Specimens: Glass A special installation at Snyderman Gallery,
October 2003
Research
I have spent considerable time developing research at museums and
natural sites around the country for my new series of finished glass,
mixed media objects. The work explores the notion that many personal
and emotionally charged interpretations occur as one inspects the
visual aspects and form characteristics of exotic organic life specimens.
This project took form when I first visited an exotic collection
of study forms at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. The
Museum holds a dynamic and inspiring collection of botanical study
forms that were hand made in glass. These images revealed a collection
of provocative forms that evoked an emotional response, a response
that seemed primordial. Natural processes that last only a few hours,
flowers in bloom, or slowly dripping nectar, were frozen in glass
and preserved with extreme beauty and precise elegance.
I have pursued forms that exaggerate the sense of the primordial,
are excessive in their coloration, and may be made with a modification
of scale in order to initiate a variation in interpretation. I have
also been quite inspired by the collection at Philadelphia’s
Mutter Museum: medical specimens of human abnormalities known for
emotional and visceral potential. In addition to these institutional
visits, I have been working in the field. Seeking exotic specimens,
I have traveled to isolated nature preserves along the eastern coast
of the United States as well as the forests of Pennsylvania, New
England, and West Virginia.
I am compelled by the notion of how and why so many related interpretations
exist as one examines an exotic, dynamic, or sexually charged “special” object.
The specimens I refer to include reproductive elements in plants
and flowers, scientific study models, drawings, photographed organic
images, and life forms from obscure underwater havens. My work involves
selecting provocative forms that are empowered by the combination
of surface texture, light gathering shapes, and their orientation.
Production
Innovations in process are part of this project, introducing new methods
for form translation that are accessible, direct and inexpensive. My
objective in creating hand made objects with discrete textures and reassembled
form attributes have been achieved by using direct castings in plaster
and metal. When I make the models I work to translate stimuli and emotions
into an alluring form. I utilize the aspects of transparency, translucency,
and opacity, as I incorporate glass as the main character within my drama.
The process serves to engage an elastic form with a new flavor and stimulating
shape. A hot glass shape is placed in the mold cavity, inflated with
my breath, changing it into a positive glass object. When I introduce
the mold blown form back into heat it begins to react to gravity, inertia,
and compression. This is the moment for which I have worked; it is in
this space and time where the work truly lives. I then continue to work
the piece in and out of a heating chamber, allowing me to develop surface,
form, and gesture.
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