Color notes: Yellow berries

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I've been running past this tree forever but just noticed how at a certain point coming toward this tree when it is leafless in late fall the tiny yellow berries suddenly pop into focus and the whole tree is outlined in tiny circles of yellow. inspiration for glass art

And now that I write this I realize that I need to go back and try to capture that 'zoom in' with my camera. I'm guessing it's too subtle to get but off I go to see.

Studio experiment: Connect 2.0

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I'm not sure what I'll end up calling this series. For now, I see it as the next iteration in the Connect series. Connect 2.1 is inspired by a recent ride on the El to re-live the experience of seeing Chicago via El as when we first moved here in the mid-1990s. I think part of my interest in creating a moment of surprise and discovery comes from learning to see Chicago from the El. The windows of the El frame fleeting glimpses of other lives and spaces and lines. My drawing practice is generally inspired by forms and lines found in nature. Curves and foliage and growth potential are in evidence. But a new set of lines is emerging. These feel like urban forms with motion and direction and angular geometry that I associate with the built environment at various scales, possibly as seen through a window.

Growing up on a farm in Alberta with a full shop and many little drawers filled with washers and bolts and nuts and other fascinating metal objects is clearly another formative experience. I finally found my opportunity to use these gorgeous oversized washers, sourced from the many little drawers at Ace Hardware.

contemporary glass art

More pieces in the works.

Views from the El

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I learned to see Chicago from the El. As I journeyed from my home in Rogers Park to work at Weiss Memorial Hospital, the windows of the El framed my transitory view of the city. Glimpses of back-porch gardens, ornate details in terra cotta, and elaborate chalk drawings interrupted the visual monotony of brick, concrete, and wood. It is these moments of surprise and discovery that animate my art. The conceptual underpinning of my work lies with my ideas about attention, identity, and place—ideas that first emerged during my decade-long career in health care. My compositions contrast luminous glass with matte settings, directing the viewer’s focus through line and form. The materials I use are as durable as they are beautiful. Glass comes to life by motion and interplay with light. Viewers passing by glass mosaics become participants in interaction with a series of moments that illuminate a shared space.

New work at Water Street Gallery

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Had a lovely evening at the opening of the annual group glass show at Water Street Gallery in Douglas, Michigan last weekend. Pieces from the Impel and Scan series are featured in the show.

Loved to see how gallerists Maryjo and Anne paired wall art with art objects to create an interesting mix of art. Enjoyed meeting Water Street Gallery regulars as well as meeting some Michigan area Facebook contacts.

Take a gallery stroll at the Water Street Gallery website.

An information-scape at coLab Evanston

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Amanda Bryant of HangItUp Chicago has invited me to hang work at coLab in Evanston. Amanda is bringing high quality original fine art into homes and offices using a rental model. She partners exclusively with Chicago area artists to connect with local clients, another angle on staying local. I met Amanda at Gallery, Now! and am delighted that she thought of my work for this light-filled, ideas-intensive workspace. coLab is a coworking and collaboration space for independent professionals and digital entrepreneurs. Working with coLab cofounder Miguel Wong has been fascinating. He has a clear vision of how art+aesthetics contribute to creating an inviting, energetic workspace. From programmers fixated on laptops to informal chats over coffee to afterhours events and meet-ups it's clear that Miguel and his partner Eric Harper are building the vibrant business community they envisioned for coLab.

Pieces from the GLYPH and Scan series form an interesting conceptual connection with coLab where it's all about about information filtering, decoding and encoding. GLYPH's abstracted letter forms point to the creative potential of language. Scan considers our inherent interest in letter forms, offering abstracted text for our pattern-detecting, information-decoding minds. And they look pretty awesome lit up in the front windows at night.

More on coLab here: coLab 900 Chicago Ave | Suite 104 | Evanston, IL | 847.440.4880

More on HangItUp Chicago here: HangItUp Chicago

About Scan

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I have been developing prototypes in a new series Scan over the past couple months. contemporary glass art I first started work on Scan in 2009. I had recently transitioned to using sheet glass and could envision a series of scrolling abstracted letter forms. As a speech language pathologist, I have a longstanding interest in language and cognition. Letter forms are inherently engaging to our pattern-detecting, information-decoding minds. With Scan, the viewer is enticed to decipher the abstracted letter forms. Using unfamiliar product names from construction materials reduces the contextual linguistic information to the point where decoding is impossible. Selective attention is activated to find pattern in the randomness. A seemingly simple act of reading is transformed into a cognitively demanding visual puzzle. In this way, the viewing experience points to that of the many people I encountered in clinical practice.

The first prototype of Scan was ungrouted glass on a painted background. The cutting was completely unfamiliar with radically new forms and shapes. I struggled to find a rhythm and ended up setting the piece aside, unfinished, and moving on to other projects.

Two things happened to bring me back to Scan this year. First, I started photographing labels from construction materials found around the studio and in my Home Depot wanderings. As I explored these images, I realized that the graphic retro fonts were perfect for Scan. The forms are solid, like building blocks and cropping these letters created lovely rounded, almost organic shapes.

