, were situated in a different gallery, these calm circles in monochromatic earthy grays presented a stark contrast to Weegee's brilliant color. These artists' technical integrity and use of pattern successfully demonstrate a wide range of possibilities in the medium of paper. Gisela Magdelena Moyer showed her rich, dark wall pieces. These recent works of assembled papers explore the emotional depths of her life experiences. Jon Born was represented by two Witnesses, thin, head-shaped, white sheets overlaid on a dark gray rectangular background. Born's technique of partially destroying the surface of the paper illustrates the historical references of the portraits. The books in this show included Walter Hamady's precisely crafted volume Traveling Gabberjabb Number Seven and an earlier letterpress and collage edition of Dieser Rasen Ist Kein Hundeklo, or Gabberjabb Number Six. Caren Heft's concertina word book was inventively underprinted with the Hmong version of the poem "Midnight Song" on top of which she printed, in English, the life story of Boua Xou Mua, the poem's author. Book of Protectors, by Leslee Nelson, is a colorful picture book consisting of pages attached to a slender stick and woven together with wire. In keeping with Wisconsin's strong commitment to art education, the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum hosted a three-week papermaking workshop for area high schools, in conjunction with the exhibition. Tom Grade, Kirsten Christianson, and Michelle Bertrand guided the students through a variety of sheet-forming processes. The students used the resulting papers to construct a large sculptural form that greeted viewers at the entrance to the gallery. It resembled a grove of trees, complete with paper-wrapped trunks and branches sprouting free-form paper leaves. It reminded this viewer that Wisconsin's abundance of trees was the major attraction for the paper industry when the state's first paper mill was built, in Milwaukee in the 1840s. This exhibition was a wide ranging survey of the hand papermaker's art. Limiting the curatorial premise to a Wisconsin connection brought into focus a significant body of work influenced by the creative energy within the state.
