ALBERT PALEY: GLASS + STEEL

Gesture, Movement, and Vitality….

Paley working at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

Artist Albert Paley investigates form, explores material characteristics and technical processes, and forges abstract masterpieces—all in service to the notion that art provides access to the intangible facets of the human condition such as emotion, intellect, memory, and aspiration. Paley manipulates material, form, color, and light to create an environment of heightened consciousness where our singular perspective encounters the universality of common experience, and where our imagination is unleashed on the yet-to-be-explored. His abstract assemblages are particularly agile at accessing raw emotion because the narratives are less prescribed; therefore, the discourse between artist and viewer broadens and the layers of meaning deepen.

Paley is most widely known for his forty-year career creating monumental outdoor metal sculptures, each one carefully designed to play off its environment and invite passersby into contemplation. While he is steadfast in his intention for his work—that it be “a sensual and intellectual dialogue”—he also believes that through research and experimentation he can push the limits of his medium, and through aesthetic flexibility he can continue to evolve as a visual artist. As he says: “We don’t have stasis in our minds so why should it exist in our artwork.”

When Paley was invited to do a summer residency collaboration with glass artist Dante Marioni at the Pilchuck Glass School in 1998, he eagerly brought his creative sensibilities and technical expertise in metalwork into an alliance with glass. Though he was aware of the Studio Glass movement and knew Harvey Littleton and Dale Chihuly, he had never engaged with the material. Steel is opaque, hard, and defined by silhouette, while glass is transparent, reflective, and characterized by light. But at Pilchuck, Paley discovered that different glass techniques such as blowing, forming, and casting have commonality with the forging, bending, and punching of iron and steel. More importantly, he recognized a symbiotic relationship between two inorganic materials that through heat and pressure both submit to manipulation and are transformed into expressions of gesture, movement, and vitality. Paley merges the two materials in graceful synergy—the weightiness of metal amplifying the lightness of glass, the fragility of glass highlighting the strength of metal, equivalent forms in different media fluidly intertwining. This complementing of opposites is a visual metaphor for the many dualities of the human condition that exist in dynamic harmony within us.

Crystal Progression, 2019, (detail)

Each sculpture by Albert Paley bears witness to the processes involved in its development; instead of concealing the signatures of the different machines and tools, Paley chases those effects. Like rings on a tree, this surface variation graphically expresses the physical qualities of the material and tells the story of how the piece is made. Paley will deliberately imprint tool lines in the metal and purposely not polish the pour lines off cast glass, going so far as to have special sessions with glass artists like Martin Blank and William Carlson to experiment with creating lines in glass that mimic the interesting marks of a particular metal press. When he was curious how far much metal could twist, he built his own machine for the task. His year-long 2014 residency at the Corning Museum of Glass afforded him the opportunity to work with specialized technicians, scientists, gaffers, and materials such a borosilicate glass that bonds with a metal alloy because they have the same rate of thermal expansion.

Beckoned Gesture, 2019, 33 x 19 x 14”

Paley has said, “there is a vocabulary of form for any given medium. The more technically proficient one becomes, the more they can explore.” He likens that exploration to a dance, in which there is a sense of the choreography but also a sense of letting go and moving unconsciously to the music. Paley uses his immense knowledge, both of the materials he uses and the art historical precedents he admires, as his guide to an open inquiry into the unknown, endeavoring to prevent his established notions and processes from becoming an impediment to seeing and doing new things. His ink on paper monoprints are reductive expressions of this search that allow him to probe formal elements outside his familiar materials. Rather than charting a definitive narrative, each work of art by Albert Paley provides a map to an encounter with our emotional selves. By his deft technical and aesthetic skills, we are quickly freed from our consciousness to wander the intricate twists and turns of each piece, discovering along the way a metaphor for the enigmas, experiences, and ecstasies of the human condition.

