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Art

A vision takes shape

"Behind Glass," a new exhibit at the Arts Center, illustrates the medium's versatility.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published January 21, 2007

	Jessica Jackson, 19, of Clearwater and Kevin Magmoll, 20, of Safety Harbor examine the works, including Ginny Ruffner’s Potentially Series: A Botanical Buggy, 2001, blown glass and steel.
[Times photos: Patty Yablonski]

ADVERTISEMENT Dale Chihuly, Golden Ikebana with Poppy and Leaves, 2004, blown glass.

ST. PETERSBURG

The elephant looks ceramic. The staircase looks like sculpted metal. The mask looks carved from stone.

Glass, a medium we know can be beautifully transparent and colorful in a rainbow of ways, reveals itself as a surprisingly versatile material in "Behind Glass," a new exhibition at the Arts Center.

Curator Margery Aronson of Seattle gathered about 40 examples of some of the finest work being created by artists who mostly live in and around that city, which has become the epicenter of glass art in the United States.

Dale Chihuly is the marquee name in the exhibition, represented by a sculpture from his Ikebana series, a glowing golden vase holding fronds and a giant poppy.

But there are other important names here and exquisite work. Only one, by Ginny Ruffner, has a passing resemblance to Chihuly's signature massing of Venetian glass forms, which she piles in a delicate metal wagon.

New ground for glass

The art spreads through three galleries, loosely arranged by the themes Figuration, Flora and Fauna, and Form and Color. Up and Down, those stairs by Anna Skibska, are delicate strands of lampwork, a process associated with small-sized work such as jewelry. She fuses hundreds of molten drips of glass into a large three-dimensional flight of stairs. Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen and Jasen Johnsen treat glass like clay, sculpting while it is liquid to create an owl perched amid birch logs.

Richard Marquis embeds thousands of tiny bits of colored glass, called murrini, into the blown form of an elephant, making an elaborate and exquisite patchwork surface. A more expected use of murrini is seen in Dante Marioni's elegant, elongated vase, rising 39 inches, an opaque white mosaic scattered across the clear green glass in undulating patterns.

Volume and space are explored in Benjamin Moore's two-part work from the Palla series. Both are the same vessel, one in vase form, the other collapsed into a disk. Both are centered with a ball of red glass, the same color as the threads used to encircle the vessels. In the disc, it looks like a planet radiating orbits. In the vase, the ball is trapped and enclosed.

Veruska Vagen's homage to Vermeer could technically be described as an assemblage of murrini, but the little beads she uses do not, like most glass, fuse under intense heat, so the portrait created after his Girl with a Pearl Earring resembles benday dots.

Some of the works are flamboyantly gorgeous -- Debora Moore's Pink and Green Lady Slipper, rendered with botanical correctness - and some are cerebral in their beauty - William Morris' Medicine Jar. Morris has long been a favorite of mine for the seemingly impossible delicacy of his glass forms and surface treatments. Another conceptual artist and innovator is Bertil Vallien, whose cast glass "boat" is mostly clear glass in which masks float like sunken treasure.

One of the giants of glass art, Lino Tagliapietra, is represented by a gravity-defying vessel shaped like a huge teardrop, color upon color incised with etching.

In our future

"Behind Glass" is a primer and survey of what's happening in the glass world these days. More to the point, it's a preview of the programs we can expect once the Arts Center opens a museum devoted to Chihuly's monumental installations, which is scheduled for groundbreaking ceremonies in 2008. The Arts Center also will expand its programs to showcase other prominent glass artists such as those in this exhibition.

We marvel at glass's delicacy; its vulnerability, and at the artists' willingness to push its possibilities ever further.

More remarkable is the proximity in which most of these artists work. Because creating glass is the work of many hands, they often collaborate. But that closeness seems to have generated innovation rather than derivation. As we see here, they haven't hit the glass ceiling yet.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

Review

Behind Glass

The show is at the Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, through March 11. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Free admission. (727) 822-7872 or www.theartscenter.org.

[Last modified January 18, 2007, 12:35:04]