Cal Breed: Signs of Lift

Cal Breed Signs of Lift

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Foreword Angie Dodson Director

As Director, I’m asked on occasion to write a foreword for the curator’s essay—a few words to say something of note about the exhibition before recognizing all those involved in its development and delivery. The recognition part is a snap—I know well the village it takes to dream up and make real an exhibition, and I relish the opportunity to share those stories— of the curator’s passion, the team’s creative problem-solving and efforts, and the sponsors’ commitment, faith, and generosity. For Cal Breed: Signs of Lift, we applaud MMFA Curator Jennifer Jankauskas, who has been working on this exhibition with Cal over the past three years.

In addition, we thank Cal for his contributions to this collaboration and for loaning all of the work on view. We also appreciate the enthusiasm and generosity of our sponsors—the James W. Wilson, Jr., and Wynona W. Wilson Family Foundation, Laura and Barrie Harmon, and Dawn and Adam Schloss.

The other part of the assignment—the part where I am to offer an endorsement, some context, or an insight into something that I, unlike the curator who has studied the artists and the art, really know very little of…well, that’s a more challenging task. Usually, so far in advance of an exhibition, I’ve only seen a draft of the curator’s essay. I’ve neither met the artists nor seen the work in person. Such is absolutely

the case with Cal Breed. But, Jennifer’s eye and mind and heart have my absolute confidence, always. And, even in simply looking at images of Cal’s work, I find the pieces breathtakingly beautiful, infinitely inviting, and intriguing.

Already, I can promise that this work will be worth seeing, worth knowing. Our encounter with it will speak to us, draw us in. It will somehow manage to do that thing that art does so well—it will slow us down and develop in us an awareness of the finest details and most wonderous curiosities of our world. Who knows, it might even bring about a stirring of our own creative impulses. That’s one of the great things about art and artists—the way they put something into our paths, something that deepens our understanding of things. In Breed’s case, the things are “meditations on breath and water,” which seem to span the spectrum—from scientific truths to the miraculous moments in nature which transcend understanding.

So, let’s follow the lead of the artists. Let’s exit the crowded expressway of our twenty-first century lives, if only for a moment, and…wander in wonder. Let’s be still, get quiet, breathe, look, ponder, imagine, meditate, pray, daydream, talk, listen, repeat. In Cal Breed: Signs of Lift, you will be richly rewarded for doing so.

Lead Sponsor

Sponsor

The James W. Wilson, Jr., and Wynona W. Wilson Family Foundation

Laura and Barrie Harmon Co-Sponsor Dawn and Adam Schloss

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Exhibition Checklist Between a Cloud and Its Shadow, 2019 Blown glass 25 x 18 x 14 inches Page 4

Coalescence, 2019 Blown glass 10 x 18 3/4 inches Cumulus, 2019 Blown glass 28 x 32 x 32 inches (approximately) Cycle of Breath, 2019 Blown glass 28 x 24 x 17 inches December, 2019 Blown glass 6 x 24 inches Page 9

Dewpoint, 2019 Blown glass 12 x 15 inches Down, 2019 Wood and blown glass 13 x 21 x 90 inches (approximately) Driftwood (Dandelion Seed), 2019 Blown glass 57 x 44 x 38 inches

Drizzle, 2019 Blown glass 16 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches Even Together, Our Life is But a Vapor, 2019 Blown glass 26 x 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches Front Cover (detail) Page 2

Holding my Breath till Blue, 2019 Blown glass 48 x 48 x 10 inches (approximately) Mist, 2019 Blown glass 13 x 17 1/2 inches Back Cover (detail) Page 8

Signs of Lift, 2019 Blown glass 60 x 60 x 2 7/8 inches Page 10 (detail) Page 11

Water’s Interpretation of the Braille Sky, 2019 Blown glass 13 1/2 x 30 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches Page 6 (detail) Page 7

All works lent by the artist. In citation of dimensions, height precedes width precedes depth. Images courtesy of Orbix Hot Glass, photography by Brian Francis.

Above: Cal (center) at work in his studio with assistants Mark Laputa (left) and Eric Harper (right).