A “Walk Through” of the GLASS and STEEL exhibition installed at the Stockbridge Station Gallery, 2020

Albert Paley at work and speaking of his exhibition at the Museum of Glass…

CompContrast_AlbertPaley_MSTR_H264 from Derek Klein on Vimeo.

Available Works by Albert Paley

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About the Artist….

Albert Paley, photographed in 2013 by Creative Imaging

Albert Paley, an active artist for over 40 years at his studio in Rochester, New York, is the first metal sculptor to receive the coveted Institute Honors awarded by the American Institute of Architects, the AIA’s highest award to a nonarchitect. “The allure of Paley’s art comes through its intrinsic sense of integration of art and architecture,” as one noted architect stated. Paley, Distinguished Professor, holds an Endowed Chair at the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. Commissioned by both public institutions and private corporations, Paley has completed more than 50 site-specific works. Some notable examples are the Portal Gates for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Synergy, a ceremonial archway in Philadelphia, the Portal Gates for the New York State Senate Chambers in Albany, Sentinel, a monumental plaza sculpture for Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as a 65-foot sculpture for the entry court of Bausch and Lomb’s headquarters in Rochester, NY. Recently completed works include three sculptures for the National Harbor development near Washington DC, a 130’ long archway named Animals Always for the St. Louis Zoo, a gate for the Cleveland Botanical Gardens in Cleveland, OH, a sculptural relief for Wellington Place, Toronto, Canada, Threshold, a sculpture for the Corporate Headquarters of Klein Steel, Rochester, NY, and Transformation, a ceremonial entranceway for Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Pieces by Albert Paley can be found in the permanent collections of many major museums including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Broadly published and an international lecturer, Paley received both his BFA and MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He received honorary doctorates from: the University of Rochester in 1989; the State University of New York at Brockport in 1996; St. Lawrence University, in Canton, NY in 1997; and the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden in 2012. Paley is also a Distinguished Professor, holding the Charlotte Fredericks Mowris Professorship in Contemporary Crafts, School for American Crafts, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY

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CONTEMPORARIES | JOHN KILEY and DANTE MARIONI

To appreciate the relationship between John Kiley and Dante Marioni, Kiley suggests you get in the “way back machine” to when he was a high school student in Seattle and an apprentice chef with a knack for ceramics. He was saving money for a course on lost wax casting at Pilchuck Glass School (he wanted, but was too young, to enroll in glassblowing). When a guy came into his restaurant wearing a Pilchuck shirt, they struck up a conversation. It was Dante Marioni, an established glass artist and Pilchuck teacher who proposed Kiley join him a few days later at Benjamin Moore’s studio to talk glass. But the young and somewhat cavalier Kiley missed the meeting, only realizing later when he arrived at Pilchuck that Marioni was a big deal in glass. Kiley looked Marioni up in the phone book and gave him a call, during which Marioni graciously forgave the missed appointment and invited the kid to his studio.

Over the years, the two became colleagues and friends. Marioni recommended Kiley check out the Glass Eye Studio, where the young artist eventually landed his first job in glass. Later, Marioni hired Kiley to his team. Kiley clearly respects Marioni, who was surrounded by glass from a young age (his father is American Studio glass pioneer Paul Marioni), honed classic glassblowing techniques working with Maestro Lino Tagliapietra, then firmly established his own style of elegantly blown diaphanous forms patterned with impeccable reticello cane work. Eventually, Kiley ventured out on his own to pursue his personal style, characterized by a signature technique in which separate hand-blown geometric forms are joined, then cut, polished, and poised in precarious balance; the resulting configurations offer myriad passageways for light and for the interplay of color.

