History of the Paper Art Collegiate Triennial exhibition

Founded in 1999, the Triennial offers college students a way to show the country what they add to the field of handmade paper art. Jurors represent the most exciting curators, artists, and gallerists involved in the field. Venues are located in diverse university galleries, museums, and art centers around the country. Sponsors from papermaking centers and materials suppliers across the U.S. offer awards and special residencies to recognize the accomplishments of student artists working with their own handmade paper.

Every 3 years, early career college papermakers are encouraged to participate in the juried Collegiate Paper Triennial traveling exhibition. The show offers great exposure to undergraduate and graduate students in academic papermaking programs and gathers talent from all across North America into a single show.

Any student enrolled in a two-year Associate, BA, BFA, MA, or MFA program in a college, university, or art school in the US is eligible. To ensure that any qualified student can enter, registration is handled and paid for by the participating schools. In turn, the fees constitute ensure that the triennials remain self-supporting.

We are deeply grateful to all those who have participated, whether by submitting work, encouraging student-artists to enter, offering support to the program as sponsors, or by serving as jurors. Finally, we as papermakers remain deeply in debt to the visionary co-founders of the Collegiate Triennial, Lynn Sures and Cindy Bowden.

Testimonials about the Paper Art Collegiate Triennial

  • Michelle Samour says "The Paper Triennials have offered my papermaking students a unique opportunity to show their work with their peers from across the country...This venue always raises the bar for them, and has become an important part of their emergence as young papermakers and artists."

  • Mary Tasillo, (3rd Triennial) formerly at Hand Papermaking magazine, said “… the Paper Triennial gave me confidence in my handmade paper art at a time when I was just learning to work with handmade paper as an expressive form.”

  • Lynette Spencer (5th Triennial) said “As an award winner, it was a great jump start to my time as Papermaking Associate at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center… "

  • Eleni Giorgos, “I was … grateful that my award membership to the Friends of Dard Hunter also furthered my connection to the papermaking community at large.”

  • Megan Singleton ( 5th Triennial) now an active artist in St. Louis, noted “… the opportunity to exhibit our work in prominent galleries and museums, gain exposure…and develop our C.V's,” and participating “strengthened my connections with prominent contemporary paper artists.”

  • Leah Matthews (4th Triennial) has made paper in New York at Pace Editions. She adds her experience there “showed me the creative process of working [with]…artists like Jim Dine, Leonardo Drew, Donald Baechler and Shepard Fairey.”




Past Paper Art Collegiate Triennial Statistics

1999 First Triennial: 39 works from 29 schools with 160 artists entered

2000 Second Triennial: 38 works from 15 schools were chosen; 21 schools entered the competition

2005 Third Triennial: 33 works were chosen from 11 schools.

2009 Fourth Triennial: (new Co-Director Anne Q. McKeown of the Brodsky Center of the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University) 18 students from 11 schools were selected from more than 100 slide entries.

2012 Fifth Triennial: 40 works selected from 227 entries from 21 schools

2016 Sixth Triennial: 21 works from 9 schools were selected from 185 entries from 12 schools

2019 Seventh Triennial: (New Co-Director Megan Singleton) 37 works from 15 schools were selected

2022 Eighth Triennial: (first competition wholly under FDH/NAHP auspices) 36 works from 11 schools were selected from 138 entries from 17 schools.

Past Collegiate Paper Triennials: Venues

1999 First Triennial: Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, Buffalo State College in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC

2002 Second Triennial: American Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta; the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa; Nichols State University in Thibodaux, LA; Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA

2005 Third Triennial: Brodsky Center of the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University

2009 Fourth Triennial: Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and Brodsky Center of the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University

2012 Fifth Triennial: Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and Morgan Conservatory of Art, Cleveland, OH;

2016 Sixth Triennial: Corcoran Gallery of Art

2019 Seventh Triennial: University of the Arts, Philadelphia; Morgan Conservatory of Art, Cleveland, OH; Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta.

2022 Eighth Triennial: Cedar Crest College (Allentown, Pennsylvania): August 22 - October 14, 2022; Evanston Art Center (Evanston, Illinois): January 14 - February 19, 2023; Morgan Conservatory (Cleveland, Ohio): June 23-August 5, 2023); Lyndon House (Athens, Georgia): October 7, 2023 - January 13, 2024


Past Jurors

1999: Jane Farmer, independent curator; and Joann Moser, senior curator of graphics at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

2002: Mindell Dubansky, Associate Museum Librarian/Conservation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY and Andrea Honore, Art Program Administrator of Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ

2005: Barb Korbel of the Art Institute of Chicago; Frank Paluch, Director of Perimeter Gallery; and Marilyn Sward, Founding Director of the Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts

2009: Paul Wong, Artistic Director, of Dieu Donne Papermill, and Shelley Langdale, Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art

2012: Jane Milosch, Senior Program Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, Smithsonian Institution

2016: Joan Hall, professor emeritus at Washington University at St. Louis

2019: Tatiana Ginsberg, artist/educator, Co-Director of Artistic Projects and Master Collaborator, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY; AND Buzz Spector, artist/critic/educator, Professor of Art, Washington University, Saint Louis MO

2022: Mina Takahashi, editor at Hand Papermaking magazine, and former director of Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY; Karen Kunc, book artist and printmaker known for her woodblock prints, Professor of Art, University of Nebraska at Lincoln; and Erin Zona, Artistic Director at Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY.

 

Note: This information was compiled from Lynn Sures' article, “The National Collegiate Handmade Paper Triennial: Twenty-First-Century Papermakers,” in Hand Papermaking, 31/1 (2016), and has been updated since then.