4.3 Nebulous Landscapes – Form
I discuss how a work in glass can expand beyond its object to deeply engage with both its maker and its viewer.
I have worked with glass casting through a number of projects, and each time I learn something more of its behaviour.[1] Glass is a complex physical entity and the variables it brings into making are many, but it is clear that it is not the material that determines outcomes. Each maker pursues his or her own narrative interests. Artist/educator George Aslanis says he regards his scientific understanding of the technical processes he uses as important, but he says his technique is always in the service of his concept or idea. [2] Aslanis casts glass by using billets in an open mould as I do, and for all his understanding of the physics of the process Aslanis freely admits he does not choose to control his process completely, because like me, he benefits from spontaneous acts within that process.
Creative Pathways
Manipulation of glass through kiln-forming offers particular creative pathways.[3] Casting progresses in stages and each stage provides points for reassessment and allows considered redirection. In casting I am pitting my knowledge and skill against the resistance of the material and all the while, at the deepest level those Deleuzian forces of the world are in operation. Propelled by these forces, the glass, if taken for granted, could easily turn my process into failure. I structure my creative process according to my aesthetic, and in collaboration, the material adds its forces to the equation and consistently takes me beyond my preconception into the advent of something I did not predict, and certainly to a point beyond my original expectation.
When I give a project a working title I am not fixing the outcome. I am revealing my intention, and that intention is a continuation of my technical and aesthetic development, which in turn forms my narrative as an artist. The title will alter as the artwork comes into being. The titles of sculptural works within this project changed. These working titles evolve as the sculptures develop through the casting and finishing processes. They do so because the nature of their ambiguity shifts internal forms, and suggests alternatives. My concern is, that in my choice of language, a final title does not arbitrarily restrict the viewer’s ability to realise his or her own forms.
Aesthetic Triggers
To fulfil my obligation as an artist I implant my aesthetic triggers: in the physical parameters of the mould I create strong, simple geometric shapes. These might be construed as Modernist forms however; intense restrained colour, internal detail, and a sensuous surface create a meditative mood of yearning that is romantic rather than classic. I relate scale to the human form, symbolically empathising with the human chest, which is the physical centre of our visceral engagement.
Selecting the colour of the glass, I determine the placement of the billets in the mould. Then I rely on the process to provide the chaos that will destroy the cliché of my expectation and transcend my intention. This is opening myself to uncertainty, and as Margot Osborne says, “Zen-like … letting beauty result from interaction between the mind and the elemental forces of nature”.[4] The forces I add to the forming of the glass are applied as heat and time. My fear of failure is subsumed into a well-rehearsed free fall, and my compensation for this act of release is that the reward can be great. The flow of the glass in the mould creates those visual ambiguities within its form.
My cold work creates an unobtrusive surface, which, negated by a polishing that obscures but still allows suggestions within, provides visual entry into and through the work. It is this cold working that further releases the interplay of light on matter, seductively revealing the flows of the work’s making. An alternate high polish would bring reflection and with that, draw attention to its surface so that surface would become a barrier. Random imperfections on the glass could do the same. Light then becomes my ally, collaborating in the work’s shifting presentation.
Only Drowning Men Can See Him
With my first cast work for this project, the sculpture Only Drowning Men Can See Him, I continued to hold lightly to representation as I used the external form as my platform for embedded imagery. I initially conceived it as a figurative work based on a poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. My subject matter for the work came from the drowned friend Joe in Slessor’s classic 1939 poem ‘Five Bells’.
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass)[5]
The aesthetic triggers I incorporated in the work are facilitated by the play of light through the varied thickness of glass and with shifts in colour and tone within the limited range of my reduced palette. The external form makes reference to a boat, and the embedded imagery continued the presentation of my applied narrative. Although I am experienced as a caster, the firing process always modifies my intent. Traces of the flowing glass in the firing opened the imagery by simplifying and minimising articulation to create an ambiguous presentation that is more evocative of the emotion conveyed in the source poem. Beyond that point, my physical involvement as the maker is my attempt to refine and eliminate surface distraction and to draw the viewer into the internal flows.