Kiley reminded Marioni that he wanted to work with some of his little “seeds” (kernels of concentrated and painstakingly designed patterns that he blows and stretches in his larger forms), thinking it would be interesting to experiment with a design element as the membranes of his joined pieces. For Kiley’s 2015 Museum of Glass residency, Marioni finally gave him one of these “seeds” to make a piece for auction, though Marioni did not participate in making the work. When Kiley made further requests for more patterns, Marioni—a consummate teacher driven by sharing the craft—encouraged him to learn how to make them for himself. But Kiley is a minimalist by nature, so while Marioni has a passion for perfecting patterns, Kiley chose to focus his glass practice on exploring the essence of the objects. A fortuitous intersection of circumstances finally brought Marioni’s meticulously arranged patterns and Kiley’s joined geometric forms together. In 2017, Kiley’s main projects involved optical glass and a body of work called Fractographs, neither of which could be demonstrated at his forthcoming Museum of Glass residency as they did not involve blowing glass. He figured he would hearken back to “classic Kiley” forms for the week-long stint in the museum’s hot shop. Marioni had shut down his furnace for his annual summer hiatus so he relented when, two days before the residency began, Kiley stopped by his studio and suggested he come along and bring some of his “seeds”. From that residency, and their subsequent sessions together, came an extraordinary amalgam of two minds in joyous equilibrium.

Basket Halo, 2020, 15.5 x 15 x 7"

Each artist is fussy about different things—Kiley rejects work with the smallest bubble (which Marioni finds imperceptible), while Marioni rejects the slightest wrinkle in the reticello (which Kiley sees as beautiful). As the collaboration progressed beyond the Museum of Glass residency, the two worked more deliberately. Whereas in the beginning Marioni would choose the patterns and Kiley would blow, fuse, and cut the pieces, now they collectively and purposely select patterns together and discuss how to cut a piece when it was still a sculptural blank waiting to be formed.

Though Kiley’s glassblowing demands discipline and technical prowess, and each piece of Marioni’s cane represents decades of practice and hours of labor, the physical act of combining Kiley’s two spheres with Marioni’s reticello core occurs in mere seconds. Success is rarely guaranteed. Kiley and Marioni have attempted many pieces that simply did not work, though they have used these failures as lessons and appreciate that accidents can often lead to intention.

When these two distinct aesthetic points of view coalesce—when Marioni’s fine patterning endows the central membrane where Kiley’s colored objects fuse together—a stunning harmony is achieved.

Amber Wave, 2020, detail.

The head of a glassblowing studio is its creative visionary and technical director but being a successful hot-glass artist does not happen in isolation. To actualize an elaborate work of glass art, a group of incredibly talented individuals work together in very close quarters. The master conducts a choreographed whirlwind of intensity, heat, and drama, and with the right assembly of personalities the process can be a lot of fun. Sometimes two artists come together in this dance of effort and joy, not as leader and assistant but as true partners. Though there was a time years ago when Marioni was the boss and Kiley the apprentice, the current collaboration between them is genuinely synergistic—two friends coming together to have a good time in the hot shop, each of whom bring to the experience distinct aesthetics and aptitude. The singular and exceptional results of the venture are a testament to the spirit of skill, spontaneity, experimentation, and friendship that began “way back” and continues to this day.

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View the works at the gallery.

Amber Wave, 2020

14.5 x 13 x 11”

Basket Halo, 2020

15.5 x 15 x 7”

Cerulean Tunnel, 2020

14 x 16 x 14”

Cresting Reticello, 2020

14.5 x 14.5 x 11.5”

Current, 2020

14 x 14 x 5”

Kinetic Reticello Wave, 2021

15.5 x 14.5 x 7”

Reticello Sun, 2022

14 x 14 x 6.5”

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Cresting Reticello, (detail)

IN SPIRIT The Art of Lino Tagliapietra

May 29 - June 21, 2020

“...the idea is born, and sometimes it is very easy and sometimes it is very hard to go in a new direction and find the correct way. But the good things give you energy. Sometimes it is important to think a lot, but thinking can complicate things. Sometimes the good things are the simple things, but then sometimes the easiest things are the most difficult to do. You can have something perfect, but then you lose the spirit. Sometimes you have the spirit and sometimes you don’t. I still get so much joy from the work. It is still absolutely the best thing I know.”

