The University of Wisconsin Libraries will host an exhibition titled “Text Support: A Library Exhibit About Paper” that will run through June and focus on the art and history of papermaking.

Tracy Honn, the senior artist for Silver Buckle Press, said papermaking is something people use in their everyday life, but they do not know much about it. She said it is an “invisible technology.”

The exhibition is about what UW has in its library, including books and research from the Wisconsin Historical Society of Madison, Honn said. She said the items are not seen in the course of everyday life and people can go see them for free.

There are also some collections from the UW archives that have not been shown before and are considered extremely invaluable, according to Honn.

“We don’t know anything about paper,” Honn said. “It’s a long tradition that people made – and made it very well.”

The exhibition will reveal the importance of the art of papermaking, its tradition and the invention of the mechanical paper machine, Honn said. The only thing that the exhibition does not cover, she added, is that there are not many varieties of paper.

The idea for the exhibition came, in part, from Joe Wilfer, a papermaker from Wisconsin whose family donated collections of his work to the UW Libraries. Honn said Wilfer studied at UW, went on to become the first head of the Madison Art Center in the 1970s and was an influential teacher in his time.

“The decision to have Shawn Sheehy as a lecturer is because he has done a lot of work in the art of paper-making and paper-engineering,” Honn said. “He is an academic person, an artist, naturalist, environmentalist, interested in environmental education and the last, but not the least of all, is that he is from Madison.”

Jim Escalante, associate dean and UW professor of art, said students will have the opportunity to attend a workshop May 14 with Shawn Sheehy, a well-known artist and pop-up bookmaker. He said the elements in Sheehy’s work are moveable and feature sculpture-like objects.

“Students would definitely benefit from the exhibition and the sculptural objects from the library,” Escalante said.

The most important thing done by Honn and Rider for the exhibition is the successful contrast between utilitarian and colorful paper, according to Robin Rider, the curator of special collections at Memorial Library. She said this enhances the reading experience.

Rider said the exhibition is the first on papermaking, and research that has been done on it over the past few years. However, she added, it is expected to have an online version of the show in the future.

“Students, faculty, community members, scholars and artists would benefit from the show as it has a lot of cultural and business value, since store groups can enhance their business and make a lot of benefit,” Rider said.

Escalante said the reason this is considered a multi-library exhibition is that there are many books and collections from other libraries in Wisconsin.