Ironically, I exert my technical skill to become invisible as the maker of the work. Like Loughlin, I do not want to stand between viewers and their aesthetic experience of the glasswork. Whatever I contrive to visually execute, the final engagement is with the internal play of light on the flow of ambiguous layers created during the work’s conception in the heat of the kiln. It is my hope that in this collaboration with light, the work becomes an event that makes vision tactile in the work’s intimate and evolving connection with its viewer.
Drifting
My evolution toward ambiguity in my casting led me to create my work Drifting. In this work I abandon representation. Drifting is open in its creation and being non-representational, it is open to the viewer’s interpretation.
In Drifting I attempt to create freedom within constraint. Light and colour are my elements of seductive engagement, but through the nature of glass, it is the work’s materiality that provides the ambiguity that is its link to the figural. In this work the shifting patterns of light and the visually mutating forms that result, act as landscape. This landscape is available to draw us into an aesthetic experience. Unanchored by any permanent representation, or evidence of my direct gesture as the artist, this work is about the glass and its ability to seduce its viewer.
With Drifting as an installation, I extend this process of seduction. I arrange the pieces that make up Drifting to effectively adapt them to each space they are given to occupy. Between the visual forms I want to create a tension that is sensed by the viewer as binding the space. I want the work’s possession of that space to extend and intensify the presence of the work and increase its potential to engage the viewer. As the viewer moves around the work, I intend Drifting to be looked at and looked into, as it in turn, appears to read its viewer. Drifting exists in its space and, through light, is reactive to that space. Drifting exists in the three-dimensional world, yet it is open to being subjectively interpreted as spiritual, as it offers a portal to our own inner worlds.
With this work I hope to elicit the strong experience of it being, rather than “having being done”.[6] That is, I meticulously labour to remove any evidence of my gesture as the maker, and I do this to release the glasswork from any inferred narrative concerning myself. This glasswork is centred on the interaction between the glass and the viewer. Viewers, guided by the projection of their desires, are free to be consumed in the event of their engagement with the glasswork. In this, imagination can lead them into their own mindscape in what becomes their own improvisation. By interpreting meaning as they view the glasswork, they are creating their own forms from within the ambiguity of glass.
[1] Deb Cox, personal interview, 20/09/10, 8.
[2] George Aslanis, personal interview, 17/07/09, 2.
[3] Keith Cummings, Techniques of Kiln Formed Glass, London: A & C Black, 1997,10.
[4] Osborne, Mind and Matter, 4.
[5] Kenneth Slessor, ‘Five Bells’ in Nicholas Jose, ed. Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2009, 444.
[6] Morris, Continuous Project, 98.
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I discuss how a work in glass can expand beyond its object to deeply engage with both its maker and its viewer.
I have worked with glass casting through a number of projects, and each time I learn something more of its behaviour.[1] Glass is a complex physical entity and the variables it brings into making are many, but it is clear that it is not the material that determines outcomes. Each maker pursues his or her own narrative interests. Artist/educator George Aslanis says he regards his scientific understanding of the technical processes he uses as important, but he says his technique is always in the service of his concept or idea. [2] Aslanis casts glass by using billets in an open mould as I do, and for all his understanding of the physics of the process Aslanis freely admits he does not choose to control his process completely, because like me, he benefits from spontaneous acts within that process.
Creative Pathways
Manipulation of glass through kiln-forming offers particular creative pathways.[3] Casting progresses in stages and each stage provides points for reassessment and allows considered redirection. In casting I am pitting my knowledge and skill against the resistance of the material and all the while, at the deepest level those Deleuzian forces of the world are in operation. Propelled by these forces, the glass, if taken for granted, could easily turn my process into failure. I structure my creative process according to my aesthetic, and in collaboration, the material adds its forces to the equation and consistently takes me beyond my preconception into the advent of something I did not predict, and certainly to a point beyond my original expectation.
When I give a project a working title I am not fixing the outcome. I am revealing my intention, and that intention is a continuation of my technical and aesthetic development, which in turn forms my narrative as an artist. The title will alter as the artwork comes into being. The titles of sculptural works within this project changed. These working titles evolve as the sculptures develop through the casting and finishing processes. They do so because the nature of their ambiguity shifts internal forms, and suggests alternatives. My concern is, that in my choice of language, a final title does not arbitrarily restrict the viewer’s ability to realise his or her own forms.
