Kresge Art Museum supplemented its paper art exhibition with a talk by artist Alan Shields Thursday evening.

Shields’ offerings continue at 5 p.m. today with a demonstration of his work at The Art Apartment, 210 Abbott Road.

“I do, in this case, watercolor paintings,” Shields said. “They’re done on pieces of paper supported by wire, which I can then stack up or assemble. I will actually be asking the people who come to see them to participate in assembling the works.

“We’re more or less going to play with them.”

Kresge acquired a work of Shields’ several years ago for its permanent collection, and is now displaying more of his work as part of the “Rags to Riches: 25 Years of Paper Art from Dieu Donné Papermill.”

Dieu Donné Papermill is a nonprofit organization that makes paper for use by artists in New York City.

Shields’ works have also been displayed at The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York City.

April Kingsley, Kresge’s curator, said Shields has a unique style that garners respect from other prominent artists.

“He has a kind of leadership way about him,” she said. “He’s always been a kind of a forefront person - he takes his own way to make a painting.”

Kingsley said the demonstration at The Art Apartment will involve those who come to see the art.

“It’s going to be kind of a participatory demonstration of this kind of work that’s in different pieces,” she said.

Mina Takahashi, program director at Dieu Donné, said paper is a very unique medium.

“Why paper? It’s a fabulous medium for artists to create their work,” she said. “It can be just exquisite, it has a lot of possibilities.”

For those who are curious about what Shields’ art looks like, they’ll just have to go to the demonstration.

“It’s an impossible task to describe in words because I’m a visual person,” he said. “For me to try to describe it puts me into the realm of something I’m not capable of.”

But his work extends beyond just the visual.

Shields describes himself as a philosopher-artist whose philosophy is best interpreted by experiencing his art. Even his tattoos reflect his philosophy.

“On the back of my neck is a tetrahedron, which is linearly solid,” he said. “And on my hands and feet I have cubes - if you make that out of sticks it’s a linearly unstable solid.

“My hands and feet can go anywhere but my head is on straight and I keep going and I have continued to keep going.”