The Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington is the West Coast’s largest and most active museum glass studio. One of the recent MOG exhibitions was Counterparts: Glass + Art Elements which groups glass and non-glass artworks.
Eduardo Calderón writes:
“My photographs are reflections of the world around me. The images are captured during walks in the streets of populated areas in Peru (particularly Arequipa, my home town) and other countries in Latin America and Europe where I set temporary residence for weeks at a time to familiarize myself with the culture and the geography. My work is not meant to be judgmental of the things I see.”
April Surgent writes:
“Regarding the past, my work strives to challenge the 21st century’s move away from tradition by sustaining an age-old craft and integrating it with contemporary themes and technologies, the very act of engraving becoming a confrontation of our times. Using the photographed image as inspiration along with the antiquated technique of cameo-engraved glass, I make archival records of contemporary life. My engravings symbolize my collective experiences and observations and are one portrayal of what life looks like.”
Nancy Blair writes:
“My work stems from a lifelong interest in mythology and shamanic traditions. I am particularly fascinated by the voluptuous excesses that accumulate, clutter and distract, and at the same time can elevate the ordinary detritus of daily life into extraordinary objects that demand attention and reverence, transforming the psyche at deep healing levels.”
Rick Bartow writes:
“I work in an expressionistic manner using what I refer to as transformational images, which have evolved from work done in 1979, when I began drawing figures with masks either being removed or falling off the face. These images, I find, coincide with my having stopped drinking, obviously a cathartic period in my life.”
Cappy Thompson writes:
“For me, as a narrative painter, the issue has always been content. The issue wasn’t glass, the material that I chose some 37 years ago. Nor was it the painting technique—grisaille or gray-tonal painting—that I taught myself to use. My work—which spans several decades and a variety of scales from the intimate to the monumental—has always been driven by content.”
Kit Paulson writes:
“My recent body of work has been a eulogy for ornament, a testament to generations of human skill. Ornament calls upon the viewer to actively look and see, to get lost inn seas of foliage because it is impossible to take in the whole in one glance. I make objects that embody ornament, decoration and detail. Decoration is inherent to the structure of my work, it is built of ornament. I see handmade ornament as the visible accretion of human time. I want the viewer to float, lost in rolling waves of detail and time.”
Gail Tremblay writes:
“As I grew up, I always wanted to learn how things were made. Perhaps that is what lead me to making art and weaving and working with fibers. And then living in American culture with its images of Indians made me want to re-contextualize the things I saw and comment on what I was seeing, and I started to weave film and turn weaving into a conceptual art.
I use non-traditional materials to explore ways I can weave traditional Onondaga and Micmac basketry forms so that my work will comment on indigenous life in the 21st Century.”
William Ivey writes:
“Form comes easier to me than color. Once I begin to get the color right, the painting starts to fall into place, because color controls the space. I could go on nitpicking subtleties of color, or shifting an edge forever, but I know a painting is done when no piece of it can be taken out.”
Museum of Glass: Counterparts, part 1 (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Some glass artists (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Indices del Pacifico (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Studio glass (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Glass art for the home (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Human figures by Lalique (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: Visiting Artists (photo diary)
Museum of Glass: The Art of Being (photo diary)