Faculty Members Caroline Bagenal and Julia Shepley in the Boston Globe

Season for living and color
Works show off prisms where nature, art meet

By Cate McQuaid
Globe Correspondent / July 28, 2010

Summer gathering
Group shows are a staple in summertime. A light-hearted one at Boston Sculptors Gallery, “On/Of/Like/About Paper,’’ offers artists who usually work in three dimensions an opportunity to delve into paper and all its qualities: flatness, translucence, texture, pulpiness, ability to fold and take up space.

Leslie Wilcox’s wonderful lineup of 2-foot-tall sculptures made of heavyweight paper, each painted a buzzing tone, reminded me of deciding whom to talk to at a party: the carefully pleated one, the audaciously twisted one, the one that appears on the verge of toppling over? (Maybe not the last.)

Another party is evoked in Mary Sherman’s “At Heart, Spike Jones,’’ a Rube Goldberg-type contraption made of boxes suspended at different heights. Push a big blue button and a jaunty Jones tune plays. In one box, a turntable spins a cocktail glass; in another, a splatter painting rotates to a blur. Text encourages visitors to take a paper coaster with them and pass it on, sharing the art, sharing the party.

Hannah Verlin’s “Soak’’ installation looks like a ritual site. Wax bowls hang over a sheet of salt-covered paper. Ink in each bowl eats through the bottom and begins to drip out, splattering the paper and getting absorbed by the salt. The piece is all pristine white except for the ink, and beautifully conveys erosion and time passing. Caroline Bagenal has elegantly pieced together concentric paper circles in the simple “Cut Tree Rings.’’ Julia Shepley’s drawings in thread, shadow, and ink sandwiched between arcs of glass and mylar pull you in with delicate intimacy.