Shifting Sands

Big Flats Artist Connie Zehr Learns to Love Glass

By Janet McCue

Connie Zehr moved from Southern California to the Southern Tier in 2010, despite the warning from a West Coast friend that she’d be moving to a wasteland if she relocated to upstate New York. Instead, Connie found color, community, love, and a new art form in her adopted region.

Connie works in sand. Her art installations are ephemeral, created for a site and swept away at the conclusion of the show. Yet the images of her art remain seared into the visual imagination.

But she also makes photographs of her sand sculptures, then sends those photos to be printed on aluminum. Hanging these aluminum prints in a grid allows her to “work large and on the wall”—a new type of installation for the sculptor.

“If I was not able to document it, it would be heartbreaking,” Connie admits. “With the proper lighting, the sand photographs beautifully.”

Connie’s early work was often monochromatic, usually large sculptural shapes made with white sand. Occasionally, she incorporated wood or another object to create a shadow on the mound of sand. She often rolled out pieces of porcelain to form rods, letting them dry and then incorporating them into her sand sculpture installations.

“So it was white on white, hand-formed shapes of white clay in white sand,” she says.

When she moved to the Southern Tier, Connie enrolled in a flame course at the Corning Museum of Glass. It was a decision that would alter her art and enrich her life.

“I had never done anything with glass, actually manipulating glass, until I moved here. And it was such a perfect combination because glass, of course, is made from sand.” After taking the flame class, she realized that the shapes she was making with glass were similar to the ones she had made in clay. Her epiphany came when she saw the possibilities of glass interacting with sand.

“Since I’ve been in New York, I’ve added color,” Connie explains. By mixing dried pigment into the sand in her installations, she “discovered that the color percolates up into the glass. A really interesting phenomenon.” Her exhibitions at the State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca showcased this new and colorful bent. By featuring vibrantly pigmented sand, metal slag, and borosilicate glass, visitors saw how the ribbons of glass captured, reflected, and absorbed the surrounding colors.

At CMoG, Connie also met a

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