Reconsidering the Carbon Economy—and working with Magritte
As much as anything I have made, I felt compelled to make this piece. It took a lot longer than I thought it would when I started, and a lot longer than I remember now that it is done. It doesn’t look like anything I ever saw before, or even what I originally planned. But I like it, and I am proud of how it turned out. This piece took several years and I am grateful to all the folks who helped me with it.
It began with a trip with my friend Mary Ann to SF MOMA to see a Magritte exhibit. I was taken with some of Magritte’s less familiar work [no pipes, no apples, no bowler hats] that features a window, a picture frames, or an easel. Magritte saw these dual images as a way of questioning what is imposed by the minds eye on “reality” and vice versa. He painted many of these. I was particularly taken by the one on the left, the sunset.
I went back another time to talk about the sunset painting with my teacher and collaborator Gina Zetts. I saw the sunset as an opportunity to depict the passage of time. For me, one of the problems with images from the polar regions is that no matter how damaged the ice/environment/habitat is, what you see when you get there is consistently gorgeous, almost overwhelming. But I wanted to show change and decline. The sunset painting provided a model.
My ideas about what my piece would be changed over the time I worked on it. The idea of a bear crashing through the field of oil derricks was not what I initially envisioned. At first I saw the derricks smothering the bear. But by the time I was half way through it, Gina had convinced me to suggest that there are ways to break out of the current energy economy. The arrangement of the images was one of the last things to fall into place.
Like most of the pieces that I call sculptural, as opposed to functional housewares and post cards, I had no idea how to make much of it when I started. It turned out to be a whole lot of separate parts, each of which required a different approach or technique.
I made the window frame first. It is a lost wax casting, like the Dumbo figurine in my first class with Gina. I made sides for a frame using pieces I got at a frame shop, built a frame and then an open faced plaster mold around it, and then melted out the wax. That is what I know how to do. And if I don’t, Gina does. So that was the easy part; although it did take several iterations to figure out how to get a convincing window sill and base board.
The images also were relatively easy. A professional firm makes decals for glass artists to use in fusing projects. Over time the technology for rendering color in decals has improved enormously, and I am now happy to use them in many applications. I made three for this project. The clouds are Magritte clouds; the oil derricks are from an early 20th century post card of the oil fields in Los Angeles. The polar bear/glacier is a composite of many of my own photographs, stitched together with the assistance of Photoshop teacher Sean Duggan. I love it that my sister-in-law and I turned the image of the bear into children’s quilt for Gina after she had a baby. I did not love breaking my carefully wrought image of the oil derricks with a blow torch, but it had to be done.
What did not come easy at all was the damn curtains. I tried a lot of approaches, not one of which suited. After months of work and wasting a lot of glass, I gave up on the discovery method and took a class from Jen Halvorson -- who is one of a small group of fabric casting mavens. She teaches how to make a press mold – which you use to make a two sided piece, usually very thin—like a piece of fabric or a sweater. Sometimes my learning curve challenges even the best teachers in the world. But I kept at it and kept learning a little more with each attempt.
It turns out that a key element was finding a good piece of cloth to use as a positive. I worked my way through a lot of dish towels, t shirts, place mats and other fabrics from Petaluma thrift shops before I hit on one that worked. Again, it is at bottom a lost wax casting. To make glass curtains, you dip the cloth into wax to make a model and build a plaster mold around it, first a bottom mold and then a top. Then you open the mold and pull the waxy cloth out and, presto, a mold for casting the glass.
Once I got all the pieces made, wood crafter Brian Huse made a box to contain the piece. [Brian and I also collaborate on a box for the annual Gallery Route One Box Show.] Brian’s box all by itself is a work of art. On a very quick turn around, Petaluma frame maker and artist Al Tofanelli produced the wonderful gold rimmed frame you see on the piece.
It took a lot of folks’ hard work to finish the piece in time for me to submit it to Corning Museum’s New Glass Review. I made the deadline, barely, although the piece was not accepted. My consolation prize was that one of the judges wrote a kind word on my rejection letter. I find myself entering contests which I have no chance of winning because it is part of the discipline of learning. And also, I am going to win next year.