The art of paper

With 178 works of art in the mix, there’s a pretty fair chance that something Looks Good on Paper in the Spruill Center for the Arts Gallery exhibition.

The second annual pulp show, which is loaded with riches and fluff, asks artists who have worked frequently on paper and those who are new to the medium to contribute work to this Paperalooza. A doozy of a -looza it is, too. The Spruill Center is rendered a fire hazard from all the combustibles that fill the interlocking rooms from ceiling to floor.

If one thing holds true throughout this exhibition, it’s that artists who are good in one medium tend to be good in another.

The accessible, democratic qualities of paper have allowed certain themes to flourish. Artists like Neil Bender, Alex Kvares, and Caroline Latham-Stiefel are inspired by the scatological and sexual fixations of underground comics and the psychological purging contained in doodles. On a more gothic note is Barbara Schreiber’s arrestingly simple, funny “Vulture and Squirrel” drawing of the bird contemplating the dead varmint. The squirrel looks splayed out more like a suicide than roadkill, and the vulture’s contemplation seems more existential than is nature’s usual way. The squirrel appears to embody a deeper quandary for the bird, not as a quick meal but more as a fallen comrade.

There is probably as much abstraction as finely wrought representation in the show. Leslie Snipes’ drawing of an eerie wavy form with a vast white hole in the center could be a crop circle or an overview of a man’s bald spot. It performs an uncanny act of showing tension between representation and abstraction. Ashley Neese, one of the few artists to incorporate text into her work, also shows an interesting tension between drawing a picture and withholding details. Her diaristic descriptions of childhood trauma are nicely juxtaposed with cellular, organic etchings.

There are ambitious efforts to move paper off the wall, as in Michael Murrell’s “Ivory Tower,” which offers piles and piles of the unglamorous markings of a life of the mind in his pierced stacks of paper. Another nod to the discarded properties of paper and the amusing, poetic accumulation of forensic evidence is Susan Winton’s “Litter,” a collection of detergent pull-tabs and Hershey Kisses wrappers framed in paper boxes.

Looks Good on Paper is most satisfying for demonstrating how much talent there is in Atlanta, at every price point and stage of development. While group shows of this size tend to be overwhelming and excessive, Looks Good has the feel of an altruistic benefit concert, where some old and new school types get together for a common cause.

Looks Good on Paper: 2nd Edition runs through Aug. 30 at the Spruill Center for the Arts Gallery, 4681 Ashford Dunwoody Road. 770-394-4019. www.spruillarts.org.