GASnews Winter 2015

GASnews

WINTER 2015 VO L U M E 2 6 ISSUE 4

INSIDE

3 Letter from the President 3 Letter from the Editor 4 GAS Line: Board and Staff Changes,

Asheville SPARK! Event

5 Assembled to Give: Sharing Teaching Practices at the

Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium

8 Collecting Images: Wet Plate Collodion Photography 10 Review: Larry Bell at White Cube in Mason's Yard 12 Artist Collector: John Drury, Artist and Founder of CUD,

on His Collection of Self-Taught Artists

14 Re Collecting: Erica Rosenfeld's Artwork and Practice 17 Op-Ed: Art Collectors: A Field Guide 18 Discovering the Collector 20 Student Profile: Kit Paulson 21 GAS Resource Links Cover: Kit Paulson, Time is Going to Take So Much Away (But There's a Way that You Can Offer Time a Trade).

GAS news

GASnews is published four times per year as a benefit to members.

Contributing Writers: Regan Brumagen, Erin Dickson, Kim Harty, Grace Meils, Suzanne Peck, Jon Rees, David Schnuckel, Amanda Wilcox Editor: Kim Harty Managing Editor: Kristin Galioto Graphic Design: Ted Cotrotsos* Staff Pamela Figenshow Koss, Executive Director Kristin Galioto, Communications Manager Shelbey Lang, Executive Assistant Kassaundra Porres, Office and Volunteer Coordinator Chrissy Burd, Bookkeeper*

Glass Art Society Board of Directors 2015-2016 President: Cassandra Straubing Vice President: Kim Harty Vice President: Natali Rodrigues Treasurer: Roger MacPherson Secretary: Tracy Kirchmann Alex Bernstein Chris Clarke Kelly Conway Matt Durran BJ Katz Ed Kirshner Jeff Lindsay

Marc Petrovic Charlotte Potter Stephen Powell Masahiro Nick Sasaki Jan Smith David Willis

Student Rep:

Emily Kuchenbecker

*part time/contract

6512 23rd Avenue NW, Suite 329, Seattle, WA 98117 USA Phone: 206.382.1305 Fax: 206.382.2630 E-mail: info@glassart.or

Web: www.glassart.org

Š2015 The Glass Art Society, a non-profit organization. All rights reserved. Publication of articles in this newsletter prohibited without permission from the Glass Art Society Inc. The Glass Art Society reserves the right to deny applications for Tech Display, advertising participation, GAS membership or conference participation to anyone for any reason.

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER Dearest Glass Friends, I hope this newsletter finds you well in the depths of winter, surrounding a new year.

As a Board, we are diligently preparing for both the Corning and Norfolk conferences simultaneously. Corning is well under way, thanks to a very dedicated and organized local team and community. In February, the Board will travel to Norfolk for three days of initial conference program scheduling and site planning.

Other happenings throughout the year include regional SPARK! events, which are co-hosted by GAS and a selected local glass organization. These events are designed to generate excitement and spark conversation about glassmaking throughout an evening of local food, drinks, and friends. Our most recent and very successful event in Asheville, North Carolina was co-presented by RiverGlass public studio and school, and organized by Board member Alex Bernstein, who resides in Asheville as well. Stay tuned - the next SPARK! event might be happening in your town!

Last fall, Board member Matt Durran of England, began an extensive outreach survey of international artists to learn how we can expand our services to the worldwide glass community. The Board has also begun qualitative research, conducted through focus groups, in preparation for our long range planning retreat that will take place later this year. By surveying our current membership, as well as past and potential members, we are hoping to gain insight into the glass community’s perception of the Glass Art Society.

Our goal is to better the organization by offering new and exciting opportunities for GAS members throughout the year.

Be sure to mark your calendars for the Corning conference from June 9-11, 2016 and register by March 1 to receive the lowest rates. If you are a student member, be sure to apply for a student scholarship with the opportunity to receive financial support to attend the conference. Click here for more info. The 2016 conference is going to be FANTASTIC!

EDITOR’S LETTER

Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

‘Tis the season for shopping, buying, making, and selling.

Whether we are out binge buying mass-produced goods on black Friday, or making carefully curated selections from a boutique, we all consider the act of acquiring, gifting, and ultimately collecting, over the holidays.

This issue of GASnews expands the definition of “collector” and looks at the varying ways artists collect. John Drury talks with me about his extensive collection of art from untrained artists, and how this practice of acquiring work influences his own art practice. Suzanne Peck explores Erica Rosenfeld’s frenetic practice of collecting and processing objects into surreal installations.

Jon Rees considers the wet plate collodion process for “collecting” memories. Amanda Wilcox profiles SIU Carbondale grad student, Kit Paulson, who makes haunting work from large collections of delicately flameworked botanicals. The Rakow Research Library shares their collection of sometimes-serious and sometimeshilarious collector newsletters. Grace Meils offers readers a humorous take on this group in her “field guide” to the different types of glass collectors.

The “collector” has always occupied an exalted and mysterious place in the mind of artists, particularly glass artists. In the contemporary glass world, a relatively small and tightknit group of collectors has generously kept the glass economy – artists, craft schools, art centers, and universities – running for the past 30 years. Though all artists are indebted to this generosity, sometimes the collector feels that they are oppositional to the artists – they are the arbiters of taste, gatekeepers of financial success, they consume our most precious creations, and their motivations are a mystery.

The artists in this issue give readers a way to connect to the collector, by showing that collecting can be an act of love, memory, or preservation. Collectors can build community through shared interests and can be stewards of objects and their histories. These artists show us that collecting is not about consuming, it’s about a deep affection they have for the world around them.

Cassandra Straubing GAS President

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Kim Harty

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GAS LINE BOARD AND STAFF CHANGES Student Representative The Glass Art Society Board of Directors recently selected a new Student Representative, Emily Kuchenbecker.

Emily was born in Madison, Wisconsin and attended the University of WisconsinEau Claire for two years, for the start of her BFA. She then transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where she is currently finishing her senior year in the 3D art BFA program. While enrolled at UWSP, Emily has attended many visiting artist workshops in order to expand her studio knowledge. She participates in the student organization, SCULPT, and supports the UWSP glass program as a studio intern.

As we welcome Emily to the GAS team, we must also bid farewell to the fabulous Amanda Wilcox. Amanda’s hard work and dedication to GAS over the past year has been tremendous. During her term she continuously communicated with GAS student liaisons to help promote the organization, contributed numerous

Emily Kuchenbecker

Amanda Wilcox

Kassaundra Porres

student-related articles to GASnews, and was integral to the success of the International Student Exhibition in San Jose.

“My experience as the Student Representative was enlightening in many ways. It opened up a world of professional practices for me to take part in and observe with guidance from individuals that hold incredible passion for promoting the world of glass art. I feel a greater connection to my community and more educated on the momentum it takes to keep this community invested in conversation and innovation.”

