Mark Zirpel: Celestial/Terrestrial by bullseyeprojects

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MARK ZIRPEL

celestial/terrestrial

published in conjunction with the exhibition NOVEMBER 2, 2004 - JANUARY 29, 2005

MARK ZIRPEL AT NORTH LANDS CREATIVE GLASS

In 2004 Mark Zirpel was invited to do a residency at North Lands Creative Glass in the Highlands of Scotland. North Lands Creative Glass, founded in 1996, is in the village of Lybster, once a thriving herring fishing community situated high up on the North East Coast of Caithness in Scotland. The fishermen have long gone and the herring too. What remains is a village rich in folklore with an impressive natural harbour. Verdant headlands rise up steeply on either side of the harbour. A few fisherman in search of lobster and crab, still ply their trade out of there. The old school in the main street dating from 1877 has been re-furbished to become a state-of-the-art studio and workshop for artists working with glass. In summer there are master classes in glass led by painters, sculptors, designers and glass artists of international repute. Each year a different theme is chosen for the master classes, such as ‘Architecture and Light’ or ‘The Art of the Figurative.’ There is also an annual weekend conference around the chosen theme with lectures, demonstrations and field trips fuelled by good whiskey and traditional Scottish fare. During the rest of the year artists’ residencies are held, funded by bodies such as the Scottish Arts Council, The Heritage Lottery Fund, the Jerwood Foundation, The Gulbenkian Foundation and other charitable foundations. Bullseye has also been a generous sponsor. During a typical residency lasting up to eight weeks, four artists with different talents and often from different countries are free to work however they wish in the

studio, experimenting and exchanging thoughts and ideas. North Lands Creative Glass is seen as a creative laboratory for trying out new ideas. The residents enjoy village life as well as the unique qualities of landscape and never-ending sky that the Highlands have to offer. The present exhibition includes a selection of photographs from five hundred or so taken there. Zirpel chose his subjects carefully, light shining on the sea, wide open spaces, rippling waters, Highland cattle, sheep, lichen-rich stone buildings and some of the many Palaeolithic structures that are dotted around the countryside. These are ancient burial mounds and cairns that have so much to do with life and death and time cycles. In the emptiness and silence of Caithness there is time to reflect on the effects of time present and time past on nature, on man’s relationship to nature and his impact upon it. Drawing on the imagery captured by his camera, Zirpel set about re-creating his observations in glass. Using kilnforming techniques and sandblasting, mainly on Bullseye glass, he has made simple slumped forms impressed with marks that duplicate those created by natural processes upon the earth or the water. As the tide washes over the sand it leaves its imprint upon it. Water gathers over time in hollow spaces with its own idiosyncratic light and shade. As it evaporates it leaves behind rings. Starved of water, the ground cracks as

it dries out. The patterning and textures created by these gradual processes form the basis of the imagery in Zirpel’s current work. The processes that cause this abstract imagery are closely related to the passing of time. In capturing them within his glass creations Zirpel draws our attention to fundamental truths about our world that we might otherwise never stop to consider. Some do this in words, in paint, in clay or by carving wood. Zirpel has chosen glass as his medium and feels it is the material best suited to conveying what he is trying to say as an artist. His fascination with new technology has made Zirpel interested in the possibilities of photo sandblasting on glass and some of the work in this show was made using this process. One of the pieces bears the skeletal image of a leaf, a leaf Mark Zirpel found whilst walking in the forest. Deprived of light it had lost everything but the detailed veining which once nourished it’s greenery. This he photographed and transferred onto special film which, when laid upon a glass surface, could be sandblasted in such a way that only the veining was transferred onto glass. Sand blasting made the veining look white and shiny, the white being the white of light entering the body of the glass as the sand ruptured its surface. This is the only kind of colour that Zirpel uses. “I’m not a colour person” he says. “I made friends with blue and black, but my colours refer to water, to light and to air.”