— Lino Tagliapietra, 2020

Lino working at his February 2020 residency at the Museum of Glass.

Through the arts, we are all together, In Spirit. During these difficult times, we gain strength through helping one another. We also believe that art can be a source of hope and healing.

Schantz Galleries is pleased to present a collection of new works by Maestro Lino Tagliapietra, featuring his most recent innovations in glass. This weekend, May 29-31, we had planned to premier the new film on Lino “The Making of a Maestro” at the Berkshire International Film Festival. Due to the current pandemic, all cultural organizations, and most businesses in the Berkshires are closed for the summer. Although our physical space is currently closed, we remain committed to installing our planned exhibitions in the gallery to be shared virtually with our audience.

We are happy to schedule a FaceTime tour of the gallery with our clients. Having the artwork displayed at the gallery gives us the opportunity to share the presence and nuance of each work. Many of our collectors enjoy the option to consider works from the comfort of home!

We know that the best way to experience art is in person, and will try our hardest to weather this storm in order to eventually open our doors again — with the belief that the outcome of isolation may be a renewed desire to see art in person.

CATALOG ESSAY

Each artwork by Maestro Lino Tagliapietra is a physical manifestation of the artist’s emotions, experiences, and audacious imagination, communicated to the viewer without the assistance of language or verbal explanation. Endowed with unparalleled technical prowess, boundless creative insight, and a charismatic disposition, Lino commands a thoroughly expressive visual vocabulary that guides the viewer. We see and feel as each piece articulates and reflects the inimitable spirit of a very special artist and soul.

Masai, 2020, 55 x 26 x 4” photo, Russell Johnson Click through to Exhibition Page.

Despite the visual nature of glass art, there is a place for words and sounds in the experience. Lino Tagliapietra has traveled extensively, witnessing and absorbing the richness of different world geographies, cultures, and glass practitioners then thoughtfully integrating these encounters into his work. Another source of inspiration for the artist, however, is the realm of things he has never experienced materially. Many ideas emanate from his fantastical imaginings of unknown places, reveries ignited by something he reads or a captivating word or sound. As a boy, one of his favorite writers was the Italian action-adventure author Emilio Salgari, who never left Verona but wrote about pirates sailing the high seas to Borneo and outlaws fighting corruption in the Old West. In the case of Lino Tagliapietra, a work such as Masai conjures the flora, fauna, and culture of the African tribe so elegantly, it feels like the artist must have spent time there. In fact, he simply loved the sound of the word “Masai” and allowed this to be the spark for the work. A lover of reading—whether history, politics, or stories in both English and Italian—he says that what he reads and hears offer as much creative motivation as what he sees.

Kira, (detail)

Nassau, (detail)

Aquilone, (detail)

On the experience of being an artist-in-residence, Tagliapietra highlights the importance of being in the moment. He says: “in the beginning, you are rusty in the mind, the hands, and the spirit. But soon, these things begin to move in concert, you start to feel free, your mind fills with ideas and emotions, and the experiment of making the work takes off.”

Lino never does drawings or sketches, saying he has no patience for it. Instead, there is a special alchemy that occurs between his mind and hands and the materials of glass and fire which cannot be predicted and for which there are no adequate words. The swirling Angel Tear, the serpentine Fenice, the florid Florencia, the exuberant Nassau, the sinuous Kira, the billowing Thila—each work is ultimately the expression of a single indefinable thing, the extraordinary spirit of Lino Tagliapietra. As he describes it, “the idea is born, and sometimes it is very easy and sometimes it is very hard to go in a new direction and find the correct way. But the good things give you energy. Sometimes it is important to think a lot, but thinking can complicate things. Sometimes the good things are the simple things, but then sometimes the easiest things are the most difficult to do. You can have something perfect, but then you lose the spirit. Sometimes you have the spirit and sometimes you don’t. I still get so much joy from the work. It is still absolutely the best thing I know.”