Amanda recently accepted a position as retail sales and studio instructor at the new Bullseye Glass Co. Resource Center in Los Angeles, CA. Congrats, Amanda!

Office & Volunteer Coordinator We are excited to introduce the newest member of our team, office & volunteer coordinator, Kassaundra Porres! Kassaundra is an experienced arts administrator and passionate supporter for the sustainability of the arts and cultural community. She grew up in a military family, moving around the world, and cultivating her appetite for the arts at a young age. She received her bachelor’s in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2012, and after graduation she moved to Florence, Italy to complete a master’s in museum studies. Returning stateside, Kassaundra worked as gallery manager for a contemporary art gallery in Rochester, NY until she decided to venture to the Pacific Northwest.

public access studio, there was certainly a feeling that the future of studio glass in this region is very bright,” said GAS Board member and event organizer, Alex Bernstein.

This was the third SPARK! event hosted

by GAS. Previous locations include Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, WA (2012)

and the home of former Board member, Geoff Isles in New York, NY (2013). These events are designed to educate the local community about our organization and to generate excitement and spark conversation about glassmaking. Stay tuned for future dates and locations!

ASHEVILLE SPARK! EVENT On December 2, over 200 glass artists and enthusiasts came together for a successful GAS SPARK! event, co-hosted with RiverGlass, at Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, NC. Attendees enjoyed local craft beer and a delicious taco bar catered by Mamacita's Mexican Grill, while mingling with friends, dancing to bluegrass music from the Typical Mountain Boys, and watching glassblowing demonstrations provided by Mobile Glassblowing Studios. Each person was also entered into a raffle for a chance to win exciting prizes, including two individual GAS memberships, one full-conference pass, and vintage conference t-shirts.

“With the history of the Glass Art Society being founded in nearby Penland and the excitement of RiverGlass a new nonprofit

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ASSEMBLED TO GIVE: SHARING TEACHING PRACTICES

AT THE ROBERT M. MINKOFF FOUNDATION ACADEMIC SYMPOSIUM

by David Schnuckel UrbanGlass Studio

One of the admirable qualities of the glass field is its history of supporting creative fellowship. This sharing was particularly important in the early years of the Studio Glass Movement, when the excitement of engaging glass for individual creative expression was hampered by the reality of not fully comprehending glass’s technical mysteries. Think of the spirit behind the Toledo Workshop of 1962 or the story of the first summer that established the Pilchuck Glass School in 1971; there was a sense of moral obligation (in addition to educational necessity) to build community as a means to learn from one another, to inspire ideas, and to discover each other’s unanticipated potential.

The virtues of connection, learning, and sharing wholeheartedly that were engrained by the early generations of the Studio Glass Movement are still very much in play today…not only in established institutions like conferences, schools, and colleges that inform our glass-based making, but new and exciting platforms to further inform our glass-based teaching.

The Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium has been a truly unique example of this extension of creative fellowship, specifically in the effort of GASNEWS

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advancing the field of glass education.

Sponsored by the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation, founded by Robert Minkoff, directed by Andrew Page, and hosted by UrbanGlass, these symposiums have been designed to bring together educators, students, artists, and administrators of art organizations from around the world to approach challenging issues related to teaching and learning within a glass context. “We wanted to establish a higher level of discourse than you might find at a typical presentation,” notes Robert Minkoff, Founder and Managing Trustee of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation, Ltd. “We wanted people to present academic papers in an effort to signal our expectations of a more rigorous discussion [involving innovative approaches to enhancing the glass field through education].”

The impetus to develop and organize a new platform of exchange came to Andrew Page, editor of GLASS Quarterly and director of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation, following his panel, Post-Studio Glass: A Look At The New Parameters For Work In Glass at the 2012 GAS conference.

A vigorous conversation amongst the audience followed the panel discussion; an indication of a new dialogue beginning VVO OLLUUM MEE 2265, , IISSSSUUEE 44

to take place within the glass teaching practice, as a younger generation of artists were beginning to take over academic positions. Further conversations between Page and sculptor/educator Daniel Clayman (who was in attendance at that panel discussion) planted the conceptual seeds to give this sort of conversation shape in the form of an organized conference. “The need to reassess the teaching of glass emerged as a focus, and so the concept of a forum on ‘Glass Pedagogy’ took shape,” says Page.

“A key step was when I approached the Minkoff Foundation and the concept was enthusiastically embraced.”

The primary mission of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation includes the promotion of glass education, to encourage excellence in glassmaking, and to invest in the advancement of the glass arts. Minkoff reveals the interest in his foundation to offer support by way of providing ideas, expertise, and vision through innovative opportunities to influence the contemporary field of glass in addition to providing financial support. “We prefer to initiate our own projects, bringing new opportunities to the glass field; whether it be an artist residency project, an at-risk youth forum, or a gathering of academics to discuss the

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state and future of glass education,” he says. “I feel we can make an even larger impact on the field through the creation of new projects.”

In addition to the Minkoff Foundation, support was also found at UrbanGlass, where Larry Pitterman, then acting executive director and currently chairman of the board, offered staff, facilities, and strategic input to make the event a reality.

With these two organizations on board, Page began assembling an advisory board that included Clayman, Jack Wax (Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University), and Ruth King (then Artistic Director of the Pilchuck Glass School) to help select the proposed academic papers to be presented at the first Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass in December of 2013.

Issues In Glass Pedagogy was a threeday dialogue in New York City that included a Thursday evening gallery tour, scheduled lectures in Founder’s Hall of St. Francis College on Friday, and a series of presentations in the newly opened studios of UrbanGlass on Saturday. “We designed the first symposium with an eye toward connecting the glass art field with the wider contempo-rary art world. That’s why the gallery tours [at the beginning of the symposium program-ming] have been our chosen kick-off,” says Page. The first night’s gallery tour included a visit to Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Claire Oliver Gallery, Heller Gallery, and Nancy Hoffman Gallery; concluding with a reception hosted at the home of Geoff Isles and his outstanding glass collection.

Jack Wax

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Andrew Page

Page adds, “We also wanted to establish the symposium as a place for serious academic thinking about pedagogy, and so modeled it after other academic conferences where papers are presented.”

The keynote address was delivered by Jack Wax and was followed by lectures and presentations by a new guard of glass academics, established department heads, non-degree granting instructors, and administrative directors of educational entities; a line up of speakers from all around the world to approach a wide variety of issues related to contemporary glass teaching practice and methodology.

“It was very rewarding to see the convergence of people from all over to discuss the state of glass education not only in higher education, but [also] in non-degree granting institutions,” reflects Minkoff. “We posted the full audio transcripts of the presentations on the foundation’s website that has gotten a lot of positive feedback as a resource to the field” (a link to that website is posted below).

