Art: The art of paper, from sculpture to clothes

A punning exhibition title like "Pulp Function" is either going to make you groan with annoyance or pique your curiosity.

If you can overlook the misleading implication - very few of the objects in this show at the James A. Michener Art Museum are the slightest bit functional - give curiosity its head. You'll discover a delightful, if not always aesthetically profound, collection of two- and three-dimensional art made from paper.

Garden-variety paper, often recycled or mashed into pulp, appears to have arrived at the transition from mundane utility to imaginative inspiration that other common craft materials, particularly ceramics, went through years ago.

"Pulp Function," organized at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass., reveals a dazzling variety of transformations, from colored-pulp "paintings" and sculptures to jewelry and clothing.

The show offers works by more than 60 artists, including six from the Philadelphia region (Carol Cole, Arlene Gitomer, Jeanne Jaffe, Betsy Miraglia, Lewis Knauss, and Erin Tohill Robin), who approach the medium from different directions.

Some artists exploit the intrinsic qualities of paper as an art medium - its plasticity (as pulp), fragility, delicacy, texture, and ability to evoke nature poetically.

Jaffe's large wall array of biomorphic sculptural forms, most of them abstract, and Knauss' small, fan-shaped cluster of pale sheets embellished with a horsehair fringe fall into this category.

Similarly, Joyce Utting Schutter has crafted an elegant boat-shaped sculpture from pulp, cheesecloth and seed pods. Material purists would find such works most satisfying.

The other, larger group of artists uses paper either to mimic some other medium, exemplified by Gugger Petter's relief, Five People With Two Dogs, made from twisted and folded newspapers, or to recontextualize common paper materials such as books, maps, candy wrappers, egg cartons, and currency.

Yes, genuine U.S. currency. An artist who works under the name Cat Chow is exhibiting the show's premier conversation piece, a slinky evening gown, ironically titled Not for Sale, woven from strips of 1,000 shredded dollar bills donated by sponsors.

The effect suggests green-and-white chain mail, yet the dress is far more stylish than one might expect from woven paper.

Inevitably there's a social subtext - the values people place on certain objects. As the artist explains, "I wanted people to contemplate the value of a dress that was made from $1,000 worth of shredded money. Is it worth the same, nothing, or much more than the amount it had originally started with?"

Cat Chow's dress represents the apogee of the show's gee-whiz factor, but there's a lot more where that came from. There's a dress that Shelly Hedges made from candy wrappers because, as she explains, she wanted to revivify these tiny bits of printed paper that are usually "crumpled and forgotten by the time the candy has been eaten."

There's a drum-shaped sculpture of egg cartons by Inna Alesina, pleasing in its symmetry and swirling color patterns.

And, given that the vast majority of the artists are women, there's a generous dose of feminist and feminine sensibility. Best among the former is Mia Hall's Domestic Expectations - The Mother, a suit made of quilted diapers with a compartment in the back for powder and Vaseline.

As for the latter, you'll be captivated by Meredith Re' Grimsley's "love letter to her husband" in the form of a circular rack of lace-trimmed paper underpants.

The message embroidered on the garments is difficult to read, but in this case the form is more important than the text.

Maya painted pottery. The ancient Greeks elevated painting on pottery to high art.

A new exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania reveals that the Maya of Central America also were highly accomplished in transmitting cultural narratives through painted ceramics.

A group of about two dozen Maya story pots, made in highland Guatemala during the late Classic Period (about 600 to 800 A.D.) constitutes the dramatic centerpiece of "Painted Metaphors."

The show comprises more than 150 artifacts, including figurines, jade jewelry, burial urns, and elaborate ceramic censers, which were used for ritual burnings of organic materials.

Taken together, the various artifacts, augmented by musical recordings and videos about such topics as weaving and indigenous languages, offer a comprehensive and instructive picture of Maya culture 1,300 years ago.

The show's primary aesthetic interest derives from the colorful painted ceramic beakers from a village called Chama, which are unlike any other ceramics produced in the region.

The beakers, which for the most part are straight-sided cylinders, were excavated early in the 20th century by Penn archaeologist Robert Burkitt, who also recovered many of the other objects on view.

For this exhibition, museum conservator Lynn Grant disassembled the reconstructed pots and restored them using more modern methods and materials.

The scenes on the cylinders also have been reinterpreted in the light of recent field research. Exhibition curator Elin C. Danien believes that the images reflect a sudden introduction of ideas and people from the Maya lowlands into the highland area where the pots were found.

For instance, the best-preserved cylinder is believed to depict the impending death of a local lord who defied a group of newcomers from a lowland city, some of whom observe his humiliation. Because of fragmentation and color fading, other cylinders aren't as easy to read.

Fortunately, a set of remarkable watercolors painted years ago by a museum artist, M. Louise Baker, makes the task easier. The paintings are called "rollouts" because they translate the continuous, in-the-round imagery into a flat sequence.

Baker recorded the vessel narratives with exceptional crispness, detail and fidelity. Unfortunately, no originals are on view, but some paintings are incorporated into text panels as reproductions.

The watercolors are too fragile to be exhibited for an extended period. The museum plans to conserve them, and might exhibit them once that is accomplished.

Visitors interested in the pots as ceramics more than as historical artifacts might be disappointed by the lack of technical information concerning type of clay, how the pots were formed and fired, and what types of pigments were used.

But then, "Painted Metaphors" is primarily an ethnographic show, and in such situations art often is subordinated to science.

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