Stephen Rolfe Powell by Ken Saunders Gallery

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Published by Ken Saunders Gallery 230 West Superior Street Chicago, IL 60654 www.kensaundersgallery.com ÂŠ 2013 Ken Saunders Gallery All Rights Reserved Printed and Bound in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 First Edition June 2011 Cover and Book Design by Deborah Kraft (First Edition Cover and Book Design by Jo-Nell Sieren) Photography by David Harpe, Robert Boag, and Powell Studio

ISBN: 978-0-9885301-2-6

Published on the occasion of the exhibition STEPHEN ROLFE POWELL: ZOOM IN November 1 - December 28, 2013

The works by Stephen Powell that we are all familiar with have always been over the top blown glass creations that are a sly mix of humor and slight of hand virtuosity. With their suggestive figurative features and impossibly ambitious scale these works were Stephen’s signature creations. The acclaim these works received was truly deserved. Powell’s consummate skills as an artist and craftsman have been acknowledged by critics and curators. That work is well-represented in the best collections of Studio Glass in the world. Challenged to create something fresh for a new audience Powell returned in 2011 to a far smaller form, more intimate in scale but even more intense in his use of color. These works were varied in shape, more so than at any point in the artist’s career but they remained absolutely signature work, ranking with his best efforts. In 2013 Stephen Powell is presenting what is surely the evolved result of his experiments with a smaller scale even as the works mark a dramatic technical and visual break from the artist’s previous work in which the glass murrini has played such a central role. Indeed the application of color has changed completely from a patchwork of glass canes to a swirling stream of trailing strings of color set against luminous bands of purple, yellow and red. This work feels exceedingly resolved and completely new; the artist’s full command of his technique firmly on display and embodied in every work. I am personally thrilled to be able to present this exhibition of Stephen Powell’s latest work and publish this catalogue documenting the show.

Ken Saunders

Echo Wall (detail), 2013 Full wall next page 10

Tenacious Torrid Tornado, 2013 29 x 29 x 8 1/2 inches 14

Lurid Igneous Cyclone, 2013 29 1/2 x 29 1/2 x 10 inches 16

Copious Frazzled Viper, 2013 30 x 30 x 9 1/4 inches 18

Whispering Austere Whirler, 2013 7 x 30 x 30 inches 20

Zydeco Flirting Cyclone, 2013 (detail opposite) 6 3/4 x 28 1/4 x 28 1/4 inches

Teasing Rainbow Slicker, 2011 7.125 x 19.5 x 19.5 inches 16

Zydeco Sassy Twister, 2013 6 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 30 3/4 inches (detail previous page) 26

22 28

Lurid Na誰ve Tornado, 2013 6 3/4 x 28 3/4 x 28 3/4 inches

Sarcastic Lunar Vortex, 2013 6 5/8 x 29 x 29 inches 30

Hesitating Honey Cyclone, 2013 8 x 28 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches 32

Torrid Peachy Vertigo (detail), 2013 6 5/8 x 29 x 29 inches

Torrid Peachy Vertigo, 2013 6 5/8 x 29 x 29 inches 36

Giverny Rockinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Revolver, 2013 18 3/4 x 21 7/8 x 18 3/4 inches 36

Installation view of Zoom In, Powellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fifth solo exhibition at Ken Saunders Gallery, November 2013

