The name “Paradigm” (as in Michigan’s Paradigm quilters) fosters the expectation of breaking through artistic boundaries. And “Paradigm: Quilts and Beyond” at Ypsilanti’s Riverside Arts Center Gallery certainly does that.

The word paradigm has multiple meanings: It can refer to a systematic arrangement of all the items of one sort, or to one of any number of perspectives of particular items within a sort.

So what are we to do when both definitions fit? Well — that’s art for you. And this is why the exhibit’s subtitle is so accurately called “Quits and Beyond.’ Because this expansive exhibit dramatically goes far beyond any one sort of fiber art to the farther reaches of the fiber arts in general.

It also doesn’t hurt that the display is in one of Washtenaw County’s best venues for the visual arts. The Riverside Arts Center Gallery comfortably lends itself to such shows as “Quilts and Beyond.”

Paradigm has filled the expansive Riverside space. Art hangs from the ceiling; sits on display cases; and nestles creatively, salon-style, on the wall.

Paradigm’s participating local members are Jill Ault, Sonja Hagen, Sue Holdaway-Heys, Pat Holly, Patricia Ingersoll, Gretchen Jackson, Barb Kilbourn, Carolyn King, Garland Lewis, and Carol Wineman; as well as Mary Gentry of Ypsilanti.

The gallery’s exhibition statement tells us everything we need to know about the group: “Although each (Paradigm) artist is unique, they share a common love of fabric and surface design which spills over into other forms of art, including making dolls, art to wear, and fabric books.” And it's all there.

Interestingly enough, there’s also painting (after all, canvas is fiber, right?) as well as mixed-medias of all sorts. There’s just no uniformity to this Paradigm’s paradigm.

In the realm of quilts alone there’s a world of difference between Jill Ault’s “Shattered Teapot”; Barbara Kilbourn’s “Promenade with Mourgorsky,” and Gretchen Jackson’s “Urban Abstract.” Each fiber artist starts from the same aesthetic, but where they go shatters the conventional concept of woof and warp.

Ault’s “Shattered Teapot” is a handsome deconstruction of your everyday teapot with its blue kettle and blue lid radiating across the width of the quilt’s working surface. Kilbourn’s wry “Promenade with Mussorgsky” playfully riffs on Georges Seurat’s famous 1884 “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” with a portrait of Modest Mussorgsky in front of Viktor Hartmann’s “Project for a City Gate in Kiev.” And Jackson’s “Urban Abstract” does away with traditional design altogether with its dynamic overlapping patches of earthtone fiber patches stitched as a hanging quilt.

Falling between painting and quilting is Mary Gentry’s “Linen No. 1” with its mixed-media embroidered encaustic. This geometric abstract painting features an array of diagonal and rectilinear cross-stitching across the work’s surface abetted by a waxy overlay. Not only do these stitching vary in size across the work’s surface, but the very nature of their orientation gives the linen work a distinct visual lilt whose color is dramatically heighted by the encaustic’s sheen.

On the other hand, Jill Ault’s “Tropic” and Garland Lewis’ “Culinary Herbs” shatter the presupposition of what a quilt can — or perhaps should — look like. Ault’s “Tropic” (a set of eight multicolored pods) sits clustered together as a gathering of otherworldly biomorphic forms. While Lewis’ accordion book alternates recipes and stitched herb illustrations in a lively combination of art book and artwork.

Among the sculptural fibers, Dee Ann Segula’s “Starling 1, 2, and 3” and Joan Potter Thomas’ “Earth Mother” illustrate such art in three dimensions. Segula’s three “Starlings” are wool, wood, and wire fiber birds caught in flight, song, and repose as playful works of art. And Thomas’ “Earth Mother,” by contrast, is an anthropologist’s delight with its bejeweled paperclay female bust set upon a gourd with a tiny globe set within her torso.

Finally, Gretchen Jackson’s 20 diminutive rectangular pendants are among the delightful functional fiber finds in the display. Jackson’s ornamental felt jewelry is crafted with irregular stitching garlanded with beads and patterns looking distinctively unique from within a signature design. These idiosyncratic ornaments show us Paradigm at its best: Too independent to be regimented, yet too faithful to fiber to stray too far away from quilts.

“Paradigm: Quilts and Beyond” will continue through June 26 at the Riverside Arts Center Gallery, 76 North Huron Street, Ypsilanti. Gallery hours are 3 to 9 p.m., Thursday-Saturday; and 1:30 to 4 p.m., Sunday. For information, call 734-480-ARTS.