Kitty Hawk’s Paul Tury turns paper into art

By Mary Ellen Riddle | Outer Banks Voice on December 19, 2024

Paul Tury at his exhibition Handmade Paper Art in Duck. (Photo by Mary Ellen Riddle)

By Mary Ellen Riddle | Outer Banks Voice

Paper comes to life in Paul Tury’s hands. The Kitty Hawk artist has a one-person exhibit on display at the Duck Town Hall that features 13 works he’s crafted from handmade and recycled paper, dyes, and natural elements. The sculptural pieces are wall mounted in slender black frames he built that make the vibrant colors in his pieces pop. His goal: To create art by elevating paper’s status and make it the star of the show.

Tury is excited that he can create with such a common, everyday thing that is everywhere and can be taken for granted.

Using a combination of dyed cotton, abaca (a banana plant grown in the Philippines) and paper made from recycled brown bags, office paper and cardboard boxes, he molds the wet handmade paper around static shapes like PVC pipes and lets it dry to form into curves and folds.

Tury says he is into making things appear to move and be dynamic. “And that’s really my kind of thing, of breaking away from just having a 2D piece on a flat piece of paper or canvas or whatever it is,” he says. “I was really excited about breaking the space and coming out to the viewer, and, you know, engaging you in a way that hopefully brings you into my art and into the pieces.”

His sculpture “Awaiting in ambush,” literally reaches out to the viewer and “Let the current carry you’” is calming as it moves wave-like, creating a meditative feel.

In some pieces he combines paper with natural items such as shells, sea oats, pine needles, feathers, driftwood, and mermaid purses. He is saving bags of onion, garlic, and tomatillo skins to make paper or use as inclusions in the paper. His vibrant colors currently come from industrial dyes used in fabric making. He is eying a prickly pear in his yard that has the potential to yield a vibrant pink dye if he can find a way to stabilize it.

Armed with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking from James Madison University, Tury comes to his art with a keen and practiced sense of color and composition that is highlighted in his 3D paper art. Early on when Tury was in school and trying to find himself as an artist, he painted and did silk-screening and was trying to be a Leonardo and “do everything.”

But then he took a class in papermaking that excited him and led him to what he referred to as an uncontrollable calling. He began to obsessively sketch drawings that he saw as models for paper art. He filled three sketchbooks full of these drawings. But raising a family with his wife Jackie, also an artist, came first. Having graphic art skills helped.

Tury has spent the last 19 years working for the nonprofit Allergy & Asthma Network as the Creative Director. Over the years he has been with them, he has won awards for illustration and graphic design. This includes two Apex awards for publication excellence, a Davey Award for illustrations in Allergy & Asthma Today Magazine, two National Health Information Awards and two Communicator Awards for Excellence.

Tury believes genetics played a role in where he landed artistically. “Being a bit of each parent, in hindsight I can see and feel the swing between their two personalities,” says Tury of his parents. “My dad was much more analytical and methodical, with my mom being a bit more free and winging it.”

“It’s mostly an industrial process to do it yourself,” says Tury. Early on he could not find resources. He had to build his own vats, molds, and the screens to form the sheets of paper. He built his own press using two-by-fours and a car jack to squeeze out the water. He is thinking ahead of getting cisterns to collect rainwater because the paper-making process takes lots of water.

Tury continues to produce ideas to add to his process. He is experimenting with making scented paper by adding spices. He also wants to enlarge his paper sculptures to wall size.

“I feel like there’s so much to learn, so much to do, and so many options open to me that it’s really kind of exciting,” he says.

(The exhibition at the Duck Town Hall, 1200 Duck Road, Duck, through Jan. 22 (except for holidays), Monday – Friday 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.)