THE CLOWN IN ME LOVES YOU ALYSE DEATHERAGE

By Managing Editor

The Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art here at California State University, San Bernardino, is currently displaying “The Clown in Me Loves You,” an exhibition created by Katherine Gray and Nancy Callan that displays the excellent skills of blown glass work with other mixed media elements. Gray is the current department chair for the Department of Art and Design and a professor here at CSUSB. She is an expert glass blower with an emphasis on Venetian techniques of glass blowing. Likewise, Callan is also an expert glass blower. She studied under the maestro Lino Tagliapietra. According to Callan, Tagliapietra is considered one of the greatest glass blowers in the world. She worked with him for 19 years traveling around the world and helping him produce his intricate and technically challenging artworks.

The two met in Seattle and often worked together. They discovered that they had good chemistry when working together on projects and jobs and often asked one another for feedback or assistance with their own projects. After years of joking that they should collaborate one day, they finally began to seriously create a body of work together in 2015, and their exhibition “The Clown in Me Loves You” is the result. This eight-year-long collaboration originally stemmed from the inspiration of Venetian glass-blown clowns. “There also has been this history of glass clowns; sculpted, colorful glass clowns. I think the first ones were probably made sometime in the 1800s,” said Gray. The two found an affinity for clowns as a concept to revisit memories from their childhood and to examine the relationship between clowns and politics throughout history.

“You know, we were sharing a love for certain techniques and she brought to mind the Venetian clowns that used to be just beautifully made and so we started talking about them,” said Callan. “Kathy was like ‘I want to do something with these clowns’ and I replied, ‘That is so weird, I want to do it too.’”

One of the first works in the series was based on a paint-by-number painting that Callan holds dear due to childhood memories regarding paint-by-numbers.

“Nancy I’m sure will tell you that she had paint-by-number clowns in their living room when she was growing up. They were done by her grandfather,” said Gray. Callan additionally shared that her grandfather, who was a stone carver, was one of her first influences for art. Though she wasn’t aware that the paintings she had seen were paint-bynumbers, she was inspired by his “attention to detail” on even his simplest projects. Gray claimed that that was part of the beauty of paint-by-numbers, that anyone at any level of skill can often do them. They mimic the Venetian clowns according to Gray because the clowns were once made with very intricate glass-blowing techniques, but have devolved into a “more touristy, souvenir kind of thing, not so well made.” Yet, that was also something she admired in them.

“And that kind of circles back to what I was saying in the beginning about how clowns, original Venetian ones, were really exquisitely made, and then kind of devolved into not so great… [there] seems to be a corollary there between taking something super skilled and making it where you don’t need any skill at all to do it,” said Gray, referring to the accessibility of paint-by-number paintings. But paint-by-numbers have a wide array of meanings for the two artists, and they found beauty in all of the complexity mixed with simplicity. They wanted to take the skills they possessed, and some of the underlying themes that also relate to other pieces in the exhibit, and bring these together into something accessible to a wider audience.

“The panels that the paint-by-numbers are on are really technical and [require a] well-accomplished skill level; there’s a very subtle effect of the sort of monochromatic plaid patterns on there,” said Gray. “I can’t do that technique, and not very many glass blowers can do it like Nancy can.”

One piece that had a particularly heavy tone mixed with light-hearted clown accouterments was the piece “Thoughts and Prayers.” The piece features clear glass clown horns with a white crustiness to them that helps them to appear “ghostly,” according to Callan and Gray. The horns lie piled together on top of a platform that resembles the kind of pedestal base elephants would stand on during circus shows.

Callan stated that it was “one of the most powerful pieces in the show,” because of its relation to the end of the Ringling Brothers Circus and to the prominent mass shootings and political turmoil that occurred during the year it was created. The title holds a lot of power for both the two artists and for Americans today as mass shootings continue to be a prominent societal issue. Gray expressed that the horns being made out of glass, taking away their ability to make noise, was very representative of the pleas of Americans for better gun control and the absence of listeners to those pleas. Additionally, she stated that the piling of so many of these horns represented the many voices that together create a collective that has been ignored. This piece, and many others, allowed the two artists to express some of the emotional struggles they were going through during this time, and for Gray it allowed her to learn a new skill.

“I actually was doing something I’d never done before… this particular glass blowing technique that I’d seen a couple people do but had never tried it myself,” said Gray. Although she found that she struggled with this new technique initially, mastering it was a great accomplishment for Gray. “You know, I’ve been blowing glass for a long time; you sort of get a little apprehensive sometimes about trying something you’re not sure about how to do, because… you have this conception of yourself as being a really good glass blower and then when you try something and it fails and you’re like ‘oh my god.’ It’s like the rug is pulled out from underneath you,” said Gray. “But it was nice to realize ‘oh I can still learn new things and can do them well.’”

“Tell Us How You Really Feel,” which features two large horns facing one another with a soundtrack of crying emanating from one and laughing from the other, is another work with emotional undertones. Callan explained the historical significance clowns have played in political commentary, and this piece allowed Callan and Gray to use their own voices both metaphorically and literally, as the included audio is of their voices. “Clowns are just such a weird subject matter, but it turned out to be an incredible jumping off point for Kathy and I to work out issues that were coming up in politics and society,” said Callan. This piece was very technically difficult for Callan, but helped her realize that she doesn’t “like to compromise, even if it means doing a lot more work.”“[Making it] was a little stressful though. We had to use the thinnest gauge of silver leaf available, and it just flies away and I had to do several coats of it, but it was the only one that gave it that really mirrored look,” said Callan. “We could have gotten a different look with a thicker leaf, and it wouldn’t have been as difficult. But to me it was worth putting in the time to do that.” Though there is a presence of very heavy topics throughout the exhibit, the light-hearted colors, shapes, and overall clown theme of the pieces highlighted a positive counteraction to the show. The piece “Squirt” features a panel with blue and green flowing lines, an orange and white flower, and a droplet of water protruding from the panel, references a clown’s colorful attire and water-squirting flower. “The work is very frontal and two dimensional, but at the same time we wanted to have some elevated relief aspects to them to bring them into the room more and keep it kind of interactive,” said Gray.

Callan explained that “Squirt” came together quickly and it was an “organic” piece for them. She attributed this to the combination of Gray’s flower and water droplet that protrudes from the piece and Callan’s work on the panel behind it.

“I think it was just a true marriage of both of our skill sets and yeah, it’s just so abstract in a way, but also right to the point. It hits you right in the eye,” said Callan. The exhibit features a variety of pieces beyond the ones discussed that continue to marry the themes of lightheartedness with politics, history, and emotions of all sorts. The artists thanked several other individuals for their contributions to this exhibit, including Suzanne Head, Dorie Guthrie, Gene Broadgate, Becky Smith, and Callan’s partner Julia Ricketts. According to the artists, without these contributors, the exhibit would not be what it is today.

The exhibit is on display at the RAFFMA at CSUSB until April 8.

“I think one of the hardest things is that it’s coming down. We kind of struggled finding venues because of Covid too; everybody’s backed up,” said Callan. “I’m really glad that the show got to travel to the Fuller Museum, and some more folks got to see it.”

The trust and complementary skill between these two artists has led to a lasting friendship beyond this show and will lead to more collaborations in the future, according to Gray.

“We have this joke that we say to each other when we’re working in the hot shop, or when we were doing this show, we were always saying ‘It’s like working with myself,’” said Callan.