Shards of Paper, Shreds of Glass

By Wesley Cannon

The descent into the depths of the Museum of International Folk Art for the Once Within a Time exhibition involves immersion in paper. Paper forms forest creatures, funeral scenes, and walls, transforming the space into a newsprint cave. At this lair’s heart, a film features paper writhing through a sequence of transformations. 

In the final moments of Compound Eyes of Tropical, shards of paper flash into scraps of mirror as they crash through the air. We do not see the material tear, but somehow the shards’ edges are both jagged and continuous. Like gymnasts tumbling, paper writhes along its downward trajectory, twirling against the forest background. In the center of the frame, one scrap of brown paper twists in the air, then suddenly turns into a mirror. The scrap now twinkles as it turns, now turns back into paper. Flashing back and forth between paper and mirror, mirror and paper, gravity pulls it in a descending arc. 

A little fly, himself a mixture of paper and glass, fixes his eyes on the scraps. Black crepe paper covers his wire frame and borders his fine iridescent wings, which quiver in the wind. He careens through the air amongst the bits of wreckage, distinct from the fragments only in his careening through their descent. Like the fly, we are transfixed by the constant flux between scrap and shard. 

The brown wrapper shatters on impact with the forest floor, leaving glass strewn across the ground like confetti. The fly with iridescent wings inspects the wreckage. His thin wire forearms stretch to capture the shine. The fly drags a slip of glass in close to himself, as if to fuse the miraculous glass with his paper body. 

Just as paper and mirror have fantastically traded places, another paper creature has crossed and re-crossed a river. His essential movement has been rocking back and forth on his legs, gathering up his strength to propel a forward trajectory. But this larger context is unnecessary: it is enough to watch the final sequence of the film and see the mirror flash to paper, as if an incredible substance somehow possessed an alchemical power. The fly hugs the smallest final shard close to his slight body. What do glass and paper share?  Both fragment into minute flickering pieces; that is clear enough. n

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Wesley Cannon is a recent graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe and currently serves as the editorial assistant at the Museum of New Mexico Press.