The glass he uses is either transparent, black or white. Daylight or artificial light provide additional tonalities One should resist the temptation to try and fit Zirpel into any specific artistic niche like minimalism or funk. He may have been aware of specific trends but he has never consciously followed any particular one. His responses to nature and his way with the materials he chooses are entirely his own. Sometimes he is in a mood to play, sometimes to be more contemplative. Whatever the mood, he is always looking for clues to questions surrounding mortality. He has been influenced by the writings of Louis Pasteur, the great nineteenth century medical scientist and by those of Arthur Koestler the humanist whose writings focused mainly on questions of science and mysticism, especially telepathy and extrasensory perception. Zirpel is driven by a desire to use a very personal self-fabricated methodology in his search of the unknown. He says of himself, “I suffer from the terminal disease of wanting to make art for the rest of my life.” Dan Klein DIRECTOR North Lands Creative Glass

MARK ZIRPEL

Despite his years of accumulated knowledge and learning, Mark Zirpel remains a boy at heart. In all he does he manages to hang on to the optimism and exuberance of youth. He has been involved in drawing, in printmaking, and since 1994, by which time he was already an established artist, in glass. As a lad growing up in Portland, mischief was never far from his agenda. On his own admission the family’s move away from urban life to the wilds of Alaska in 1974, when he was 17 years old, was the best thing that could have happened. There one cannot escape proximity to nature. Freezing temperatures, vast skies, vast seas and raw wildlife make one very aware of man’s place in the universe. Questions about the relevance of our short lifespan and our relationship to time have always been at the heart of Zirpel’s artistic mission. He is fascinated by the way in which the elements behave, the way in which man uses the cyclical patterns of air, earth, fire and water to measure time. He observes nature first hand, watching it, touching it, feeling it, photographing it, drawing it and using an array of artistic devices through which to express his findings. After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree in drawing and printmaking from the University of Alaska in 1985, Zirpel went on to finish his studies in San Francisco, leaving there in 1989 with a master of fine arts degree in printmaking. Since 1994 (after three more years back in Alaska from 1990 to 1993 as assistant professor in printmaking at the University of Alaska), he has divided his time between Seattle and Portland. A meeting with Pike Powers, the artistic director of Pilchuck Glass School, proved to be the turning point in his life. In 1994 she invited him to become the Cold Shop/ Print Shop co-ordinator at Pilchuck with responsibility for assisting artists in residence and faculty members in the creation of limited edition prints and monotypes. He also had to maintain and organise the print studio and print collection. He has returned to Pilchuck regularly ever since. “Pike Powers granted me the keys to a new kingdom,” he says. At Pilchuck Zirpel says he felt like ‘an alien on a new planet.’ He had always had an appetite for technology, was fond of tools of any kind, comfortable with machinery and immediately drawn to the Hot Shop. He was also struck by the community nature of glass, by the sense of family within the glass world and the willingness to share and exchange information. “By the end of my first session at Pilchuck I knew a hundred people. It is not the same in the world of sculpture or printmaking. Perhaps it is the primordial force of fire that brings people together.” Zirpel tried to figure out how glass could work for him. He felt it was an advantage not to have had any formal training. He had not gone through the ‘How does one make

a perfect goblet?’ stage of glassmaking, had no preconceived ideas about right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. An interest in hot glass led him in the direction of lampworking which appealed to him partly because of its connection to scientific glass. Having discovered glass, Zirpel got the feeling that it would allow him to express himself better than the other media he had used. Its three dimensional possibilities attracted him although, he says, after working so long in two dimensions it took about five years to come to grips with it. He also greatly enjoyed all the associated technology. The machinery involved in glassmaking allowed one to ‘play around,’ an essential ingredient of what Zirpel enjoys best about being an artist. Drawing on paper allows little room for technological experimentation. Printmaking machinery is a bit formal in the demands it makes on the artist. With glass Zirpel felt much more able to behave like a kid with new toys. In his first works using blown and lampworked glass he made crude pseudo-scientific glass constructions, laborious devices based on bodily functions that dealt with the issues that most concern him as an artist – life cycles, the ageing process, the phenomena of time. These works are comical because of the childlike mechanisms involved, but serious in the message they convey and in the thought processes they trigger within us as viewers, drawing us into a world of make believe where reality and imagination merge and heighten our perceptions. “I like working on six things at once” says Zirpel. The strange devices described above are a prelude or a bridge to his more lyrical, more poetic work. His natural curiosity led him to investigate other areas of glass technology, ones that would allow him the possibility of using his drawing and printmaking skills. Experimenting with window glass bent in a kiln brought him back to printmaking. It was his partner Tina Aufiero who introduced him to kilnworking and was the first to help him slump a piece of glass. One of the first works he made in this way was included in a Pilchuck auction where it was noticed by Lani McGregor who suggested he come to experiment at Bullseye. The experiments there resulted in a whole new body of work where it became possible for all his talents to combine, resulting in something entirely new and personal in glass. Dan Klein DIRECTOR North Lands Creative Glass