Excerpted from IN SPIRIT; the Art of Lino Tagliapietra, Catalog essay by Jeanne Koles.

See all publications on our exhibitions page .

Ten percent of each sale will be donated by the artist and the gallery to FEEDING AMERICA.

Journey with Bertil Vallien

Bertil Vallien loves stories, from local folklore and international news to history and religion. He consumes stories, churns them around in his imagination, layers in personal influences and interpretations, then releases this amalgam of inspiration in glass form. Vallien is a builder, thoughtfully constructing both the physical materials and the narrative content of each piece of art. Different themes, symbols, and characters populate his work, but one common thread is Vallien’s interest in the innate dualities of life—hot and cold, light and dark, internal and external, life and death, to name a few. This dichotomy is tangibly expressed in the process of hot molten glass being manipulated then suspended in final frozen stillness and further highlighted by Vallien’s technique of casting glass in molds and placing objects within the glass.

Vallien is known as a pioneer in the use of the sand-casting technique in glass, which he originally learned in an industrial capacity before developing it for use in fine art. The Swedish artist’s early training in clay brought him to Los Angeles to work in a small ceramics company; his budding interest in glass at the time collided fortuitously with a revolution in American Studio Glass in which glass makers were encouraged to create art inspired by their own intrinsic ideas and passions. Returning to Sweden, Vallien spent many years working for Kosta Boda as a designer but, pulled by the promise of artistic freedom, he gradually began dividing his time between commercial work and creative pursuits. He has not only contributed indelibly to the expansion of glass as a medium, but he has told the world stories that might have otherwise remained unwritten.

Several works center on the theme of the boat, an apt metaphor for the journey through and beyond life. Vallien says “I like fantasies and stories and the boat, of course, is a wonderful archetype that everybody can relate to. The hull is the only thing that protects what is inside from the lethal waters.” Yet, Vallien’s boats really have no hull at all. Inside and outside merge into one as the marine blue and earthy brown shape seems made from water itself, stilled into canoe-like form. The petrified objects encased within serve as clues about whomever sought safe passage within her. Human figures, crosses, and circle symbols lend a spiritual undercurrent to these works, which Vallien has called “dreams of an eternal life.”

Boat, 2019, Cast glass, 3.5 x 43.75 x 4.5"

Over the years, Vallien has worked a series he calls Area II. Area II is an imaginary zone (to get a sense of it, see the landscape made from glass in the work entitled Map) discovered in the future and struck by either freezing cold or destructive fire (there is that duality again). The idea for The Watcher began as small figurative inclusions in works in the Area II series, then emerged as if from an archaeological dig to become powerful hybrid land-figures which caused these catastrophic events. Heads rise pharaoh-like from earthly bondage, cryptic clues suspended within the blue glass body. Rough edges meet smoothly polished surfaces, protruding bubbles sit upon etched lines, different surface treatments eliciting complex emotional responses.

A detail of Map, 2018 Sand cast glass 20 x 17 x 2.75"

Detailed planning, textural nuance, elaborate narrative, and the intelligent play of contrasts define Vallien’s work, as exemplified in the Landscape works. Layers—both physical and psychological—are created through a multi step process. Surface textures result from the imprint of objects placed on the walls of the mold, which are also dusted with powdered metal oxides to release color. As the molten glass is poured into the mold, Vallien incorporates a variety of objects from sheet metal and glass threads, to figures and other colored forms.

Landscape, 2019, Sand cast glass, 8 x 5.7 x 5.7"

This master of duality offers a contra point to his intricate cast pieces with new works called Super Eggs. Vallien says that he sat down with his casting crew one day and said: “no casting today, let’s blow, let’s show what the human breath can do with glass.” The result is the most natural form glass can make, a bubble, expanded to the limits of fragility and lightness.