Second. I read James Gleick's The Information. I am fascinated by effective information exchange between speaker and listener; that is, of the highly contextualized and personally relevant message. Gleick explores the history of information, information as message (the calculable point between randomness and pattern) and information systems and control. The centrality of information to technology and human life itself, shaping our daily lives and conscious moments renewed my interest in Scan as a visual exploration of information filtering and decoding.

Sectile cutting from strips of sheet glass lets me create these solid forms. The color palette was inspired by the original construction labels, a range of industrial greens, rusts and grays was translated into a popping bold palette of persimmon, burnt orange, spring and apple green and violet against charcoal gray. A sparkling line of gold circles suggests the bit, the smallest unit of information and the basis of computing technology. Language as information is beautiful and powerful and complex.

Twist 1.0

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A new series is taking shape in the studio. Having grown up on a grain farm in northern Alberta, seasons and planting cycles are deeply engrained. I notice plants. I notice stems and leaves as much as blooms and fruit. I like watching color and form change across the growing season. I find deadheads just as interesting as full season blooms. Climbers and vines are particularly captivating: stunning lines are formed by incessant movement and twisting toward the light. I have been drawing Twist over this summer, using images of foliage and seaweed and vines as inspiration. I am equally interested in the luminous glass and the negative space of the matte grout.

Twist celebrates life and growth and vitality. It features spring and apple greens and new colors in my glass palette, pinks and corals. I have been searching for these colors since last fall. These tints from Bullseye require kiln firing to bring out their rich color. Many thanks to my good friend Paul Messink of Turtle Bay Glass for firing this glass.

The first piece is 10"x10". So many directions to explore with this new work. mixed media art

Studio Experiment: Connect 1.0

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One of things that I have realized is that I'm essentially doing R&D: developing hypotheses, setting up experiments, executing, learning from the outcomes, revising my hypotheses and setting up the next experiment. Research has addressed concepts ranging from memory, the narrative self, the conscious moment through to identity and place, information processing and the evolving social landscape. Line, form, color, glass, adhesives, grouts are all variables in the research process. Every series is developed and iterated based on the outcomes of each experiment. I'm sure this model is a result of my science background and years of clinical practice in the data-driven healthcare industry. And I like it. I have always been compelled to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. Same holds in my art studio/lab.

Within this R&D mindset, I want to do more small experiments this year. Take some outlier ideas in my drawing portfolio to develop and realize in glass. I always learn unexpected things in the translation from line to surface.

Connect 1.0 is an experiment with glass stringer. Stringer is tiny (2mm) and I am captivated by these precision lines, reduced even further by grout. I usually work with curving lines but I have had a circuit board sitting on my desk for months. I love the straight inter-connected lines and circles. I am fascinated by this maze as the basis of information flow and organization.

Impel 3: Linking interior + exterior

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When architect Todd Pape and his wife Tracie started planning a conversion of their 3-car garage into a flexible indoor/outdoor space, they say that one of the things they agreed on early in the planning process was that they wanted to incorporate my art into the space. Love that. Todd, Tracie and their two school-aged (soccer fanatic) sons live on an astonishing country-in-the-city half-acre lot in the middle of Evanston. The original 1910 farmhouse is perched at one corner of the yard and at the other is a low-slung terracotta and brick clad garage. Rather than tackling a home renovation, Todd and Tracie saw the potential to convert their seldom used garage into a sleek indoor-outdoor multi-purpose space. Re-envisioning some of the building's original functional elements, Todd designed a minimal space that almost disappears as it points toward the outdoor world. Garage doors flood the space with natural light. When opened, the entire west wall disappears to create a literal indoor-outdoor connection--and in fact the garage door on the east wall can also be opened for an entirely open space. The original industrial concrete floors have been polished and stained a warm caramel. A mahogany pergola over a bluestone patio extends the space well into the yard and creates a striking facade for the 1-story building.

Todd and Tracie picked the Impel art series as the starting point for this commission. A nature-inspired palette of blues, greens and neutrals connects the work with their expansive yard and garden. Impel offers a social landscape, entities in interaction with each other and the environment leading to constant evolution and change. Impel1 and Impel2 were completed in 2009 and were my first large-scale pieces using sheet glass. I was thrilled with my newfound freedom to cut in glass the lines and forms I could envision and draw. Three years later, my cutting technique has continued to progress and new lines and refined forms can be seen in Impel3. I love the implication of constant movement and impingements that leave us changed and re-shaped, only to be changed again. The social landscape ideas connect directly with Tracie's work as a therapist and meditation mentor. And, in fact, one of the primary uses of the space will be Tracie's mediation practice.

At the entrance to the space, Todd had 8" x 8" niches constructed on either side of the door, lit by overhead sconces. Two 8" x 8" Impels cropped from the larger piece and worked at a much larger scale to create self-contained compositions prime the viewer for the full size Impel3 (24" x 24") seen directly upon entering the space. The interior wall where Impel3 hangs is painted with black chalkboard paint, adding a playful, kid-friendly feature to the space while at the same time creating a dramatic backdrop against which Impel3 floats and shimmers.

3-Day Sale with Fab.com

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Fab.com and hhmosaics I am delighted to be collaborating with Fab.com to introduce Mosaic Elements to a wider audience of design enthusiasts. BLOOM, FLOAT and GLYPH are available to Fab.com members at special pricing now through Saturday, 5/19. Membership is easy--and free.

You can find the sale here at Fab.com