A show of “Cutting Edge Glass” creations that attempt — for the most part successfully — to go beyond the expected and increase the number of ways we think about the medium, is on view at JRB Art at The Elms gallery.
The national juried and invitational exhibition was curated by University of Central Oklahoma faculty members Charleen Weidell and Barbara Broadwell, who said they looked for innovative, authentic work that challenged the ways glass “was manipulated and constructed.”
In “Glass Tympani No. 3,” Texas artist David L. Zvanut turns an old kettledrum on wheels, with a pedal to turn on its interior light and a mirror base, into an almost Tiffany-like piece of metal and mosaic glass art, with a semi-abstract floral motif.
In “Reconnect,” Ohio native Timothy Stover bolts rounded dark steel strips into the rough, translucent surface of a greenish-hued glass sculpture which resembles a funky “V” for victory sign.
Making a strong, downbeat feminist statement is the “Domestication of She,” a powerful mixed media wall sculpture by University of Tulsa glass blowing program director and teacher Rachel Haynes.
In Haynes' creation, a steel collar seems to choke or hold harmless a glass rattlesnake, while a needle and red string sews its mouth shut, under three dark, teardrop- or dolphin-like glass shapes, perhaps symbolic of freedom, protruding from the wall.
Drawing us into its quietly moving narrative, too, is “Brown People Glass House,” a mixed media, multi-level work by Los Angeles-based artist Kathie Foley-Meyer. Elements in her creation include the glass house itself, outlined in neon with its borders protected by a white fence, a four person “family” of cutout, brown glass figures and a small screen on which a cycle of family pictures are projected.
A translucent white, fancifully extended, plant-like organic shape seems to sprout from a silvery, mirrored, almost donut-shaped glass disk, making us think that “Artificial Nature” may be better than the real thing, in a work by Southern Illinois University graduate student Jing Li.
Resembling a bottom-hugging underwater creature is the dark, open-mouthed “Host” for a group of small, white, almost shell-like glass organisms or objects, in the work of that title by Indiana artist Ben Johnson.
Zac Weinberg jars us by displaying a delicate glass pitcher on a base consisting of a plumber's bathroom plunger, and Joanna Manousis exposes the dark glass seeds and silvery innards of an elegant glass “Pomegranate.” Both artists have taught at Alfred University in New York.
More purely decorative are the richly alluring glass vases of Vermont artist Randi Solin and San Francisco artist David Patchen. Also on display are exquisite glass spheres by Ohio artist Mark Matthews, small handmade books with glass covers by Alabama artist Donna Branch, and an optically dazzling sheet of bending glass by Adam Burges, also of Alabama, called “Kaleidoscope Eyes.”