Confucius said “yin and yang, male and female, strong and weak, rigid and tender, heaven and earth, light and darkness, thunder and lightning, cold and warmth, good and evil…the interplay of opposite principles constitutes the universe.” That the same artist could conceive and execute such seemingly disparate works—from the thoughtful and weighty Landscapes to the spontaneous and diaphanous Super Eggs — may seem counter intuitive. In fact, this is the mark of an artist who truly relishes in the range of his material and who continues to explore the universal dualities of life and glass.

Super Egg, 2019, Blown glass, 20 x 14.25 x 14.25"

VALLIEN'S HORSES

Vallien has stated that his “whole career started with horses.” The magnificent and gentle animal fascinates Vallien, who deftly captures their monumental form in a series of drawings. Until now, he has not exhibited his two-dimensional work in the United States. Portraying the horses in either black and white or golden amber flecked with red imbues them with an otherworldly air. Motifs from Vallien’s glass works appear as supporting characters—enigmatic cave-like drawings, celestial maps, landscape sketches, and mask-filled boats are layered directly on the horse form or set in the background. Vallien demonstrates a thoughtful touch when working in two-dimensions, blending chiaroscuro bands of soft color with precise line drawings. His deliberate layering of objects, tones, and textures creates a sense of depth on the page.

Grid 80, 2017

At the Edge, 2019

Untitled, 2018

Yellow 2 - Crossing, 2019

Starry Sky, 2019

Untitled, 2018

Shown here are a selection of limited edition archival prints on 310 gr ARCHES paper. 21 x 27”

LINO TAGLIAPIETRA | SOFA 2018

This year is the 25th year for SOFA Chicago and we are proud to say that Jim Schantz has been there for 23 of those years! Unbelievable!!

Lino Tagliapietra has stated that SOFA Chicago is the most important show to present his newest creation, and he works towards that goal. When in the windy city, he enjoys meeting his fans, seeing long time friends, and the fine dining in Chicago.

For the 25th Anniversary of SOFA, Lino has created the Secret Garden, a wall installation featuring leaf forms that are blown and hot sculpted.  Additionally he has taken his Florencia Series further…

Glass deeply ingrained in Lino Tagliapietra. More than a livelihood, glass is the guide that shepherds him through the many tributaries of life. It is his foundation for cultural knowledge and artistic expression, his pilot to exotic destinations, his source of self-reflection, his connection to others.

We hope to see you there and share these and other exciting works by the Maestro with you. Here is a catalog of a selection of works to be presented – be sure you view full screen to get the full effect.

MARTIN BLANK STUDIO DEMO 2018

Here is a very quick look at the creation of a huge roll of molten glass, which Martin Blank and his team created for our group during our visit in March of 2018. The total time to create this was about an hour and a half!  It is a small file to save space… let us know what you think!

Schantz Galleries Glass Collectors tour in 2018 visited the studio of Martin Blank, where he and his team, witnessed the process of working with molten glass up to make a huge roll with gold leaf throughout the layers. This short video represents about an hour and a half of hard work by Martin and his team. It was a great experience for our group to witness and in some instances be able to get up close and work with the team.

PRESTON SINGLETARY BASKETS

“The technical combination of blown and sand carved glass demonstrates a firm control of the material. Creating the surface of Tlingit Basket forms is a time intensive process. Using masking material cut to the width of straw or grass, each layer is sandblasted and then remasked until the carved effect is achieved. In all of his sculptures the patterns and designs tell stories not for our minds to consider, but also for our hands as the work is so tactile.”

-Jim Schantz, Carving the Past into the Future, 2011

The Art of Preston Singletary "I see my work as an extension of tradition and a declaration that Native cultures are alive and developing new technologies and new ways of communicating the ancient codes and symbols of this land." Preston Singletary

The beauty of the Tlingit Baskets by Preston Singletary is only equal to the amazement for the intricacy of the  process to achieve them, therefore, we are posting a brief description for a better appreciation!

