Courtesy of the artist
John Publick seeks to provoke viewer interaction with "Cutting Through the Lies." The glass pair of scissors seems to be held by an invisible hand.
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Twenty-five artists who work with glass as a principal medium are participating in a major exhibit at VisArts in Rockville. Some of them — Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Syl Mathis, for example — may be familiar. During the past few years, their work has been seen in a fair number of glass art-focused exhibits in metro area galleries, particularly in Bethesda, with generally favorable critical response.
That said, one might wonder at the defensive tenor of much of the text surrounding the exhibit. Even its title, "Glass: Evolving" — as though we're still thinking of works in glass as somehow less important because of the medium's long association with craft — suggests they're only now "evolving" into fine art.
We need to suspend the polemics for a while, and simply assume that expressive and content-driven, or abstract and intentionally non-functional works like those now at VisArts fall into the art category regardless of their medium — be it glass, ceramic, concrete or bronze.
Filling all three gallery spaces, the artists are divided by their association with the Washington Glass School, a local entity at the vanguard of the glass-as-art movement, or with a larger group from outside the area represented by the similarly minded Habatat Galleries of Virginia. The regional exhibit shows metro area glass artists to be both distinctive and strong, displaying a high level of quality overall.
Two whimsical works of Robert Palusky greet visitors. He works in a combination of media including glass, as do many of the artists exhibiting here. "I'm having fun" and "The Whole Family Knows" are narrative works that involve human figures and animals shaped in ceramic and covered with glass reverse-painted mosaic tiles and other glass parts. These sculptures don't photograph well; they are far more compelling in person, with allusions to fantasy, ritual, travel and even ancient art forms, both Roman and Mexican.
In the same vein are two small heads by Louis Sclafani, sculpted in glass and textured with layers of copper skin that gives them both a pre-Columbian feel.
Among the best in the show are pieces by Elizabeth Ryland Mears and John Publick. Mears is one of the most interesting glass artists around at the moment. Her work here shows the variety of media that can successfully be combined with glass for extraordinary effect, as well as a range of expressive content. I loved her two glass books: "Accordion Book/Teacup Conversation" and "Standing Book: In a Breath." Both are made with flameworked and sandblasted glass, with photoscreened images and painting. The former is a delicate combination of sepia-toned glass pages connected by fused glass hinges that relate a Haiku-like story. The latter is a much larger affair, with black and white standing glass pages attached to a glass cylinder, wrapped in wax linen thread and topped with coral- or tree-like forms made of clear glass. Its story is darker in mood, and the images are black and white. Totally different in feeling, but with similar coral-like forms, is "Bundle of Clement Aspect," the somewhat mystifying title of a work exploding with brilliant color. The branch forms, and a glass leaf emerge from a pouch made of copper wire and waxed linen threads.
Publick's work is both simpler and more subtle, with a fascinating combination of industrial and natural elements and precisely formed glass. "Duality" is a good example: A clear glass cylinder contains a fused glass screw going its length, attached to a steel base on which it turns. A wooden branch has been shaped to wrap itself around the screw like a snake. "Cutting through the Lies" presents an old typewriter whose ribbon appears to be cut by a ghostly pair of glass scissors. The gravity-defying secret is that the ribbon has been reformed in steel. Unlike his "Redefined" with its scary juxtaposition of pincers to a glass rod, the ironic sense here is both darkly humorous and a touch whimsical.
Syl Mathis is showing two exquisite boat forms, both smaller than his usual ones, and a conical work "Temple of the Boat People" that contains a tiny stairway — all it needs to connote an archaeological ruin. Martin Kremer's "Agora" also has an archaeological sensibility, connoting some ancient place, like Stonehenge or Greece, in its fused glass architecture.
Among the abstract works, Martin Rosol's "Bird of Paradise" is bold, using optical ground glass that results in interesting visual effects. Jackie Braitman's piece feels like a model for something larger, but her work has real potential. And Lea Topping's glass "Shields" are both beautiful and ironic; a glass shield seems an essential contradiction pointing to the vulnerability and the strength of the medium.