The first academic symposium in 2013 was responsible for introducing new perspectives on glass-based teaching, facilitating new conversations about glassbased learning, and creating connections between programs and educators at an international scale. In response to what he feels the first Academic Symposium aimed to accomplish Page says, “We hope this forum helps to exchange information that will equip program heads to better advocate for their programs within their respective institutions.”

In 2015, the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation partnered with UrbanGlass once again for another opportunity of academic exchange. From October 22-24, 2015, department heads, professors, educators, students, and arts administrators gathered in New York City to attend Issues in Glass Pedagogy: New Technologies in Practice. The nature of the symposium set its sights on a much more specific conversation regarding the integrations of technology into glass curriculums and its implications upon glass education.

The schedule of the second Academic Symposium (in full disclosure, I was a presenter) followed the three-day format of the previous symposium. The Thursday evening prior to the Friday and Saturday lectures included a gallery tour of Sean Kelly Gallery, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and concluded at Heller Gallery. The final stop at Heller Gallery also hosted a panel discussion featuring Kim Harty (assistant professor, section head of glass, College of Creative Studies, Detroit), Helen Lee (assistant professor, head of glass, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Sharyn O’Mara (associate professor and head of glass at the Tyler School Art at Temple University in Philadelphia), and Marc Petrovic (assistant professor, chair of glass, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland) entitled, Inheriting an Established Glass Program and its Technology. The panel, and the reception that followed, set an inquisitive and conversational tone to open the second symposium.

Tina Aufiero

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“I was really struck by the energy level of this symposium, which I noticed on the very first evening when we had a panel discussion at Heller Gallery,” notes Page.

“I’m not sure if it was the subject matter, the fact that this was the second iteration of the symposium, or the characteristics of the group, but I noticed right off the bat an eagerness to ask questions, speak, [and] exchange ideas without any prodding. It was something that carried through the entire three-day event.”

The second day of lectures took place at Founder’s Hall of St. Francis College, where the day was inaugurated with a keynote presentation from Tina Aufiero, artistic director of the Pilchuck Glass School.

Saturday’s presentations took place in the studios of UrbanGlass. Over the course of the three days, topics ranged from various approaches of integrating technology within educational curriculum, technology as an aid in both teaching practice and personal making practice, unique developments involving science and art as seen in the The Corning Museum of Glass/Corning Incorporated Specialty Glass Residency, and insight into the development of the MIT Media Lab’s breakthrough hot glass 3D printer. Page adds, “These are the kinds of things that the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation was hoping to foster through the symposium: advancing glass education as a whole…and it is exciting to get the ball rolling and watch it take off.”

With the second symposium recently concluded, the buzz of new information, new interactions, new ideas, and new possibility was noticeably resonant; the buzz even becoming what could be considered a standard after-effect upon attending these events. What’s even more exciting is the viral nature of these exchanges; with participants bringing the vigor and information back home with them and letting the impact of these symposiums spread throughout their communities by way of newly influenced teaching and extended conversation.

When asked about the direction of future Academic Symposiums, Page adds, “I think we will get better and better at GASNEWS

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Inheriting an Established Glass Program and its Technology panel discussion at Heller Gallery

fine-tuning the symposium to the needs of glass educators everywhere, but that we’ve hit upon a good model. We had a very productive focus group at the end of the symposium where a lot of great ideas came up, many of which we will be implementing, so stay tuned.”

For anybody with a penchant for issues related to education (whether glass-specific or not), the anticipated continuation of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium is something to be truly thrilled about. Even in its budding momentum, Issues in Glass Pedagogy has certainly revealed itself to be a valuable platform of exchange within the contemporary glass field (a gathering similar to a GAS conference), yet directed at a public specifically interested in amplifying the impact of teaching. Aside from being a collective opportunity for educators to come together and challenge the notion of contemporary glass-based teaching practice, the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium makes for a dynamic exemplification of what community is best in service of: to support and encourage unforeseen possibilities within one another.

https://www.facebook.com/ minkoffsymposiumaturbanglass/ David Schnuckel is an artist and educator, currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor to the Glass Program of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.

http://www.rmmfoundation.org/ academic-symposium.html https://www.urbanglass.org/events/ detail/academic-symposium-2015

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COLLECTING IMAGES: WET PLATE COLLODION PHOTOGRAPHY

by Jon Rees When I think of collecting, the first thing that comes to mind is photography. I think of collecting of moments from one’s life, in the form of imagery. Often, photos become memories in and of themselves; snap shots that are cataloged into the entity that we call our personal history.

There is a historical photographic process for capturing imagery to glass called wet plate collodion. The process can be used to apply a photosensitive emulsion to plates made of tin (tin types) or glass (ambrotypes).

Frederick Scott Archer is credited for bringing the wet plate collodion process to the photographic community in 1851.

This process involves coating a glass plate with a liquid mixture of a soluble iodide and collodion (cellulose nitrate). After the initial coating of the plate, it is immersed in a bath

Willie Osterman, I Am That, 2013

of silver nitrate to sensitize the collodion, prior to being exposed through a camera.

After exposure, the plate is developed by pouring a solution of several chemicals over it, and then fixed with a solution of sodium thiosulfate or potassium cyanide.

It is important that the plates are developed wet, since the drying of the collodion solution prevents the developer and fixer from completing their reactions.

Traditionally, ambrotypes were used to collect portraits, as well as images of landscape and architecture. While there is currently a revival of using this process in the historical context, there are several contemporary artists using it conceptually.

Sally Mann, one of America’s most renowned photographers, began using the collodion process in her work during the 1990s and continues to do so today. She has been a recipient of numerous awards, including the NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim

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Foundation grants. Mann is most famous for her controversial Immediate Family series, which is a collection of images of her children growing up around her southern country home, sometimes in various states of nudity. The photos are imbued with a southern mystic realism that is emphasized by the intense contrast and detail achieved through the alchemical photographic process. Mann also creates ambrotypes, which are often a series of ghostly-looking portraits. She says of the process, “The ambrotype in particular has this fabulous, three dimensional textural quality to it.”

Willie Osterman, a professor in the photography program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, uses the collodion process as a metaphor and a capsule of the personal details of his life. In the series ChemoToxic, he finds parallels between the toxic photochemical process of wet plate collodion and his wife Michele’s

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Catherine Hellsten, Alice, 2015

chemotherapy treatment. In the piece I Am That, Osterman creates a sculptural assemblage of collodion images of the body that speak to the idea of the impermanence of the self. He uses the transparency of glass and the translucency of the images, to create plates that appear similar to holograms, X-rays, and other diagnostic images. When considering the fragility of the human condition, glass as a material adds an additional dimension to the content of Osterman’s work.

