2015 EMERGING ARTISTS
2015 EMERGING ARTISTS CATALOGUE PUBLISHED MARCH 2015
Cover details: Justin Ginsberg, Light Drift / Alli Hoag, Inhalation / Jacci Delaney, They kept coddling him until he screamed and screamed them off Catalogue designed by Kristin Galioto
ABOUT Each year the Glass Art Society selects three emerging artists to present lectures at its annual conference. Through these lectures, artists with promising talent are afforded the opportunity to introduce their work to a large audience of established artists, educators, peers, collectors, art historians, and critics. Educators and museum curators are asked to nominate individuals who meet the following criteria listed below. • • • •
An emerging artist using glass as their primary medium Not currently enrolled in a training or education program (including MFA or PhD) Have 5 years or less of professional experience since graduating from study or training program Not currently scheduled to be, or have not already been, an artist presenter (lecture or demo) at a GAS conference
Nominees are contacted and requested to submit applications. A jury of professionals review all the applicants and determine the presenters for each conference.
2015 EMERGING ARTIST PRESENTERS
Jacci Delaney - Columbus, OH
Alli Hoag - Bowling Green, OH
HONORABLE MENTIONS Jenny Ritzenhoff - Groningen, NETHERLANDS Wil Sideman - Vineyard Haven, MA
Justin Ginsberg - Arlington, TX
JACCI DELANEY Concealing vulnerabilities prevents one from fully feeling. In my work I am creating that moment of revelation in which you can see everything, but only when you look at it just right. The notion that we all carry burdens and struggles with us, which go unnoticed by the people around us is similar to a hologram: the image in a hologram is only revealed when one is positioned at the right vantage point. Bubble wrap is such an interesting material because it is easily recognized as a material for protecting breakable objects and by putting it on people and objects; it becomes a symbol of fragility. jaccidelaney.com
Right: Earth and Air Sublimation, 2013, Cast glass, 5” x 5” x 3.5”
The Stoic Old Woman, 2014, Laser viewable hologram, glass, laser, 12” x 16”
The drowning of the sorrow stopped a year later, and then he emerged 2013 Hollow core hot cast glass 20” x 23” x 19”
Bubble Wrap Vortex 2014 Cast glass 8” x 8” x 5”
JUSTIN GINSBERG
There is a powerful capacity to communicate through process. By accepting this symbolic form of communication, I remain open to possibility and flexible to the unforeseen. It is within this realm of giving up control, letting go, embracing spontaneity – that my work is nurtured. Sparked by my intrigue into the properties of materials and the preciousness of action, I am attempting to abandon traditional methods, seeking new ways to engage process and object. I challenge the perceived boundaries of material and the presumed nature of things, often relying on metaphor and gesture, to express my interest into my own fragile existence. Recently within my visual arts practice, and compelled by my interest in the phenomena of material, I have been investigating unusual properties of glass, through actions that challenge its flexibility. By means of experimentation through innovative processes, I became intrigued by glass’ extraordinary ability to flex, coil, and bend, when made very thin. I harness the tensile and compressive properties naturally inherent within the material as a foundation for exploration. The methods I employ require me to make tens of thousands of long threads of glass by hand, and more recently, implementing handmade machines to assist in the process. The strands are used as a means to construct more intricate and complex works, through the selected experimental actions of bundling, fusing, draping, coiling, stacking, crushing, and suspending, gaining greater understanding to the manner in which the precarious pieces fall, bend, and tangle according to the specifics of space and the will of gravity. A single fragile thread of glass can barely be seen with the naked eye, but when grouped together with thousands of others, they create a visible mark. In an attempt to preserve their ephemeral state, I often utilize photography and video to not only document the process, but also their temporary existence. The documentation often becomes works in their own right, allowing me an opportunity to direct the viewer towards the nuances within the installations, maintaining that the individual parts remain an essential component to the whole. Through the accumulation of the smaller individual parts, the work utilizes materiality, as a means to investigate the innate entropic relationship between parts to a whole, focusing on the subtleties of causality and the individual histories ingrained in the elements. I am interested in this collective gesture, achieved through tedious constructions, utilizing both the tensile inflexibility, and intriguing flexibility as a means to create. I exploit the aesthetic qualities of the material while also trying to investigate glass within a larger sculptural field. justinginsberg.net Left: One Single Life-Detail, 2013, Glass, 23’ x 10’ x 5’ Hand-pulled glass fibers suspended individually and held under tension to create the catenary curves
A Mile of Glass Coiled into A Box-Detail 2014 Glass 12” x 12” x 5” Hundreds of hand pulled strands of glass are individually coiled and stacked within the acrylic box. The glass’ desire to spring open holds the piece in place.
Glass Spinning Wheel 2014 Glass, bicycle tire, pulleys, paper, clamps, palettes 50’ x 20’ x 5’ A 200’ strand of glass is coiled around the wheel and extends several stories up within the exhibition space. VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/116299868
Light Drift 2013 Glass, light 15’ x 10’ x 3’ Site-specific installation: 1500 24” glass loops are bent open and stacked at the base of a tree and a lamp post, while the light in the middle spins back and forth.