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Cal Breed: Signs of Lift Jennifer Jankauskas Curator

Nestled in Fort Payne, Alabama, Cal Breed’s (born 1972) glassblowing studio sits atop Lookout Mountain, next to the Little River Canyon National Preserve. In this locale, nature surrounds Breed and feeds his creativity. When not blowing glass, Breed immerses himself in his environment; recently, he became involved in paragliding. While in the air, Breed experiences a heightened awareness of his environment, and he is able to observe floating particles in the air, how the wind moves leaves in the trees, birds in flight, various types of clouds floating across the sky, and the variegated surface of the land. Breed revels in the purity of air and the mechanics of flying: how the air guides the experience from the first lift into the atmosphere to the final deflation of the glider wings upon landing. Breed likens it to inhaling and exhaling.

For him, this becomes a metaphor for life: the first exhale, the last breath, and the space between the two.

These experiences have helped to physically and metaphorically shape the body of work featured

in Cal Breed: Signs of Lift. As a glassblower, air is crucial to the creation of his pieces as it is breath that brings to life the shape of the glass. In the exhibition, Breed’s works are “meditations on breath and water”.1 Often using the process of incalmo2, his pieces suggest the changing forms of water: liquid, gas (vapor), and solid (ice), taking forms such as clouds and igloos. Breed’s sensuous sculptures are also explorations of patterns and systems: the in-and-out repetition of breathing essential to sustain life, the impeccable geometries perfected by nature as evident in beehives, and the necessary precision in stacking blocks of ice 1 All quotations come from notes shared by the artist with the author or from conversations during studio visits on September 23, 2016, and July 12, 2019. I thank Cal for his generosity in sharing his time and insights into his process with me.

2 Incalmo is the process of fusing two or more blown glass elements during the construction of the pieces.

Working with this technique for the last 24 years, Breed has refined and expanded it to help him concentrate light in certain patterns and to highlight either the rigidity or the organic nature of his sculptures.

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to create an igloo’s iconic domed form.

To Breed, water signifies movement and the flow of life. Drizzle, a spherical vessel, has a transparent blue top (representing the sky) that shifts into a clear band over a lower half that is an opaque sea green color. Looking into the darker area reveals an illusion of condensation built up on the inside of the vessel; it appears to drip and slide down the glass much like rain on a window. In the companion piece, Mist (above and back cover), Breed reversed the placement of transparent and carved matte glass. He formed the orb-like sculpture in two shades of blue; the lower half is clear, with concentric circles symbolizing ripples across water, while the darker, frosted upper feels laden with moisture as if in the twilight hours when mists are rising.

Mist is created when a cloud system hovers close to land. Moving up into the atmosphere, transitory vapors form into cumulus, cirrus, and other clouds composed of water droplets 8

and ice crystals. Inspired by these natural structures and his study of optics, Breed created sculptures that include cloud-like forms and play with light and shadow. For Between a Cloud and Its Shadow (page 4), Breed produced a globe comprised of blue ripples or waves of glass that mimic the thin and wispy strands of drifting cirrus clouds. Shaped by wind currents and filled with ice crystals, these clouds often indicate changing weather patterns. Breed topped this piece with solid white spheres that coalesce into a floating cumulus cloud. Similar in form, Cycle of Breath is a vessel formed by clear bands of blue, yellow, and green with a transparent cumulus cloud at its apex. In both of these works, the clouds become containers of breath rising in the atmosphere. Breed has also constructed these two sculptures into lidded vessels, a way to trap and hold the air. The large-scale sculpture Cumulus is an inversion of those two pieces, as the opaque, cotton-like white cloud supports and begins to envelop a blue igloo with striations that signal water. For Breed, this piece hovers between the safety of

home—as represented by an igloo—and flight, which opens up the great beyond.

Breed used the symbol of igloos to signify solidity, safety, terra firma, the here and now, and as another container of breath. Seen not only in Cumulus, igloos are visible in several other sculptures. December (above) features a frosted igloo supporting a transparent golden platter comprised of concentric rings that dip down in the center. Breed filled this shallow form with clear glass beads that resemble water droplets or constellations of stars, creating a slice of an infinite and mysterious sky that reflects the release of all accumulated breaths.