Catherine Hellsten, a recent MFA graduate of the Imaging Arts program at the Rochester Institute for Technology (and, in full disclosure, my partner), utilizes the collodion process within her glass sculptures. She begins by collecting vivid memories of those around her. She then selects photographs from her digital archive to re-create key ideas or themes from these memories or stories. By using this imagery, she becomes a visual storyteller. She says of the work: “Vivid memories are the foundation of life-stories. The importance of the memory does not lie in the accuracy to the past GASNEWS

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event, but the personal interpretation of it. Storytelling allows us to fill these voids to create a whole, cohesive memory. So, rather than being recovered, our memories are recreated and in this recreation we become the authors of our own personal mythologies.”

Hellsten’s collected imagery is applied to glass plates through the collodion process, then the plates are laminated and cold-worked. The result is a threedimensional visual narrative, based on the perception of events from the personal mythology of other individuals. The illusory nature of glass as a transparent material supports the idea of memory; the images are crisp and highly detailed, but contain areas of transparency that speak to the ethereal quality of memory.

While there are many options for applying imagery to glass these days, there are few, if any that will yield the same crisp, photographic detail of the wet plate collodion process.

Jon Rees is an artist-educator living and teaching in Salisbury, Maryland.

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REVIEW: LARRY BELL AT WHITE CUBE IN MASON'S YARD

by Erin Dickson This autumn in London, booming blockbuster exhibitions opened amidst a torrent of media attention. Ai Weiwei’s retrospective at the Royal Academy, described as ‘momentous and moving’1, promises to be one of the most attended shows of 2015, rivalling Banksy’s controversial bemusement park, Dismaland. For those that are looking for a more pensive type of work, a short walk from the Royal Academy hid an altogether quieter, though equally art history book-worthy, experience.

Larry Bell’s solo show, 2D-3D: Glass and Vapor at White Cube in Mason’s Yard, was also momentous, albeit through relative subtlety and immateriality.

Larry Bell’s exhibition was comprised of three early glass installations: Gone but not Forgotten (1969), Corner Lamp SB 8 (1981) and 6 x 8: An Improvisation (1994), as well as collages on paper and a new series of ‘kinetic Light Knot sculptures’.2

Larry Bell, 2D-3D Glass Vapor White Cube, Masons Yard, London, 2015

In Bell’s fourth solo show represented

by White Cube, the Mason’s Yard venue provided a more intimate space, which is echoed in the exhibition’s curation. In its previous iteration at the larger Bermondsey Gallery, Bell’s Light Knots hung free from the ceiling, rotating with air currents. In Mason’s Yard, the coated Mylar forms float within tapered transparent cases. The use of the glass cube language is a well-worn Bell trope, but here he shifts to a vitrine that is used as a means of containment. The not-quite-square enclosure changes the viewer’s perception of the work. Instead of the Knots slowly revealing themselves and reflecting their surroundings, the viewer controls how they are experienced as they move through the gallery.

The phenomenology of space is an important aspect of Bell’s artistic practice.

Identified with the California Light and Space Movement, Bell’s contemporaries include Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and Mary Corse. They were deeply influenced by the West Coast landscape

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and emerging manufacturing and material technologies of the 1960s and 70s. The group was described as ‘fetish finish’ artists by the New York art scene; a knock meant to imply that they were superficial because of their apparent obsession with slick surfaces and highly-polished craftsmanship.3 Despite this, artists from the Light and Space Movement are now some of the most influential artists in the world today, with an impact on design, architecture, and popular culture. An exemplification of this is the adaptations of James Turrell’s light installations as inspiration for the backdrop to Drake’s Hotline Bling music video (Turrell denies any involvement with the video). Though some might call Turrell’s work transcendent, I might characterize them as unrestrained, Vegas-style artworks to which Bell’s manipulation of light, space, and surface can be considered understated by comparison. This is most obvious when experiencing Bell’s large-scale glass sculptures, in which he has mastered a coating technique to a level of precision

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Larry Bell, 2D-3D Glass Vapor White Cube, Masons Yard, London, 2015

that the artworks appear to dissolve into their architectural surroundings.

Part of the improvisational series of standing walls, 6 x 8: An Improvisation was installed in the centre of the darker basement space of White Cube.

Constructed using eight 96” x 72” glass panels coated with inconel (nicholchrome), Bell “…wanted to do something that incorporated the peripheral vision that ‘daydreamers’ have a propensity for.”4 What is striking about this work is a material and formal elusiveness that adds to viewer fascination, an aspect that is lost with the newer works. 6 x 8 draws the gaze and the body, allowing one to walk within its walls and circle its periphery. Here, Larry Bell works with the inherent properties of glass with a sensitivity that is missing from many glass artworks today. As clichéd as it may seem, he allows the material and the applied optical films to speak for themselves. Because of this, the series is as contemporary and enigmatic as when it was first conceived almost fifty years

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ago. One cannot view a Larry Bell Standing Wall without feeling as though they have been part of an enforced introspective experience. Bell does not need hype. His work embodies something much more meaningful.

Dr. Erin Dickson is an artist, researcher and FabLab technician based in Sunderland, UK. 1. Searle, A. (2015) Ai Weiwei review – Momentous and Moving. [online] Available at: http:// www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/ sep/14/ai-weiwei-royal-academy-review- momentous-and-moving [Accessed 01 November 2015] 2. White Cube (2015) Larry Bell, 2D-3D: Glass & Vapor. [online] Avaliable at: http://whitecube.com/ exhibitions/larry_bell_masons_yard_2015/ [Accessed 01 November 2015] 3. Davies, H. (2012) Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface. University of California Press, California. [p.10] 4. Frank, P. (1997) Larry Bell: Understanding the Percept, Zones of Experience: The Art of Larry Bell.

The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque [pp.30-31]

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ARTIST COLLECTOR: JOHN DRURY, ARTIST AND FOUNDER OF CUD, ON HIS COLLECTION OF SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTS Interview by Kim Harty When did you start collecting art?

I began collecting with earnest, the art of the self-taught creator while still in college, during the early 1980s. I was living in Columbus, Ohio and attended the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD), where I received my BFA in 1983 and discovered the material glass as an artist-friendly media. I also attended Ohio State University, where I completed my sculpture MFA in 1985, with an emphasis in glass and a minor in painting, under program head, Richard Harned.

It was a particularly fertile time in the capitol city for self-taught artists.

Painter William Hawkins (1895-1990; whose paintings and drawings remain a favorite), Elijah Pierce (1892-1984), and my buddy Russell “Smoky” Brown, were all yet alive and participating in the very modest gallery scene. These gentlemen were the city’s artist elite, though without formal education. The works of Pierce and Hawkins, of course, have now been championed and exhibited internationally; each is blue chip. I attended Hawkins’s first exhibition at the Ohio Gallery, one of the very first galleries in America to recognize, support, and exhibit this sort of work. The gallery is now long gone. Elijah Pierce had a barbershop, just a few blocks from CCAD.