Objects in this series are titled “Tlingit Basket” and the correct medium is “blown and sand-carved glass.” They are created in either the smaller “Berry” size or the larger “Shelf” size.

The baskets that Preston Singletary creates are contemporary glass versions of traditional Tlingit baskets, which were woven from spruce tree roots.  Tlingit designs found on historical baskets inspire the designs on these glass baskets. Singletary began making this series around 2004.

Tlingit Basket Process

The process for making the glass baskets is complex – it involves first blowing the glass form with two layers of glass (for example: a cream color over red) and wrapping a bead of hot glass around the lip.

When the basket has cooled, a stencil is applied to the surface, to create the larger basket designs, and then strips of custom-made tape are applied over the stencil, first vertically, then horizontally in a spiral in order to create the basket weave design.

The whole surface is deeply sandblasted (called sand-carving) once, then the spiral of tape is removed, then it is sandblasted a second time, and finally the vertical lines of tape are removed.  Everything that is covered with the stencil is not exposed to the sandblasting process. After the last sand blasting, the entire stencil is removed to reveal the textured basket design. Finally, it is given a light sandblasting (called frosting) and coated with a special finish called Liquid Luster, to protect the now porous glass and give it its characteristic low sheen.

DISTINCTIONS IN GLASS | Bremers, Janecký , Shimomoto

Peter Bremers, Harue Shimomoto, and Martin Janecký demonstrate the breadth of the physical and creative possibilities of glass because each brings deep devotion to the art, a unique ability to work with the material, and a drive to explore new experiences in glass.

Distinction can be defined both as a contrast between similar things, and an excellence that sets one thing apart from another. Two discrete meanings for the same word, yet both meanings apply easily to the glass work of the three artists—Peter Bremers, Harue Shimomoto, and Martin Janecký—featured in this exhibition. This gathering of three unique artists highlights the diversity of technique, form, and aesthetic which glass allows the maker. Bremers creates monumental cast glass sculptures—abstract, monochrome references to landscape and space. Shimomoto weaves glass threads into sculptural tapestries, employing clean lines to capture the essence of nature. Janecký is a modern-day Augustus Saint-Gaudens who sculpts molten glass into naturalistic, emotive busts and figures. Their commonality—a gift for manipulating this malleable material into astonishing works of art that elevate the viewer beyond the banal of the everyday.

Convoluted Space, 2017, Cast glass, 17 x 14 x 6.2"

Peter Bremers was an established light sculptor when he stumbled upon a glassblowing workshop in his native Netherlands, inspiring a journey of discovery in using glass to capture and bend light. The artist sculpts a model out of a dense foam block. By using the kiln cast method, the model is transformed into glass. He is well known for his awesome glass icebergs, inspired by a voyage to Antarctica in 2001, which bridge the psychic gap between humans and the natural world. He masterfully captures nature’s magnificence in flawless glass microcosms, bringing us intimately in tune with nature by kindling our sense of wonder and smallness around her majesty.

Inverted Space, 2017, Cast glass, 16.8 x 19.8 x 13”

Bremers work in this exhibition turns the journey inward with metaphysical cogitations on space that offer a healing salve in a disconnected and anxious world. Bremers takes the interplay of positive and negative space—an element inherent in our physical experience of three-dimensional sculpture—and extends it in a metaphoric direction. He brings negative space into the sculpture in the form of holes and hollow sections; visible through an outer transparent shell of glass, their volume constantly shifts as the light flows through. These studies of space are monochromatic meditations on form and light—at times intricately faceted, gracefully arched, softly geometric, languidly amorphous. Eloquent descriptors such as Circumscribed, Honey Sweet, Illusional, Optical, Sensuous, and Connected title these “spaces,” signposts that encourage our understanding of Bremer’s artistic intention. Of this series, the artist has written, “Finding ourselves in a time of increasingly negative perception of everyday news events and an overall rising feeling of being unsafe in a world of religious, political, and social divisiveness, we may forget to focus on the possibilities and comfort offered by positive action and attitude. Positive space symbolizes tolerance, appreciation, hope, and opportunity.”

