Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on May 6, 2021.

The Floyd Center for the Arts recently hosted a small invitational (due to COVID-19) introduction to the Center’s new Hayloft Gallery exhibit “Paper – An Enduring Medium,” on display through June 5, 2021.

Curated by Floyd County’s renowned international paper artist and the Center’s Distinguished Artist of 2021 Gibby Waitzkin, the exhibit brings Waitzkin’s work together with that of four other accomplished paper artists in a 2-D artwork, sculpture, mixed media and installation show.

The pieces work well together and demonstrate the range of what artists can do with paper, from the whimsical blue herons by Bryant Holsenbeck and Nicole Uzzell’s larger than life ant pieces crawling on the walls (Uninvited Guests), to Waitzkin’s mixed media series Truth Continuum, which includes “Renewal of Hope,” a pigment print of the statue of liberty with a rainbow embedded in woven strips of walnut-dyed plant material.

All the exhibit pieces share a common thread, as the Center’s director Becky Lattuca states in her introduction to Waitzkin’s virtual gallery talk, which can be accessed through the Center’s webpage floydartcenter.org. “The common thread is an awareness and respect for our shared environment,” Lattuca said. She also pointed out that the collective show embodies a level of maturity, as the artists involved have had decades to define and refine their craft.

The Gallery Tour begins with Waitzkin’s “The Boats of Many Colors,” eighteen handmade paper boats made of a wide variety of plant fibers, bark and leaves traveling on a blue planet sea.

“I was thinking of the journey people take to come to America and how hard it is, and our history. One of the most enduring papers are documents,” Waitzkin said. The documents the Boats of Many Colors are holding include the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Amendment to end Slavery, Civil Rights Voting Rights, the Women’s Right to Vote and more, including religious documents.

“Boats symbolize the journeys. All of us are on a journey. We feel like we all in the same boat with COVID, but all of us have a different story. Sharing our stores is part of our healing process to getting our world back to normal,” she said.

All the exhibiting artists are women and all know each other. In describing Georgia Deal’s work, which utilizes layers of pulp painting, pulp stenciling and layering wax, Waitzkin spoke of taking one of Deal’s classes and incorporating what she learned in her work today.

She described Holsenbeck and Uzzell’s process of forming shapes with wire and dipping them in paper pulp over and over, and Char Norman’s artistic process, which incorporates crochet and weaving in her fiber sculpture making.  “We’ve all worked together. We all want to try what each other is doing, but our individual applications are all very different. That’s what’s exciting,” Waitzkin said.

Waitzkin is scheduled to do two outside paper-making demonstrations on Saturday, May 1 at 10:30 to 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm. The demonstrations are free and open to the public.

“The materials Gibby uses in her works are works of art in themselves, lily, banana, bamboo, cotton and flax. Many of these materials Gibby grows here in Floyd County and that gives her work a beautiful sense of place,” said Center Programming Director Kate Skelly.

Lattuca reported that the Center can arrange private group tours with Gibby for those interested. The exhibit can also be viewed during regular business hours, Monday through Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm. Plans are in the works for a June 5 closing reception with all the featured artists, Lattuca said. “It will flow outside and there will likely be artists talks outside, under a tent.” – Colleen Redman