According to legend, Spider Woman taught human beings how to weave using sunshine and wind. Perhaps her daughter taught our ancestors to make paper by adding a sieve of bamboo. Looking at the current Durango Arts Center exhibit, one could almost believe it.

“Washi and Other Ephemera: The Art of Hand Papermaking” concentrates on the present but links us to an ancient past. That there are a multitude of modern practitioners will be a discovery for many.

Thanks to curator Mary Ellen Long and an inspired DAC team plus Cutting Edge Productions, the exhibit also featured an eminent guest speaker for opening weekend. Timothy D. Barrett is a master craftsman, paper historian, MacArthur Fellow and Director of the Center of the Book at the University of Iowa.

Barrett provided the connection between a gallery full of contemporary works and the beginnings of papermaking. The craft is more than 2000 years old. The year 105 CE is generally acknowledged as the first recorded instance of papermaking – at the Imperial Court of China. But according to archaeological evidence, the practice dates back to 200 BCE. The invention of paper is often paired with the wheel as critical to culture.

In Barrett’s demonstrations and lectures, bits of deep history spilled out. He stirred strips of white Mulberry bark in a large vat. He shook and shifted the pulp through a rectangular sieve. And he piled up sheets of pale paper one-by-one on a felt bed, bringing the ancient craft to life.

Aesthetics came home in items Barrett brought for display – a multitude of papers and artist’s books.

And then there is the exhibit.

A few works hover on the conventional end of the spectrum – some collage, six framed prints and a pair of traditional artist’s books. Most works are abstracted from natural forms or veer off into conceptualism.

Santa Fe papermaker Tom Leach exhibits three beautifully complex patterned papers. Sukey Hughes, known for publishing the 1978 classic in the field, Washi: The World of Japanese Paper, exhibits two editions of her Goddess Book with linocuts. Nicole Donnelly’s delicate monoprints begin with leaves pressed on paper, but they have the appearance of ancient fossils.

Catherine Nash’s “Night Boat” offers an exquisite illusion of a small, three-dimensional boat floating above a night sky. The mixed-media work consists of four square panels with geometric star tracery and a mysterious, sculptural boat on top. Look closely and you can read an embedded Rumi poem.

Robbin Ami Silverberg’s three text-wound spools may constitute the most conceptual piece in the exhibit. Each has been wrapped with imprinted strips of paper carrying folk sayings that have an ironic bite. For example: the old and uncomfortable proverb: “Women are like shoes, they can always be replaced.”

But above all, “Washi” is a retrospective of sorts for Mary Ellen Long, our own internationally known Earth artist and paper guru.

DAC’s windows flutter with her white-paper panels suspended as long, folded sheets or torn strips of beautiful hand made paper. All are delicately inscribed in some manner – thoughts, single words, poems. In addition, Long displays a variety of handmade paper bowls, boxes, pods and natural structures, like her wrapped logs.

Several ceremonial objects combine paper, twigs and/or stones. “Shintal Circle” is representative of these serene works, revealing Long’s devotion to the natural beauty and her fruitful imagination.

jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, artist and critic.

If you go

“Washi & Other Ephemera: The Art of Hand Papermaking,” Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave., through Sept. 28. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday.

Three papermaking workshops will be offered in conjunction with the exhibit. “Sidewalk Cloud,” presented by Mary Ellen Long, will be given twice; from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and again Sept. 7. Paper artist Helen Hiebert will offer “Illuminated Paper Structures” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 14. Each workshop costs $65 for DAC members, $75 for nonmembers plus applicable material fees.

For registration and more information, call 259-2606 or visit www.DurangoArts.org.