At first glance this exhibition may seem like a drastic departure from my previous work. A closer look will reveal a consistent further exploration of color and light with experimentation in new formats. The title of the exhibition, Zoom In, is the first clue as to what I am about. Viewers used to seeing my pointillist approach to mixing and exploring color with thousands of murrini might be asking, “Where are the murrini?” My answer is that I have zoomed in for a microscopic view of the interaction between targeted color and light. It is an attempt at getting to the essence of color, breaking up light, simplifying the relationship between the viewer and my sense of color. Looking closer at each piece, one sees that the light breaks the color into a linear spectrum rather than the Seurat-like use of combining pointillist colors so prevalent in my earlier work. I am breaking color up rather than combining colors. At least some of this exploration of color can be attributed to my fascination with the color field painters of the 1960s and 1970s such as Kenneth Noland and, in particular, Gene Davis. Their linear mystic voyages continue to intrigue and inspire me. We call these new pieces “echoes” because we are as concerned with the refraction of color bouncing off of the surface behind the piece as we are with the actual piece of glass. Kaleidoscopic effects begin occurring as light is transmitted through the glass to paint a refraction of color on the surface behind, that then creates reflections on the underside of the glass piece. While we are mostly focused on the aesthetic results of the work, there are many technical concerns that have led us to where we are. As we choose colors we have to be aware of not only the hue and the intensity, but also the viscosity and the refractive character of the colored glass. All of these qualities are different for every color we use. Refractive qualities are key to the work of Zoom In. We have mostly abandoned opaque colors, despite their wonderful reflective nature, because of their negation of any color transmission to the refraction behind the piece. We certainly use many transparent colored glasses that do a great job with the transmission to the refraction behind, but they don’t add much to the reflective surface of the actual glass. The most interesting colors are translucent colors that, because of their chemical makeup, both transmit and reflect light. For now we are limited to a narrow range of translucent colors, mostly in the yellow to red range. I look forward to the development of translucent blues, greens and purples in the future. Another technical concern that we deal with is the viscosity or the different softening points of each color we use. All colors absorb heat differently, which creates problems when you are trying to blow out a multicolored piece evenly. Colored glasses that have similar melting qualities will perhaps be available someday, but until then dealing with viscosities is a daily studio challenge. What I do is definitely a team effort. I want to especially thank Mitzi Elliott, DH McNabb, and Stephen Cox for their help in creating the work for Zoom In. Stephen Powell

Pages 40 -43: Stephen creates an Echo with the assistance of Mitzi Elliott, DH McNabb, and Jacob Moody.

Frenetic Crying Truth, 2011 40.25 x 24.25 x 13.25 inches 48

Buttery Spanking Breeze, 2010 37.5 x 23.5 x 13 inches 50

Torrid Citrus Nudge, 2011 26.5 x 20.5 x 19 inches 54

Cherry Puffy Puff, 2011 26 x 21.5 x 18.75 inches 56

Jealous Frantic Striker, 2010 41.25 x 24.25 x 15.75 inches 60

Lino Tagliapietra and Stephen Powell.

Stephen, his wife, Shelly, and sons, Zachary Hawk and Oliver Blue.

STEPHEN ROLFE POWELL Born: 1951 Birmingham, Alabama EDUCATION 1983 1980 1974

MFA Louisiana State University Teaching Certificate, Birmingham-Southern College BFA, Centre College

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Racine Art Museum Racine, Wisconsin Hunter Museum of American Art Chattanooga, Tennessee Muskegon Museum of Art Muskegon, Michigan Montgomery Museum of Fine Art Montgomery, Alabama The Corning Museum of Glass Corning, New York Cincinnati Art Museum Cincinnati, Ohio Grounds For Sculpture Hamilton, New Jersey Wustum Museum of Fine Arts Racine, Wisconsin Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio Detroit Institute of Arts Detroit, Michigan Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery Wagga Wagga, Australia Sydney College of Art Sydney, Australia The Auckland Museum Auckland, New Zealand Huntsville Museum of Art Huntsville, Alabama Baptist Hospital/Desoto South Haven, Mississippi Regent Hotel Le Plume, Hong Kong Mobile Museum of Fine Art Mobile, Alabama Birmingham Museum of Art Birmingham, Alabama Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, Russia Red May Glass Museum Vishny Volochok, Russia Lvov Art Institute Lvov, Ukraine Haystack Mountain School Deer Isle, Maine Lamar Dodd Art Center LaGrange, Georgia Centre College Danville, Kentucky Adele and Leonard Leight Collection Louisville, Kentucky Providian Corporation Louisville, Kentucky Humana Corporation Louisville, Kentucky Tropican Corporation St. Petersburg, Florida Donnelley Printing Corporation Chicago, Illinois

KEN SAUNDERS GALLERY

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