Glass Art in General (and at the Sandra Ainsley Gallery in
Particular)
It's blown, but does it blow?
By Kerry Freek
Posted June 18th, 2007
Glass art tends to fall into the "crafty grandma" genre. You know what I mean: knitting, rug-hooking, country-art stenciling, et cetera. No matter how pretty they seem when they catch the light, those decorative blown-glass balls you'd find in any small town gift shop are to glass art what the Norman Rockwell print is to painting. Call me uncultured, but the idea of glass art makes me think of those cheesy psychedelic vases from the 60s and 70s — the sort you'd find in Value Village for $5.99. While kind of kitschy and cool in the present era, they're not really what I'd consider art of merit.
While I do like me a well-constructed afghan, I'm half-kidding about the whole grandma thing. In fact, a recent Luminato-inspired visit to the Sandra Ainsley Gallery (The Distillery, 55 Mill Street, Building 32) has me looking at glass in a whole new light.
Walking into the gallery, I knew immediately that I was wrong about glass. First up were Canadian Tanya Lyons' gorgeous wall and floor dresses, adorned with blown glass droplets and other paraphernalia, including capsules and gauze. Further into the gallery, Alex Gabriel Bernstein's sculptures appeared, looking like a biological study of skin cell snippets or icy, lonely landscapes.
And, throughout the gallery, a handful of works by veteran glass artist Dale Chihuly. Huge, intricate, colourful and fantastical pieces. Based on seeing the golden amber and opal chandelier, I felt compelled to hit up Chihuly's website. And I was schooled.
Walking into a Chihuly exhibit seems akin to walking into a dream — all floating, twisting shapes and colours from imagined worlds. Chihuly creates installations that immediately captivate — in some of his projects, like the Chihuly Bridge of Glass Seaform Pavilion (a ceiling made of 2,364 objects), the sheer volume of glass is enough to boggle the mind, let alone the bold, majestic shapes each piece takes. It's art, alright.
What seems most intriguing to me is the construction process. The labyrinthine Chihuly chandelier at the Ainsley Gallery, for example, is composed of several smaller, delicate parts. Precision and planning are key ingredients in its creation. Not to mention that glass-blowing itself is a fairly mysterious skill, and, like most art, requires imagination and expertise.
Glass: definitely not just for grandmas and windows.