How does your art collection inform your practice?

I work in a similar manner to the grassroots artist – intuitively, from personal experience, and from the heart of common and repurposed materials. When the world is your pallet, you are free. I hadn’t particularly felt a kinship with my fellow students or creative peers, most following a sort of Modernist (or Post-Modernist) trope. I had always made things of recycled material and these older artists were the magic makers I was drawn to. I share with them the feverish need to combine objects

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John Drury (1994) Kintsugi series commercially enameled glass and rubber.

and material in an effort to understand and make sense of the often perplexing world around us; one-plus-one equaling three, when all goes well. There is undoubtedly an affinity to the work I have made with Robbie Miller now for twenty-seven years, as CUD. CUD’s work was often created from beer, wine, and liquor bottles. Our first effort, the Recession Series, was fired enamel paintings on one-gallon wine jugs, scrounged from the Pilchuck Glass School dump.

Do you have a relationship with the artists you collect?

I do. During the 1990s I visited most of the artists whose work I collect at least once.

Many of them were from the American South and I would fly into Atlanta, rent a car and make a multi-state loop though Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, knocking on screen doors with my then GASNEWS

girlfriend – now wife, Joyce. Many of the artists were environment builders (had yard shows) and my interest was in documenting their unique efforts and selves. I have accumulated many hundreds of photographs from these ventures.

Perhaps one day I will put together a book. At this point, most of the artists I documented have passed.

My friend, the painter Bertha Halozan (1917-2004), was an immigrant from Austria, then living in a single room occupancy (SRO) and had no family in the US. I would visit her every year at Christmas time. My visits with Bertha continued for more than a decade until her death. We each lived in NYC and I needed to know that she had friendship and a few extra dollars in her pocket during what can be a very lonely time of year for the elderly. At just over five feet tall, Bertha was tough though

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the material to compose his messages of belief, both personal and political.

GLASS Quarterly #70 (Spring 1998) includes a feature article that I wrote on Paul’s practice. As a fellow sculptor, I enjoy the creations of Z. B. Armstrong (1911-1993) who would position his objects in space by labeling top, bottom, front, back, and sides.

Smoky Brown lost an eye in a bar-fight, the result of an earlier lifestyle fueled by drugs and alcohol. I own a work composed of small liquor bottles that sat atop the artist’s kitchen cabinet – each adorned with a single letter culled of Christmas signage – in combination, spelling P-O-I-S-O-N; its value to the artist is personal and poignant.

Where do you acquire pieces?

Paul Darmofall (1925-2003), glass and mixed media on wood, 21 x 11.5 x 1.5 in.

– a fireball. She would leave her room on 55th Street and wheel a cart of her works to Broadway every day, set them up and display them for the world to see.

What are a couple of your favorite pieces?

There are so many! The diversity amongst these artists is astounding and I am drawn to different works, at different times – for different reasons. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for my Ohio artists, and I really enjoy a painted, wig-topped papiermâché bust of William Hawkins that I have, made by fellow Buckeye, Grandpa Smoky Brown (1919-2005). Paul Darmofall’s (1925-2003), the Baltimore Glassman, is a favorite for obvious reasons – his use of glass. He is my favorite artist employing GASNEWS

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Most of what I have accumulated over thirty years, I have purchased from the artists themselves. These are artists who have rarely set foot in a gallery or museum – sometimes not referring to their work as art at all! Most (not all) are AfricanAmerican and were active during times of great inequality and division in this country.

Many of these artists came to light after the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement.

Their work has increasingly gained recognition after the 1980 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art titled, Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980. This exhibition introduced me to Pierce, Sister Gertrude Morgan, the great Bill Traylor, Nellie Mae Rowe, Sam Doyle, David Butler and James “Son” Thomas, to name a few. And while “outsider” is an unfortunate term, for more than 20 years now in NYC, we have supported this genre with the annual Outsider Art Fair, which seems to grow in popularity each year.

individuals to first acknowledge, support, and preserve this work early on. To act as protector and steward to this body of work, while increasingly popular as a genre, still largely marginalized – is a gift. Many have heard me say that I believe that we are all, each and every one of us, capable of making art; some have simply made a practice of it – I’m one. I tell students that we all sign our names differently; all are legitimate. I believe the same is true of art.

Shit or gold, all materials are conducive to human expression and while it can be difficult to preserve works made of a diverse and often unstable pallet of materials, until we include the forgotten, the ignored, and the simply avoided, we are left an incomplete picture of ourselves as creators.

Kim Harty is an assistant professor of glass at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI.

How does it feel to be a collector?

It feels good. I believe in it and particularly suggest the practice to my contemporaries – the artists! Too often the artists are the VOLUME 26, ISSUE 4

John Drury (1991), Santa's Bright Idea, painted ceramic.

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RE COLLECTING: ERICA ROSENFELD’S ARTWORK & PRACTICE

by Suzanne Peck “The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

Love in the Time of Cholera “Granted that disorder spoils pattern; it also provides the materials of pattern.

Order implies restriction; from all possible materials, a limited selection has been made and from all possible relations a limited set has been used. So disorder by implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realized in it, but its potential for patterning is infinite. This is why, though we seek to create order, we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognize that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolizes both power and danger.” ― Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger

Erica Rosenfeld and I have orbited each other for over a decade and in the past year or so our worlds have converged enough for me to get to know her and her practice in some depth. I’m pleased to write about her work and our discussion of her life and practice (often one and the same) that were shared over glasses of wine in her home/studio in Brooklyn, NY. Erica Rosenfeld is a maker. This is evident in her sculpture and jewelry, and becomes apparent when visiting her home. Each object, every item hung on a wall, the way the cheese is arranged on the tray, the arrangement of the furniture – each feels simultaneously natural and considered. This place is her home, her studio, a salon for conversation, and a respite from the hectic Brooklyn scene. It is here where the majority of her practice takes place. Rosenfeld’s work can be seen in three categories – jewelry,

Labor and Material Rosenfeld started working with glass in the late ‘90s. She enrolled in classes at UrbanGlass, as it was close to where she was living at the time and the material piqued her interest. She wanted to use glass in her jewelry. It was here where her practice began to take shape, not just visually and materially, but socially. “Up to then I had never had an artist community and didn’t know what that felt like.”

In 2007, after years of working in the NYC glass bubble, Rosenfeld was invited to participate in a WheatonArts Fellowship.

“It changed the entire course of my life.

It took me three years of applying to get in.

I think I really got it at the right time.” It was during her time at Wheaton that she met the group that was to form Burnt Asphalt Family, who propelled a portion of her practice into a performative, interactive direction. Wheaton was also the first time Rosenfeld found the support, time, and equipment to experiment with materials.

