It was in San Antonio that artist Michael Velliquette found his calling. Velliquette moved to the city in 2002 after college and soon earned a spot in the Artpace International Artist In Residence program.
He described his Artpace project as “this big immersive thing” involving foil, plastic tarps, cardboard, colored paper and other materials, but what he learned from the experience was that paper should be his primary medium.
He used leftover cardstock to construct small-scale sculptural models but realized they were artworks in themselves that gave him “a unified experience and a sense of finish that I had never had in my work before.”
Years of honing his practice led him to his current body of work, a set of intricately detailed, elaborately constructed paper sculptures on view at the Contemporary at Blue Star art space.
Architectural imagination
The 12 pieces in the exhibition contain thousands of pieces of cardstock and are shaped from tens of thousands of cuts made by hand, a process so involved that Velliquette completes on average only three of the sculptures per year — and runs the persistent risk of what he called “scissor finger,” a dent in the index finger of his main cutting hand.
However, the pieces show no sign of strain, instead offering a sense of meditative time, fine handiwork and a miniature-scale architectural imagination.
Some pieces such as It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being and Our newly awakened powers cry out for unlimited fulfillment are standing monochrome towers, while wall sculptures including My soul is alight with your infinitude of stars are layered into palace-like forms that recall timepiece machinery in symmetrical mandala-like designs.
Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray, curator and exhibitions manager at the Contemporary, spoke of spiritual dimensions in Velliquette’s work and the show’s title, The Direct Path, that guided her and the artist to construct a maze of windowed walls that alternately conceal and frame the artworks as viewers move through the space.
“Between pieces, there’s a relationship with sacred architecture or sacred geometry, this hidden structure that will guide you somewhere, this kind of puzzle,” she said.
Sculpture titles such as Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever and You create yourself in ever-changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days recall not only the circles, arches, cubes and columns within each work but also the intimacies of personal relationships and poetic contemplation.
Startlingly, the densely layered, near-perfect symmetries are mostly improvisational, with preparatory drawings mode only to solve what Velliquette called “engineering problems” akin to architectural supports.
Simply paper
Having studied drawing and sculpture, Velliquette sees using paper as a way to meld the two mediums, and a material that any viewer will be familiar with.
“It’s a material experience that most people recognize and know,” he said. “I like that they have to use their imagination to make the leap to what it is versus what they know it is,” he said of recognizing the mundane cardstock behind his mind-bending constructions.
Now an educator at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, over 20 years of artmaking Velliquette has participated in more than 150 exhibitions in museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe and Asia. But the formative days of his career were spent in a five-year San Antonio stint.
“This was where I really was able to become an artist. I had so many opportunities here,” he said, including running a South Alamo Street gallery and residency space called The Bower with fellow artist Joey Fauerso and opening an exhibition 20 years ago at what was then called Blue Star Contemporary.
“I love San Antonio. I miss it,” Velliquette said.
The Direct Path opened July 7 and will remain on view through Sept. 3. Admission to the Contemporary is free, though donations are encouraged.