ALLI HOAG I am interested in ideas concerning the realm of magic. Not the generalized modern term used in conversation today, but the in the sense of the ancient human desire to understand and control the natural world. Originating as incantations, divinations, and the understanding of the world through myth, magic was a way for us to strengthen our relationship with nature, simultaneously delineating our realm as outside that of the natural world. Once this line was drawn, this schism created, this sense of longing has perpetuated into our human consciousness even today. Wound up inside of the perfectly choreographed string of DNA, nestling in each glowing follicle of a laboratory rabbit, residing within every perfectly labelled and named peak and valley in the map of the moon, this same longing is alive and strong in the realm of the modern world today. In each circumstance, these artifacts become a mirror of our selves, our desires manifest; but as a mirror creates a perfect reflection, one loses sight of the glass and silver that elicit the intriguing apparition, the crude mechanics that effectuate the semblance of the real. The material qualities and historical context of glass embodies this sense of longing, and has been a vehicle of magic, through which we attempt to bridge that distance. The crystal ball, the mirror, yes, but what of the humble window pane? It created a visual connection of the outside world within the comfortable shelter of the home. It rendered nature as a two dimensional field, an outside, a screen. I see this use of glass as invisible delineation from the elements, a re-creation of the “real”. A pristine world inside of a petri dish, an uncanny stare of the glass eyes of a taxidermic mount, the one way mirror of the interrogation room, the relationship I have with my iPhone screen as a means of communication. Our coexistence with glass as a material has allowed us to evolve in a divergent manner. We feel connection through mediated experience. We can create new realities through the delineated, hermetically sealed realm inside of a glass form. Whether we could even daydream before our co-evolution with this material is a large question for me. My body of work thus far has been investigation of this idea of magic, the simultaneous lightness and heaviness that is created when the imagined is labored into the physical realm. I am a collector of stories, using indiscretion toward whether fact or fiction; I seam narratives together, manipulating the realness of objects through the malleability of wax reproductions. I endeavor to recreate those moments experienced, or imagined into a physical semblance to be witnessed with others in a mutual reality. I see my process as that of the taxidermist, dissecting and reconstructing found forms into an alternate reality. It is within the connections, or the new skins that I reanimate, that the hand is evident, that hand that endeavors to manifest creations that can fly on their own, yet to afraid to let a hold of them.
www.allihoag.com Left: Searching Hand, Slipping Foot, (detail) 2012, Cast glass, blown glass, mixed media,18” x18” x 8”
A Form More Familiar, Exhibition View 2012 Cast glass, blown glass, mixed media. Dimensions variable
Disconnect 2011 Table, TV screen, one way mirror 30” x18” x 48” VIDEO: http://youtu.be5x4iMgVeplU
Phototaxis (detail) 2014 Cast glass, mixed media 4.5” x 4” x 5”
HONORABLE MENTION
JENNY RITZENHOFF Repetition N° 5/155 of infinite To be able to understand a glass object consisting of two glass bubbles and the Gestalt of these pieces, I grind it. Almost like an autopsy I trace their cross-sections with colour prints on paper. This I do until it is physically gone. Dust, colour, adhesive and a pile of paper stay. The object has dramatically changed its physicality during this grinding process. This is a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction and of destroying and making, thinking and understanding. The passing layers of grinding a glass object whose original format is decipherable, still means the objective end of this object. Is this work questioning the processual truth, taking place in the painstaking truth of deconstruction and reconstruction, or is it about the effort of Vanitas? “They report about the wounds of the object, you and I suffer from, and how the healing corresponds to it. The cure is contemplation, also considering the ‘origin’ of the objects”. All prints together do not emancipate themselves from the original object, they refer in their staggering on its destruction. Contrastingly each single print stands naked and bare, but still refers to his original anatomy. Repeatinfinition This is a work in process. I grind blown glass objects and make prints from the rim on A4 paper until the solid glass is gone. The prints are scanned and become a movie. Up till now I repeated this 8 ½ times, so this video shows 8 ½ different glass objects. The glass has transformed into moving image. The moving image is what gives us the idea of how the objects could have looked like. 8 piles of glass dust, paint and adhesive and the idea of the object is what are left. To be continued. www.jenny-ritzenhoff.de
Repeatinfinition, 2014, Video installation, 10 animations from acrylic prints from blown and ground glass on paper; glass dust from glass, paint, abrasive; glass objects, w1,30m x h0,90m x d0,80m VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCjrjsgGG74
HONORABLE MENTION
WIL SIDEMAN My work is routed in narrative, the ability to represent stories or events through the objects and scenarios I create. Through on site research and studio experimentation I explore ideas about family, self identity and geographical location, how these universal concepts effect our personal development. I am intrigued by the human inclination to obtain objects, how our community, location and life style all play into the objects we interact with daily or ritually. Evidence of time and interaction become engrained in these specific items causing them to be recognized, coveted and potentially handed down through generations. Imbued with memories and stories, these objects become their own narratives. The work I create from these ideas begins and records a historical fiction, referencing factual information as well as romanticized memories. My choice of glass as my material allows me to utilize the preconceived ideas society has about glass. The transparency