Cut-paper artworks by 11 artists are on display in Sewanee

The University of the South Art Gallery in Sewanee, Tenn., is exhibiting “Cutting Fine, Cutting Deep” through April 13. The show introduces viewers to parallel, complementary worlds of environmentally focused cutpaper art.

Organized and curated by Sewanee art professor Julie Puttgen, this exhibition showcases five artists from the Swiss scherenschnitt (scissor-cutting) tradition together with six contemporary artists working in North America. Drawing from traditional papercutting techniques, these artists create silhouettes, dioramas, stencils, paper lacework, pop-up drawings and complex symmetrical designs. The resulting narratives present striking contrasts and similarities such as Ernst Oppliger’s profound environmental love affair with Swiss pastoral life, Humberto Duque’s absurdist figures in dismembered landscapes, Lane Twitchell’s dense apocalyptic cities and Ueli Hofer’s mythical Edens.

All of the works in the show are linked together by explorations of human interrelationships with the natural and man-made world, as well as by the radically simple starting point of paper and blade. The act of cutting paper requires clarity of mind and physical patience, as well as a certain confidence in reductive and often hidden processes.

Bringing together this small group of Swiss and North American artists for the first time, “Cutting Fine, Cutting Deep” presents a unique opportunity to consider different papercutting traditions in the context of environmental and community awareness.

The gallery, located in Convocation Hall on Georgia Avenue, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. For information, call (931) 598-1223.