In Holding my Breath till Blue, Breed created a star chart behind a series of igloos that rest upon a glass shelf. Centered among the structures is a polar bear that gazes upward into the universe. A stand-in for the artist, the bear, although grounded, contemplates flight from the “ledge of ice and igloos, leaving the safety of land and embarking upon the excitement and freedom of flight”. The title of this installation

reinforces this feeling as the phrase “holding my breath until I turn blue” often indicates a state of anxiety or excitement. Bringing these elements together, Breed once again evoked the idea of breath, and in this case, explored the tension between life and death.

In Even Together, Our Life is But a Vapor (front cover and page 2), Breed combined igloos with another natural form that he has found meaningful: a beehive. Atop his carved base patterned with honeycomb shapes, Breed placed several glass igloos under a transparent conical cover tinged gold. This upper piece resembles not only a hive, but also an elongated igloo or a bell jar, which confines air and holds its contents in stasis. Adhered to this piece are more glass drop constellations forming such patterns as Orion, a sequence of stars that has always been of particular interest to the artist and one that represents the idea that stars help to establish our place in space and time. This sculpture encompasses many of Breed’s thematic ideas: safety and comfort as 9

symbolized by the igloo and the hive; flight, with his allusion to bees; and community, with his reference to bees (where many species work as a unit) and to shared breath.

The glass beads that create an illusion of dew drops or constellations are the driving visual motifs seen in Coalescence and Dewpoint. Both vessels also feature bands of ripples that imply rings of water and are a light, transparent blue to echo the crisp, clear, lifting air of a perfect paragliding day. While similar in concept, they differ in form: one piece is an open bowl, while the other is a sphere—another vessel that captures air. Breed sees this air as shared among all humankind; as we breathe in and out, our breath merges with those of others. For him, air functions as a timeline of humanity, a continuum of past and present as our inhales and exhales mingle and await the addition of future breath.

The communal breath that comprises the air around us lifts and gives flight to various objects. Breed created glass versions of such objects in Down, a single feather, and Driftwood (Dandelion Seed), objects he has noticed, gathered, and closely observed around his studio while walking in nature. A feather, once separated from a bird, will float down to Earth. Breed’s oversize, weighty version could never find lift upon a breeze, but it symbolizes the possibility and wonder of flight. Likewise, Driftwood (Dandelion Seed) also refers to the act of floating or drifting. Scattered by the wind, dandelion seeds take root where they land, creating new life. Breed’s giant glass seed 10

embodies this hope for renewal.

Another work that symbolizes a cycle of reciprocity, Water’s Interpretation of the Braille Sky (pages 6 and 7), was created by Breed in homage to one his teachers: Lino Tagliapietra (Italian, born 1934), one of the undisputed masters of glass. Breed recently saw a piece by Tagliapietra, Riverstone (2000), and it inspired him to craft his own version as a way to visually continue a dialogue between teacher and student. Breed’s piece has a center stone of opaque black glass ringed with an undulating deep blue platter filled with his glass droplets/ stars. This platter not only calls forth the idea of water—with the stone half submerged and half above the waterline—but also a galaxy surrounding a black hole.

A final work, one that gives title to the exhibition, Signs of Lift (above and right) brings ideas and components from each of the works discussed earlier in this essay into one large-format installation. Breed fused, carved, and firepolished glass to form the five-foot diameter bullseye. Overlaying the target are wood compartments filled with imagery and objects that relate to clouds, igloos, hives, and wind, among other references.

Throughout this body of work Breed found patterns in nature as a way to interpret the beauty around us, to contemplate the mysteries of the unknown, and to wonder at the brief gift of life. Breed knows that for each of us, a “last breath is inevitable, yet we are still searching for signs of lift”.

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Cal Breed: Signs of Lift Organized by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts October 26, 2019–January 12, 2020 Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts One Museum Drive Montgomery, Alabama 36117 334.625.4333 | mmfa.org Š 2019 Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, a department of the city of Montgomery, is supported by funds from the city of Montgomery, with support from the Montgomery County Commission and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association. Programs are made possible, in part, by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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