This year marks the 50th anniversary of the studio-glass movement. So, in celebration of that fact, Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery in Shadyside has mounted the exhibition “Celebrating Glass.”
“Museums and galleries everywhere are celebrating it,” gallery owner Amy Morgan says. “Glass is our thing, so we are celebrating it, too.”
Featuring the work of four artists from around the country, and one from Australia, the exhibit is the first of two Morgan has planned around the 50th anniversary marker. A much larger show “Happy Birthday! Glass is 50” will follow in mid-September.
The Australian artist whose work is in this show is the incomparable Nick Mount, of Adelaide, Australia. Visitors to the Pittsburgh Glass Center saw a survey exhibit of his work, “10 Years of Bottles and Bobs,” earlier this year.
Many of Mount's pieces echo the work that was on display at the glass center, such as the plumb bobs and scent bottles for which he has become well-known.
A large red “Scent Bottle” on display in the rear of the gallery cues visitors into what Mount's work is all about — form overpowering function.
“Even though they are objects they seem almost figural in a sense, having a head, neck, a body and feet,” Morgan says of this and Mount's many other Scent Bottles. “They are not meant to be personifications at all, but they certainly have that beautiful form.”
Mount's most recent foray has been the creation of large fruit forms. Several, like “Cherry,” “Plum” and “Pear with Olive Stem,” are scattered among pieces by other artists toward the middle of the gallery.
“The fruits are a new series that he is just beginning,” Morgan says. “The addition of the fruitwood stems is brand-new, and he also carves the stems himself.”
The “Pear” piece is quite unusual, having noticeable pencil markings on the surface that harken to the artist's drawings, one of which hangs on the wall behind it. “He also devised an enamel pencil that can be fired on the glass, and is permanent,” Morgan says. “He marks on the glass, then heats it. Making it permanent.”
Drawing, too, is the noticeable underpinning of the work of longtime gallery favorite Gregory Grenon of Portland, Ore. The two-dozen reverse-painted, oil paint on glass paintings by him on display are dark and moody, but with an undeniable Expressionist quality.
“He primarily shows women as he sees them,” Morgan says. “A lot of the work looks as if there may be bruising. But a lot of the bruising is really just about interior angst. He's not creating paintings about women who have been abused — rather, about women who have interior feelings, and showing them coming out in the work.”
This notion is given a lighthearted twist with the piece “Office Chair.” In it, a woman is bound by rope to an office chair, upside down and struggling to free herself. It's meant as a “comment on the workaday world,” Morgan says.
Much of the remaining works are more somber, such as “The Love Letter,” in which a young girl seems tormented over a letter she is writing. “These are all letters,” Morgan says of these paintings. “He thinks of them as letters, in which women are looking, thinking and communicating.”
Though Grenon's work may appear similarly stylized, they are no match for the highly stylized female torsos of Jan Kransberger of Asheville, N.C. With works like “Ornament,” “Bird Song” and “Disparity, which are all brightly colored busts of female figures in heavy, cast glass, each is nevertheless light in intention.
“They're very sensitive and lyrical,” Morgan says. “Pretty minimalist, not very formal, but they're really quite elegant.”
Also working in cast glass, Mielle Riggie of Chester, N.H., creates works that are no doubt more deep, and deeply personal. Take, for example, the piece “Bluebird.” A cast-glass version of a child's blue dress, it has many windows sunken into it. “It's like having windows into the soul,” Morgan says. “It's very sensitive work.”
Finally, Micaela Amato of Boalsburg displays several cast glass busts that have noticeable historical references, such as “Tunisian Man” which features a seemingly well-preserved man with a headdress that looks as if he was unearthed from a melting glacier.
A drawing and painting professor of art and women's studies at Penn State School of Visual Art, Amato has been working in glass since the 1990s, and always creating work that has a “historical bent,” Morgan says. “Her work is really all about relating to history — Egyptian and African history — and she references those historical cultures in her work.”
Looking back at all the pieces, Morgan says she did not intend for this exhibit to have an overall theme, but she admits a there is an underlying common thread.
“Because of the things I like, I would say that this show has a very feminine spirit to it,” Morgan says. “Not all the artists are women, but there is something very feminine about all the work.”
Kurt Shaw is the art critic for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at kshaw@tribweb.com.