of the material, especially when color is absent, references the past, fragility and the temporal. When working from recognizable objects, I use concepts of material, scale and environmental shifts to challenge the viewers perception. These techniques draw the viewer in closer to examine all aspects of the work more intently, picking up on the subtle references and further contemplating the work in front of them. Objects that encourage physical interaction (tools, utensils, containers) often show the most vibrant signs of life. These items usually are viewed as seemingly ordinary however they can contain the most beautiful, romantic and insightful stories. Every human undergoes instances worth remembering, moments in ones life worth reflecting upon and learning from. As society has moved forward we continue to find new ways to record this information, whether through fact or fiction these lessons in life are expanded upon and taught to future generations. I am most interested in the silent, contemplative and humble stories. The shovel buried beneath the leaves, the cassette tapes in the attic or the feed bucket overturned and forgotten. By researching my own families history as well as geographical location, I can give life to these memories, these personalized, seemingly unknown stories of human existence. My work has long been an avenue for self investigation, leading me to research and explore ideas about family, community and place. Filtered through my own aesthetics and personal outlook, the works I create function as permanent place holders for memories and stories that may otherwise be left uncelebrated. wilsideman.com
Unfinished, Untold, 2013, Kiln formed flass and copper, 3’ x 2‘ x 15”
JURORS
JOHN DRURY John Drury is an artist, writer and educator from Brooklyn, NY where he lives with his wife Joyce and two children. Drury is a regular contributor to both Glass and New Glass and Architecture magazines and has received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award for the Visual Arts in 1997. John has also collaborated with fellow artist Robbie Miller of Vancouver, the influential glass anomaly known as CUD, for more than twenty-five years serving as visiting artists and teaching worldwide. He includes amongst his passions, art by untrained artists and has documented the environments and creations of dozens of individuals in the American South; also writing for Raw Vision magazine. His text is included in the monograph to accompany the retrospective exhibition (2015) of Jerry Pethick’s life work at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
JUROR COMMENTS [Excerpt] Our choice of artists here, each utilize a severely restricted pallet to successfully avoid the trappings of the eye to instead engage the mind; to also avoid the benign. It is a great time for the material glass and its most potent practitioners have returned to the self as well-spring for the unique. Our choices reflect this change in direction-a sort of colonizing in glass and stolen image no longer acceptable, as we recover from the stranglehold of Venetian Fever to replace cane with concept-regurgitated image with originality. Few are capable of making the leap from the show-room pedestal to command space in support a unique vision based in truth and studied knowledge. I applaud Alli Hoag’s ability to weave a story of fact and hypothetical possibility - to capture viewer and material alike in a net of studied concern. Justin Ginsberg has shunned all color from his work, succinctly based in action; simply proof of procedure to expose the materials capabilities-tested to highlight its characteristics, in a certain truth to material rarely rewarded. Jacci Delaney brings life and relevance to her work, incorporating holography to activate space and thought, exposing the particulars of unlimited possibility, family and community with light and love.
GINNY RUFFNER Ginny Ruffner is a Seattle artist, trained at the University of Georgia as a painter, graduating with honors and an M.F.A. in 1975. Ruffner has had 74 solo shows, several hundred group shows, and her work is in 53 permanent museum and public collections around the world. Seattle public art installations include a 30-foot tall kinetic water feature downtown and a permanent installation in the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. She has written two books and been the subject of an award winning, full-length documentary titled “A Not So Still Life, the Ginny Ruffner Story”. Ruffner has lectured and taught extensively and has served as an artist in residence numerous times at schools and universities around the world.
JUROR COMMENTS Due to the high quality of the work, this was a hard decision process for me.
EMMA WOFFENDEN Emma Woffenden trained as a glassmaker and has made work using most glass techniques. Her practice involves a variety of materials; it can be objects, sculpture or installation. The work often references the body as a physical and psychological site more recently working with the figure. She exhibits and lectures internationally and is represented by Marsden Woo gallery in London with work held in museums and collections worldwide. Beside her studio practice she collaborates with her partner designer Tord Boontje their work is in MOMA New York, Corning Museum of Glass and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Emma is currently the Artistic Director for North Lands Creative Glass.
JUROR COMMENTS I enjoyed the process and was impressed by the ingenuity and scale of some individuals practice. There was an ability to take on whole spaces, an awareness of the image with an interest in moving image and performance work, as well as objects. There is an emphasis on process, artists using a repeated element and building up larger works. Applicants also ambitiously mixed glass techniques and materials to make one installation. I am left with the impression people are talking about glass/glassmaking in many ways and using glass to explore many subjects, including death, magic, the planets, the pleasure of glass blowing, they might be fascinated by this material but allow themselves the freedom to step away from it. Expectations and understanding have changed as the glass studio practice has developed. The five selected applicants are all exceptional and I would have been interested to hear each presentation.
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