LIFE & CULTURE DENVER CLUB CRAFTS SOME FUN WITH PAPIER MÂCHÉ
With its first exhibit at Alto Gallery, the Denver Papier-Mâché Club is bring a kid-friendly craft into the serious art world.
The Denver Papier-Mâché Club wants you to take papier-mâché seriously as an art form. But not too seriously. Sure, the club’s first group exhibition takes place at Alto Gallery, a Berkeley outpost that’s become a crucial venue for fresh, young voices hoping to introduce themselves to the city’s art scene. And, yes, the club counts some of the more interesting names in Denver art-making circles among its members.
But the show’s title, “Chill & Fun,” is a reminder that the popular, pulpy, sculptural process is inescapably clumsy, and that there are limits to using last week’s newspaper and a bucket of homemade glue to conjure the finer points of fine art. The exhibit is colorful, a little clunky and has something of a childish charm.
That said, it succeeds surprisingly well in moving papier-mâché past its reputation as a simple, kidfriendly craft. These objects are expressive, emphatic, and credible explorations of all those things we expect art to consider these days, from the qualities of materials to the state of our culture — and even art itself.
“For me, papier-mâché is almost
a politically charged medium to work in,” club member Aaron Mulligan explained.
His reasoning: Access. “It’s not bronze,” he said. There are no economic barriers to making the work; no need to invest in expensive oil paints or kilns, clays or technology.
Just “flour, water, newspaper,” he said. “Cardboard, wire and glue if you want to get fancy. You can make a sculpture for under $20, and most of your supplies are found in the street.”
That allows freedom and playfulness. Without a huge investment, artists are able to experiment.
At “Chill & Fun,” that can manifest itself into something easyto-read, like Stephanie Kantor’s “Boardain (#1 Crush),” a lifesized surfboard adorned with various, house-paint images of (presumably) sex symbol and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, and set in a pile of sand on the gallery floor.
Or, more mysteriously, as a series of haunting face masks by Kyra Weinkle, all wearing virtual reality goggle guards and given different titles that start with the words “Spa Day.”
Weinkle and Kantor founded the Papier-Mâché Club, along with artist Jane Jordan Gravely, about a year ago. Members meet monthly at RedLine art center in Curtis Park. “We work together, snack together, talk about methods of papier-mâché together, and help think through options, share tips and tricks,” according to Weinkle.
And since papier-mâché “is not a mind-bending process,” as she puts it, there is time to talk about politics and personal business — and that naturally influences the art getting made.
That social aspect is a huge part of the effort. It’s a club, after all, an excuse for artists to get unserious and hang out. Everyone is welcome, all ages, all skill levels.
If there’s a practice-minded side, it can be found in the club’s official mission statement (yes, it actually has one) which includes optimistic language about “how this low-brow, perhaps less serious medium can inform an artist’s studio practice in a very real way.” In other words, artists might find new insights into more formal work by getting their hands a little sticky.
Gravely’s own goal: “Learn by doing, let go a little, test new ideas and possibly try to incorporate it in personal work.”
“Chill & Fun” reflects that spirit, though much of the work feels like finished product rather than experimentation. The work can be surprisingly finessed.
Mulligan uses the paper almost as paint for the descriptively-titled “Girl with Popsicle,” creating a figurative, relief-style work that hangs on the wall. The subject matter may not go deep but the craft is impressive; it’s full of subtle curves and shading and the edges are nearly invisible. It’s more sophisticated than you would assume papier-mâché can be.
Andrea Floren keeps her pieces closer in line with traditional papier-mâché expectations, creating multiple objects that are a bit more child-like — simple, rounded and slightly awkward forms that look more like the paper-covered balloons that many folks made back in the first grade.
But her trick — and it’s effective, beautiful and transformative — is to treat the heavy-handed items as if they were fine beads, combining shapes and stringing them together on delicate cords. Her 14 pieces of playful, over-sized jewelry hang together on a wall, giving the exhibit its showstopper.
By and large, the artists obscure whatever might have been printed on the original paper they employed, covering it up with paint or muck, though Steven Frost adds an additional dimension to his work by allowing the images that were present on his source material — a Thanksgiving issue of “Bon Appetit” and a random “Entertainment Weekly” — to fully show. It’s impossible not to read some social commentary into the faces of movie stars and the indulgent holidays turkeys that mark his pieces.
There’s more interesting work in the exhibit, by Sophie Lynn Morris, Jane Gravely, Kristen DiCicco and George Perez, and each artist has a unique method, contributing objects that are sometimes representational, other times fully abstract.
Collectively, the work doesn’t redefine papier-mâché as much as it honors its cherished qualities. The Denver Papier-Mâché Club understands the role of the form as builder of skills and as a social platform. It respects its innocence and recognizes, if not overtly, its role in art history, particularly in Mexico where it has long been a popular folk-art technique.
And it does hint at its possibilities to say and do more than anyone gives it credit for. These artists are having a blast, but pushing themselves. Their embrace of this uncomplicated, accessible, hands-on practice is welcome, and a nice balance to all of the chilly, digital art-making and thinking that dominates the current world of commercial galleries and art schools. The timing is right.
“I could envision a papier-mâché revolution if the right sculpture professor came along,” said Mulligan.