“The burnt lemons started because I had a lot of free kilns. I never thought of them

Erica Rosenfeld, Like Remembering a Dream the Day After.

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performance, and sculpture – and each is research and antidote for the others.

Jewelry is where her maker’s hands and designer’s eyes cut their teeth. She has been making fabulously wearable jewelry, arduously ground and shaped, out of glass and other found media for over a decade. These pieces are handcrafted and kinetic, and her earrings and necklaces play with color and asymmetry in a smart and delicate way. There is a performative element to her practice. Rosenfeld is a founding member of the Burnt Asphalt Family, a glass performance group formed out of the fires of WheatonArts in 2007.

Rosenfeld’s sculpture practice is a bridge between these two other elements of her work and locates itself at the very crux of Rosenfeld’s interests; weaving material into metaphor and relying on multiples as well as immersive environment.

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as showable. I just started collecting. The obsessive nature to try something and then to do it over and over and over and amass this tonnage of materials – it’s a way of mastering the ‘look’ I wanted to get.” These self-imposed standards are what creates her work’s signature look.

There is no escaping the deep relationship between labor and materials in Rosenfeld’s work, all of which requires many hands-on hours. The material is either going to talk to its maker or she is going to impose something upon it. Or both. Her method of making, as it has evolved over the last decade, is a pre-modern recipe for studio practice. Rosenfeld is not tethered to the art school model of making that engrains the pace of research-produce, research-produce and she doesn’t have an anxiety to contextualize before making.

Instead, there is a trust of intuition and the ability to labor until the work feels ‘right’.

She might have a twinge of inspiration, and then she chases it down and learns from the chase. She is willing to make, labor, and test. She is also able to stop, step back, and witness the revelation of meaning.

“Making it the way I do is very therapeutic, so it wouldn’t be the same thing to get it in a two-hour blow slot and some coldworking. Instead I work for probably 100 hours or more.

It wouldn’t be the same without that ritual. I need that. I need to fit things together. It’s a circular thing. I no longer have to translate my intuitions. All these materials around me, I’m unconsciously extracting things and thinking, staring at something for two hours in my living room and realizing it has to go into this piece. That’s why I think it’s important to surround myself by these things.”

The Shrine Room Alongside making, Rosenfeld’s practice has another driving force, one just as strong. Rosenfeld is a preservationist, fascinated and invigorated by the idea of memory and story told through object and installation. This quality is no more apparent than in her shrine room. This

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Erica Rosenfeld, Alabaster Cloud

space, a small sunroom at the back of her home, is part studio, part ongoing artwork, part scrapbook, part voodoo temple.

This room is special. She has permitted something that not a lot of people allow themselves: a space dedicated to stuff, hoarding in the most beautiful way.

This is no clean, slick space – every surface is crawling with objects. It is not a perfectly arranged, modernist-informed, well-planned tableau. This room is the antithesis of that desire altogether, a selfcurated amygdala with neural pathways made of eggshells and chewing gum wrappers. Fish bones and swizzle sticks.

Fairy lights threaded between matchbooks and around bell jars. Inside the glass, a can of Spam adorned by a tiny pink plastic sheep. A city of saltshakers. Cocktail umbrellas floating between sketches on coasters and strings of beads. Rosenfeld’s objects are preserved memories and the walls of her shire are the scaffolding of nostalgia.

The shrine room is a constellation of the artist’s life. Every shift of your gaze spins a slightly different thread of a story – when you focus on an individual thing, the memory accordions out.

Preserved and Perceived Memory Some of the collected objects in the shrine room end up in Rosenfeld’s work, but most act as inspiration for texture, material, or concept for her sculpture.

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“I’m always trying to preserve perceived memory in some way. Something I’m thinking about a lot in my work is a remnant of these memories.

This is a good way to think about the dreamscape. Everything I make now is basically a dream remnant, building towards this next iteration of Like Remembering a Dream the Day After.”

This ongoing work, Like Remembering a Dream the Day After, is a large-scale installation that explores the morphing of a dream. Two iterations have been shown thus far, first at the Laurie Siegel Gallery in Norfolk, VA, then at Heller Gallery in New York, NY. She is currently neck-deep in research for the third.

Rosenfeld is interested in the idea that – awake or asleep – memory is distorted, and she believes this distortion – conscious or subconscious – is the crux of problems, rifts, and chasms between people. Dreams are the perfect vehicle to explore the distortion of memory, as they are representations of snippets of memories and ideas that ‘float up’ unattached to history or reality. Dreams are the memories that we don’t consciously choose.

Each time this work gets installed, it grows into a different glimpse of the dream. In its first incarnation, a large black cloud made of small lenses is mounted to the wall. The cloud rains hundreds of vintage paper rabbits, swarming over the gallery. The bunnies fade into piles of burnt

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lemons spilling out on the ground. There is impossibly green moss that reveals even more impossibly fractured, yet whole, eggshells. When the dreamscape grew into in its second life at Heller Gallery, there was more of everything, and it was multiplying.

There were the burnt lemons steaming the rabbits and turning into pink lemons.

Everything was morphing, exposing another glimpse of this dream, but it was darker, stranger, and more sinister.

Rosenfeld’s interest in her materials is egoless. Eggshells are just as good as glass, a plastic ring is as appropriate as a diamond. Her magnetism to an object is about something more personal than its prescribed value. There is a flattening of value down to the core of the experience.

Because this work’s logic is algorithmic instead of additive, Rosenfeld’s metaphors are confused in the best possible way.

This can be disconcerting, in the best possible way, as it allows for numerous opportunities for entry. This intelligent exploration of metaphor, this provision of many ways to enter the work visually and conceptually is due, in part, to Rosenfeld’s use of multiples. I think about the shrine room, the small collections that turn in to the many, the horde and how this amassing of objects clearly affects (or is a reflection of) Erica Rosenfeld’s sculpture practice.

For example, the clouds, which are made of billions of parts (which isn’t true, but feels correct): how different would they be if made from a single surface? I can imagine

it. This smooth, unbroken glassy cloud – it is lovely. But all the power has gone out of it. It is in the collected, cared-for, and built up many where the virtuosity of the object emerges.

In the next incarnation of Like Remembering a Dream the Day After, Rosenfeld will explore the next phase of the dream. It will be a forest.

“There will be a lot more gold. A lot more rubies. A lot less death, a lot more growth. A morphing from dream to myth. The forest will explore ideas regarding what grows from decay.

Moving through the natural progression when considering memory and dream – the personal through into something universal, mythological.”

Though the installations are particular to Rosenfeld’s vivid personal dreamscape, the work feels like an expression of the collective female unconscious. Rosenfeld’s work is subversive in its confident embrace of her hoarder aesthetic, and the amassing of objects as a source of power. In her intensely crafted, collected, and curated installations, craft labor can be seen as a corollary to a conundrum about women’s work: if you have time, what do you do with that time? In Rosenfeld’s case – you make something fearless.

