The Second National Collegiate Handmade Paper Exhibition is distinctive in three ways. The exhibition features solely works in handmade paper, an event still rare in today’s art world. Secondly, it will have traveled to five venues. Given the sometimes-fragile nature of paper, a travelling exhibition can be a big challenge. The exhibition's third and most distinguishing feature is that it was only open to students at the college level. This narrow slice of the art community, shown every three years, can serve as a window to the future of our highly specialized medium. Not unexpectedly, the exhibition encompasses all facets of contemporary papermaking, from book arts to pulp painting to sculpture. Students from twenty-one colleges and universities submitted more than two hundred pieces. Jurors Mindell Dubansky, book conservator and preservation librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Andrea Honore, Art Program Administrator for Johnson & Johnson, selected thirty-eight pieces from fifteen schools. The exhibition makes clear that papermaking continues to be a bridge medium, one that crosses boundaries between painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, and book arts.  The two-dimensional pieces were quite often presented as multi-panel images, yet none of the artists used that format in quite the same way. In Mother, a pulp painting, Mary Cork divides a representational image, presumably of her own mother, into fifteen 10” square panels. Conversely, Lisa Shaw’s Pulp Painting Series consists of twelve individual images, each very abstract, that connote landscape through color and form. Somewhat impressionistic and reminiscent of Arthur Dove’s paintings, Shaw’s paintings are like twelve sketch book pages removed from their binding and hung in a grid. They speak more clearly as a group than as individual images. Chi Chiu Lee uses the format of our Gregorian calendar to organize the sheets in her piece, Orchid Series. The brown stain of a flower pressed into each wet sheet moves rhythmically across the days of the month. Shawn Sheehy’s multi-panel piece, In Preservation of Decay, is as much about Dada poetry and typography as about decay. The pulp in this piece has the look and feel of recycled newspaper, and I like very much the paper’s physical response to the letterpress. One notable single-panel work, Generations, by Elizabeth Wallace, fuses cane rings between sheets of over-beaten abaca, with delicate ink line drawings on the surface. Although this work is flat, its pseudo-scientific diagrams and concentric rings remind me of a Joseph Cornell assemblage.  Many pieces take advantage of the sculptural qualities of paper, whether as installations or more traditional forms. The flax vase by Deborah Sharpe-Lunstead has qualities similar to those of a thrown ceramic or turned wood vase. The proportion of lip to belly is pleasing enough that the starburst around the lip seems almost ancillary. Also beautiful in its simplicity is Huguette Despault May’s Tiara. Constructed of individual leaves made from flax and embellished with iridescent powder, Tiara would be equally at home in an exhibition of wearable art or fine art jewelry. The intimate Rocks, by Nancy Lares, makes use of an armature to support stretched paper. It seems to be a whimsical pun about the physical weight of stone. Kyoko Tanoshima’s piece, Dear Anne: Anne Frank’s Diary, is extremely fragile but well made from tissue-thin sheets of kozo imprinted with digital images. Though the dress as an emblem of the female, femininity, and feminine stereotypes is a bit overused, this piece has a particular, compelling sincerity.The book-based pieces stand out in this exhibition, not only for the depth of their expression but also for their craftsmanship. Miriam Centeno’s multi-object sculpture Ramona Caballero, with its purse, fan, book, keys, and other objects, is a study in how care in craft influences the viewer's sense of honesty and intimacy. Collector’s Tale, by Jessica Spring, includes trading cards and other objects. Beautifully made and presented, it shows a maturity of both concept and technique. The same can be said for Keri Simmons’s book, Forgotten, which makes excellent use of digital media.  While the books in general are exquisitely made, other works, particularly some of the sculptural pieces, show uneven quality and a distinct disregard for craft and presentation. I was surprised to see shortcuts, including the apparent use of construction adhesive to secure paper to the hanging apparatus of one piece, and a crudely made pulp painting very poorly adhered to a commercial stretched canvas. In several instances the craftsmanship and presentation become distracting enough that the transformation from mere physical object to vessel of expression does not occur.  Some works here seem derivative and others seem to be confined by a class assignment, but overall the exhibition expresses a sense of exploration, curiosity, and vitality. Clearly these students have embraced handmade paper and are making it work for them as a medium. The few sour notes are drowned out by very strong works, complex in their expression, beautiful in form, and well made.  Ross Jahnke  Awards Given as part of Second National Collegiate Handmade Paper Exhibition Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking Purchase Award Shawn Sheehy, Counting on the Marsh: A nighttime book of numbers Lee S. McDonald, Inc. Gift Certificate Huguette Despault May, Tiara Twinrocker Gift Certificate Mary Cork, Mother Carriage House Gift Certificate Amanda Love, Suspended Heart and Veer, but it itches  Friends of Dard Hunter & the American Museum of Papermaking, Dual Membership Lee Emma Running, Feeding from my Hands and Feeding from my Pockets Roxanne Phillips, Tops and Candy Circles Magnolia Editions Gift Certificate Kathryn Shepard, Crutches Hand Papermaking Magazine Subscription Miriam Centeno, Ramona Caballero:  A coming forth by day  College affiliation of artists listed: Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Art Miriam Centeno, Amanda Love, Shawn Sheehy, Jessica Spring Cooper Union Chi Chiu Lee, Lisa Shaw Corcoran College of Art and Design Deborah Sharpe-Lunstead Memphis College of Art Mary Cork, Keri Simmons School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Nancy Lares, Huguette Despault May, Kathryn Shepard, Kyoko Tanoshima, Elizabeth Wallace University of Iowa Lee Running Washington University Roxanne Phillips