Kooru yoru (Freezing Night), Fused glass, 36 x 36 x 7”

While Bremers articulates the grand physical phenomena of nature, artist Harue Shimomoto relishes in its small gestures and broad strokes. Diaphanous curtains of glass express abstract notions—weather shifting with the seasons, light morphing throughout the day, leaves changing their hue, air circling a pond, fields blowing in the wind. Simple colors and forms mingle in a complex but soothing mesh of layered glass rods. Illusionistic depth emerges as Shimomoto deftly wields positive and negative sculptural space and carefully handles light and shadow, distilling moments into shimmering immersive impressions. Like with Bremers, Shimomoto’s work goes beyond mere physical exploration, becoming a meditative journey that holds tightly to the impermanence of fragile moments and shifts the viewer’s gaze beyond the tangible.

Mrs A, 2018, Fused glass, 36 x 39.5 x 7”

Shimomoto was born in Japan and received her BFA from Tokyo’s Musashino Art University, then came to the United States to get her MFA, settling afterwards in Rhode Island. Simplicity and ephemerality have a storied tradition in the Japanese aesthetic, a way of being that Shimomoto embodies, but also one from which she diverges. There is a quiet strength to her work—in its construction but more so it in its message—that makes her a unique amalgam. She has said: “I do not want the viewer to be too conscious of the glass. I almost believe that glass itself is too beautiful to be a medium. Many people see glass as functional object or decorative material. I want to break these images of glass and give it a different quality. Therefore, I am careful to make my work stronger than my medium.”

Portrait of an Old Man, 2018, Sculpted glass, 15.7 x 12 x 11.5”

Martin Janecký is a master handler of the medium of glass, coaxing impossibly naturalistic figures and animals out of the material. Janecký was born to be a glassmaker, working in his father’s glass factory in the Czech Republic beginning at the age of 13. He likes to say “I didn’t pick glass, glass picked me.” After graduating from the glass school Nový Bor, he embarked on a path that has taken him to glass programs all over the world as a visiting artist and instructor to over 600 students a year. Teaching has been accompanied by endless learning, the time to formulate and hone his personal aesthetic, and the opportunity to push and perfect his innovative glass molding technique.

Portrait of a Woman, 2018, Sculpted glass, 15.75 x 12 x 11.75”

By “sculpting inside the bubble,” (blowing the basic bubble, then opening a hole and molding it with different tools from both the inside and the outside), Janecký achieves extraordinary realism and startling detail in his faces. Nooks, crevices, lines, and protuberances gradually emerge, a map of human emotion drawn in glass, radiating from within as is from a living, feeling soul. When asked about the meaning of his work, he has said: “I make things which fascinate me—not just from the workmanship point of view—I try to give them an expression. I don’t want to make just a realistic portrait. I want to capture feelings and emotions.” The external calm of the artist as he deliberately and slowly works the material belies his own creative mind—active, passionate, always seeking challenge.

White Bust, 2018, Sculpted glass, 13 x 12.5 x 9.5”

By “sculpting inside the bubble,” (blowing the basic bubble, then opening a hole and molding it with different tools from both the inside and the outside), Janecký achieves extraordinary realism and startling detail in his faces. Nooks, crevices, lines, and protuberances gradually emerge, a map of human emotion drawn in glass, radiating from within as is from a living, feeling soul. When asked about the meaning of his work, he has said: “I make things which fascinate me—not just from the workmanship point of view—I try to give them an expression. I don’t want to make just a realistic portrait. I want to capture feelings and emotions.” The external calm of the artist as he deliberately and slowly works the material belies his own creative mind—active, passionate, always seeking challenge.