The International Magazine of Studio Glass

Suzanne Peck is an artist writer and educator who splits her time between the United States and Australia.

Erica Rosenfeld, Reclaimed Chicken and Quail Egg Remnants

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GLASHAUS

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German/ English, 4 issues p.a. 42 Euros Dr. Wolfgang Schmölders Glashaus-Verlag, Stadtgarten 4 D-47798 Krefeld (Germany) Email: glashaus-verlag @ t-online.de Web: http://studioglas.jimdo.com

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OP-ED: ART COLLECTORS: A FIELD GUIDE

by Grace Meils The Decorator:

Having spent several years working in their natural habitats, I’ve had the opportunity to carefully observe the behavior of a fascinating and elusive creature – the Art Collector. This field guide provides a basic overview of each species within the Art Collector genus, and what to expect if you encounter them at your next opening.

Decorator Collectors buy work that will look good in their home. They often get a bad rap, but they choose to decorate with original artwork – which keeps us all in business. However, the Decorator Collector has been known to take things a little too far, asking for a piece to be remade in a different color or in a different size to fit their space. You can always say “no.”

The Childhood Coin Collector: Childhood Coin Collectors tend to purchase one piece by each major artist in their area of focus, check them off the list, and move on to the next one. Rather than circling back to purchase another more recent piece by an artist whose work they already own, they will focus on acquiring work by more obscure or emerging artists – or move on to collecting another artistic medium or style.

The Compulsive Shopper: Compulsive Shopper Collectors can be counted on to purchase something from just about every show at their favorite galleries, regardless of how it fits with their current collection – or even if it fits in their house.

One famous glass collector is rumored to buy works and then put them directly in storage, never even opening the box. Others have artwork crammed into every available space in their house – one might find sculptures nestled between each cushion of each piece of furniture in a Compulsive Shopper Collector’s living room.

The Artist Friend: Whether it is because glassmaking is such a fascinating process or because so many glass artists are quite personable, Artist Friend Collectors seem to be more common in glass than in other mediums.

Artist Friend Collectors will show up at their favorite artists’ openings – no matter where in the country it might be. These collectors are extremely supportive and are often artists’ greatest fans. One particular area of caution with these types of collectors: when

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The Self-Expression Collector:

they do decide to make a purchase, they often want to deal directly with the artist.

It can be tricky to negotiate with a friend and even trickier to explain the situation to your gallery, so proceed with care.

The Self-Expression Collector amasses a collection to reflect their personal aesthetic.

Their collections are their own personal artworks, and it is often fascinating to visit their homes to see what they have created.

If you agree to do a commission for a Self-Expression Collector, you may want to define clear boundaries before starting the project. Self-Expression Collectors are often very creative people themselves and tend to see commissions as collaborations.

The Niche Collector:

The Reseller:

Niche Collectors pick a central theme and collect around that, which often results in interesting groups of objects.

Some collect all figurative work, some all narrative, some abstract. Some collect works in small scale, or works all in one color. Some collect one type of object by a variety of artists. I’ve seen an incredible collection of goblets made by every contemporary glass artist you can think of – even those who don’t typically make goblets.

The Reseller Collector has been around forever in other areas of the art world, but they have been relatively rare in the contemporary glass arena. As more contemporary glass enters the secondary market, we will begin to see them more often. The Reseller Collector can often be heard talking about “doing a deal.” They mostly buy at auction and you are unlikely to hear much from them, unless something breaks.

Illustration by Alex Rosenberg

The Patron: Everyone loves the Patron Collector.

A combination of the Niche Collector, the Friend Collector, and the Compulsive Shopper Collector; Patron Collectors often collect just a few artists’ work – in depth.

Patron Collectors buy something, sometimes several pieces, from just about every show, making it possible for an artist to more confidently explore new ideas or even support themselves during times of transition.

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Note: Some Art Collectors display characteristics of more than one species, and rarely, you’ll find an independent Lone Wolf Collector, so it is best to stay alert and observe carefully before deciding on an official classification.

Grace Meils is the membership manager at Indianapolis Museum of Art and writes for the blog Glasstown, USA.

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DISCOVERING THE COLLECTOR

by Regan Brumagen

John Northwood. Drawing for Portland Vase. About 1870. Rakow Library 89966 Leonard and Juliette Rakow collection.

For a library that collects comprehensively on a single subject, finding all of the nooks and crannies into which information on that subject falls is much like trying to eliminate dust from your home – a neverending and never fully successful quest.

When the subject is as broad as glass (Windows? Jewelry? Sculpture? Lighting?

Marbles? Fiber optics? Coffee pots?

Mosaics? Paintings?), then the task is positively Sisyphean. In order to discover and preserve as much information about glass as possible, the Rakow Research Library relies on a number of sources, one of which is…“The Collector.”

Collectors, in their passion for a subject, will often amass documentation about the objects or artists they focus on: clippings of exhibition reviews, gallery opening notices, interviews, photographs, ads, letters, and other ephemeral material.

A passionate and determined collector can devote an intensity to the search that isn’t possible when your collecting scope is as broad as “glass.”

Consider the library’s namesakes, Juliette and Leonard Rakow, who collected cameo glass, Chinese snuff bottles, and Wedgwood, among other things. The Rakows developed a library to document their collections and that research is now part of our library collection. An 1891

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photograph from the Rakows’ archive shows the renowned cameo makers, the Woodall team, posing with The Great Tazza, a piece encased in five separate layers of colored glass and carved over a period of three years. Many times, the craftsmen responsible for working on a piece such as this are unknown, but in this case we have a photograph from a family scrapbook identifying the carvers who helped create The Great Tazza. Also in the couples’ archive is a rare sketch for a cameo design by George Woodall, who, according to his daughter from whom the Rakows acquired the scrapbook and the drawing, almost always drew his designs directly on the glass.

We have archives from collectors on marbles, glass company ephemera, American brilliant cut glass, as well as the research of collectors who focus on contemporary glass, like Ben and Natalie Heineman, Leatrice Minzter, Raymond L. Suppes, and many others. Since collectors tend to document as much as possible about their objects, you can even find the name of the carpet cleaning company that broke a Toots Zynsky sculpture owned by the Heinemans. Sorry, I’m not telling.

In addition to individual collectors’ archives, we have institutional archives from collecting groups like The American GASNEWS

Cut Glass Association (ACGA) and the National American Glass Club (NAGC).

These groups, made up of many passionate collectors, send us their publications, conference documents, correspondence, and other materials they produce for their members.