Eclipse II, 2004 kilnformed glass with motorized metal mount 32 x 32 x 18 inches photographed at 9-second intervals in a 60-second rotation

Celestial Clock I, 2004 kilnformed, enameled and sandblasted glass with motorized metal mount 18 x 17 x 7 inches photographed at 4-second intervals in a 30-second rotation

MARK ZIRPEL Born Portland, OR, 1956 Currently Owner, ACME Art, Seattle, WA Education and Training 1989 Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA 1985 Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK Selected Awards and Honors 2004 Artist in Residence, North Lands Creative Glass, Caithness, Scotland Artist in Residence, Creative Glass Center of America, Wheaton Village, NJ 2003 Professional Artist in Residence, Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA 2002 Emerging Artist in Residence, Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood WA 2001 Centrum Creative Residency, Centrum Arts, Port Townsend WA Visiting Artist, Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, OR 2000 Centrum Creative Residency, Centrum Arts, Port Townsend WA 1998 Artist in Residence, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT 1985 Deans Honor Roll, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK Selected Collections Anchorage Museum of History and Art Alaska Airlines Corporate Collection Fairbanks Daily News Miner Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce Lutze Corporate Collection Microsoft Corporate Collection Progressive Insurance Corporate Collection Tacoma Art Museum

Celestial/Terrestrial, 2004 kilnformed and sandblasted glass 42 1/4 x 29 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches

LIFE AFTER GLASS

Almost all of the glasswork that Mark Zirpel made during his residency at North Lands was destroyed in shipping to the US. With only weeks until the opening, I offered to delay the exhibition in order to give Mark the time to reconstruct the work. He declined. “I’ll have the glass re-done for the show. I didn’t lose what took the most time,” he assured me. “That was the ideas.” Although the craftsmanship is not nearly so simple as might appear at first glimpsing some of the fused, slumped or cast works in Celestial/Terrestrial, and although it took many long months to reconstruct those objects, that glasswork itself is never center stage in Zirpel’s performance. That role belongs to the viewer, to each one of us who experiences the pathways of light and the footprints of time that Zirpel captures with the glass. Glass helps us to see, but it is not what we see. Nor is glass alone the focus of North Lands. The synthesis of ideas and material is what makes the program in Lybster so remarkable. For Bullseye to have had the opportunity to work with a remarkable artist in an unforgettable environment and now to bring that experience back home with us, is something we will own long after this exhibition closes. Lani McGregor EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR The Bullseye Connection December 2004

Salt Pool, 2004 kilnformed glass and salt 19 x 19 x 1 3/4 inches

DESIGN

Nicole Leaper PRODUCTION

Jerry Sayer PHOTOGRAPHY

Ryan Watson technical assistance by Chris Petrauskas pages 4-5 Mark Zirpel page 15 Chris Petrauskas IMAGE DETAILS

page 1

Eclipse II, 2004 kilnformed glass with motorized metal mount 32 x 32 x 18 inches

page 2

Beach II, 2004 kilnformed and sandblasted glass 19 1/4 x 23 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches

page 7

Celestrial/Terrestrial exhibition view

page 8-9

Celestrial/Terrestrial exhibition view of Heart/Lung (bagpipe), 2002 glass and mixed media with motion-sensor-activated motor 128 x 146 x 49 inches

Bullseye Glass Co. 3722 SE 21st Avenue, Portland, OR 97202 For inquiries about the artist or works shown, please contact: The Bullseye Connection Gallery 300 NW 13th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209 T 503-227-0222 F 503-227-0008 E gallery@bullseyeglass.com