It was in San Antonio that artist Michael Velliquette found his calling. Velliquette moved to the city in 2002 after college and soon earned a spot in the Artpace International Artist In Residence program.

He described his Artpace project as “this big immersive thing” involving foil, plastic tarps, cardboard, colored paper and other materials, but what he learned from the experience was that paper should be his primary medium.

He used leftover cardstock to construct small-scale sculptural models but realized they were artworks in themselves that gave him “a unified experience and a sense of finish that I had never had in my work before.”

Years of honing his practice led him to his current body of work, a set of intricately detailed, elaborately constructed paper sculptures on view at the Contemporary at Blue Star art space.