Collectors’ clubs also usually publish magazines and newsletters focused on their particular collecting interests: The Hobstar covers cut glass, Glass Shards features American glass, The Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass Newsletter focuses on studio glass, and there are hundreds of others.

The Rakow Library acquires publications from all kinds of glass collectors, whose interests range from beer steins to bells to baby bottles. Sharing shelf space with The Dump Diggers Digest (bottle collectors) is Keeping Abreast (nursing bottle collectors), Through the Leers (Riverside Glass Collectors Society), Food for Tot: Newsletter of the History of Infant Feeding Association, Salty Comments (open salts), and even a newsletter for snow globe collectors called Snow Biz. Most of these publications are listed in the Rakow Library’s Article Index, where you can search by keyword, author, name, etc.

European glass collector, Rudolf Strasser once described glass collectors

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lamps section has some unique fairy lamps not attributed to specific companies and/ or catalogs yet.”

Regan Brumagen is reference and visitor services librarian at the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass and a regular contributor to the Behind the Glass blog.

The Woodall team working on The Great Tazza, 1891. Back: Tom Farmer, Harry Davies, J.T. Fereday, Tom Woodall; Front: William Hill, George Woodall. Originally from an album owned by Alice Woodall, daughter of George Woodall, who first assembled the photographs. Rakow Library 97796. Leonard and Juliette Rakow collection.

as “a strange lot… a close-knit group of conspirators, jealous of each other, yet friends because of the deep understanding of the excitement and tribulations which go hand in hand with collecting.” Collectors, Strasser said, are “amateur research specialists” whose investigations add greatly to the scholarship in the field. Our

library is fortunate to have an archive of Strasser’s research, notes, letters, articles, books and more. These archival materials are invaluable to the study of glass and, like much ephemera, typically items no one else keeps…except for the passionate and curious collector, the Rakow Library and (possibly) someone’s grandmother.

Rakow Staff Favorites: Collector Ephemera

George Woodall, Engraver, Cleopatra. Thomas Webb and Sons, Manufacturer, 1896. CMG 81.2.27.

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Leonard S. Rakow.

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Peter Bambo-Kocze, Bibliographer. Fine Tuning: Violin Bottle Collectors Association Newsletter. “The appeal…well, I spend most of my free time holding (and on a good day playing) the guitar, an instrument very similar in shape to a violin bottle.

Also, it’s fascinating to see the variety of objects that can be made out of glass.”

Gail Bardhan, Research Librarian.

“I love the titles either based on glass terms or puns: A Shot of News (Shot Glass Club of America), Stained Finger (Society of Inkwell Collectors), Whimsical Notions (Whimsy collectors), and The Cutting Edge (Glass Knife Enthusiasts).”

Emily Davis, Cataloging Specialist.

The Fairy Lamp Club Newsletter. “I’m not a collector of them (yet) but fairy lamps are dainty and pretty, and the undocumented VOLUME 26, ISSUE 4

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STUDENT PROFILE: KIT PAULSON

by Amanda Wilcox Kit Paulson’s work emphasizes the alluring dichotomies between the “highly decorative and downright bizarre.” In her work, intricately flameworked natural forms gain momentum as they multiply. Her fascination with detail and the productivity of the human hand is evident, and her devotion to technique is undeniable in both her sculptural and installation pieces.

When asked to speak about the use of multiples in the formation of her works she remarks, “Craft itself is all about always making the next one better than the last one and having a repeatable set of steps to achieve an end. Working that way necessarily generates a lot of multiples.”

Creating multiples allows Paulson to invite attention to minuscule objects that gather immensity as they accumulate.

Her mandala-like wall structures, environmental installations, and clusters within bell jars, or atop finely crafted

Kit Paulson, What Might Have Been Lost

platters, all reveal an investment in understanding the delicate aspects of nature. Glass flowers are most often used to address the intricacies of nature, while simultaneously imparting a “sense of time and antiquity” calling upon the Victorian aesthetic. Paulson remarks, “One reason is that flowers are so incredibly tiny and perfect and delicate. Just glancing at them, one gets the sense that they are tiny and perfect, and it’s possible to keep looking closer and closer at them and continue to see even more tiny, perfect components the closer one looks.” The fine details in her work often draw the viewer near, into a busy yet intimate space for contemplation.

She desires “to communicate [her] own fascination with the incredible detail of the natural world and with the incredible detail that can be produced by the human hand.”

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Paulson finds inspiration in the materiality of glass. The transparent, translucent, shiny, hard, and fragile characteristics have a vocabulary all on their own and speak to a historical dialogue about lenses, mirrors, vessels, and containers. The material of glass forms a rich foundation for her conceptual practice. Paulson’s “instantaneous reaction to the peculiarities of the substance” reflect her physical muscle memory and revere for craft, while also satisfying her intellectual appreciation of glass’s personality.

The piece, What Might Have Been Lost, is a result of her journey through chemotherapy after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system that compromises the body’s ability to fight infection. The piece exists as a time-lapse video that began with

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Kit Paulson, Lift Off

GAS RESOURCE LINKS

To access the Glass Art Society’s up-to-date resources, just click on the links below.

EXHIBITIONS

CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

an outline of small, flameworked flowers around the artist’s head and shoulders on her studio wall. Every couple of days or weeks, she would attach additional layers of glass. As each layer grew, a new photo was taken. After the chemotherapy came to an end, Paulson created a stop motion video from the entire six months of images.

The piece expresses tangible evidence of perseverance, creation, and the ability for artistic structure to heal.

Evolving from the same subject matter was Lift Off, a work made to signify a celebration of becoming healthy and being able to make objects again. Paulson says, “I wanted to make a piece that looked like it could fly.” Many aspects of the piece show her success in taking flight. Small birds with fully-expanded wings and clusters of flowers in a pale color palette seem to levitate upon a transparent and excellently crafted platter, allowing the eye to effortlessly graze the structure’s surface. A beautiful and joyous sense of life is represented in the spherical gathering, with every crevice and singular object now in unison.

Paulson repeats this flower motif in

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the alternative form of a skull in her piece titled, Time is Going to Take So Much Away (But There's a Way that You Can Offer Time a Trade).

Delicate opalescent white flowers with small pops of saturated color pull the viewer’s attention inward, deep into the empty eye sockets. Symbols of life and death give the work an intricate simplicity and continue the artist’s infatuation with decoration and the bizarre.

Paulson is currently an MFA candidate at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Art and Design, with a concentra-tion in glass. Associate professor and past GAS Board member, Jiyong Lee, has been leading the program at SIU since 2005. The Glass Art Society is also pleased to have Paulson serve as one of the 2015-16 Student Liaisons.

Amanda Wilcox received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in glass, expanded media and visual culture studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her work focuses on understanding the human experience through analyzation of memory, technology and history.

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JOB OPPORTUNITIES

FOR SALE

CALLS TO ARTISTS

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

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