Aesthetic Triggers
To fulfil my obligation as an artist I implant my aesthetic triggers: in the physical parameters of the mould I create strong, simple geometric shapes. These might be construed as Modernist forms however; intense restrained colour, internal detail, and a sensuous surface create a meditative mood of yearning that is romantic rather than classic. I relate scale to the human form, symbolically empathising with the human chest, which is the physical centre of our visceral engagement.
Selecting the colour of the glass, I determine the placement of the billets in the mould. Then I rely on the process to provide the chaos that will destroy the cliché of my expectation and transcend my intention. This is opening myself to uncertainty, and as Margot Osborne says, “Zen-like … letting beauty result from interaction between the mind and the elemental forces of nature”.[4] The forces I add to the forming of the glass are applied as heat and time. My fear of failure is subsumed into a well-rehearsed free fall, and my compensation for this act of release is that the reward can be great. The flow of the glass in the mould creates those visual ambiguities within its form.
My cold work creates an unobtrusive surface, which, negated by a polishing that obscures but still allows suggestions within, provides visual entry into and through the work. It is this cold working that further releases the interplay of light on matter, seductively revealing the flows of the work’s making. An alternate high polish would bring reflection and with that, draw attention to its surface so that surface would become a barrier. Random imperfections on the glass could do the same. Light then becomes my ally, collaborating in the work’s shifting presentation.
Only Drowning Men Can See Him
With my first cast work for this project, the sculpture Only Drowning Men Can See Him, I continued to hold lightly to representation as I used the external form as my platform for embedded imagery. I initially conceived it as a figurative work based on a poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. My subject matter for the work came from the drowned friend Joe in Slessor’s classic 1939 poem ‘Five Bells’.
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass)[5]
The aesthetic triggers I incorporated in the work are facilitated by the play of light through the varied thickness of glass and with shifts in colour and tone within the limited range of my reduced palette. The external form makes reference to a boat, and the embedded imagery continued the presentation of my applied narrative. Although I am experienced as a caster, the firing process always modifies my intent. Traces of the flowing glass in the firing opened the imagery by simplifying and minimising articulation to create an ambiguous presentation that is more evocative of the emotion conveyed in the source poem. Beyond that point, my physical involvement as the maker is my attempt to refine and eliminate surface distraction and to draw the viewer into the internal flows.
Ironically, I exert my technical skill to become invisible as the maker of the work. Like Loughlin, I do not want to stand between viewers and their aesthetic experience of the glasswork. Whatever I contrive to visually execute, the final engagement is with the internal play of light on the flow of ambiguous layers created during the work’s conception in the heat of the kiln. It is my hope that in this collaboration with light, the work becomes an event that makes vision tactile in the work’s intimate and evolving connection with its viewer.
Drifting
My evolution toward ambiguity in my casting led me to create my work Drifting. In this work I abandon representation. Drifting is open in its creation and being non-representational, it is open to the viewer’s interpretation.
In Drifting I attempt to create freedom within constraint. Light and colour are my elements of seductive engagement, but through the nature of glass, it is the work’s materiality that provides the ambiguity that is its link to the figural. In this work the shifting patterns of light and the visually mutating forms that result, act as landscape. This landscape is available to draw us into an aesthetic experience. Unanchored by any permanent representation, or evidence of my direct gesture as the artist, this work is about the glass and its ability to seduce its viewer.
With Drifting as an installation, I extend this process of seduction. I arrange the pieces that make up Drifting to effectively adapt them to each space they are given to occupy. Between the visual forms I want to create a tension that is sensed by the viewer as binding the space. I want the work’s possession of that space to extend and intensify the presence of the work and increase its potential to engage the viewer. As the viewer moves around the work, I intend Drifting to be looked at and looked into, as it in turn, appears to read its viewer. Drifting exists in its space and, through light, is reactive to that space. Drifting exists in the three-dimensional world, yet it is open to being subjectively interpreted as spiritual, as it offers a portal to our own inner worlds.
With this work I hope to elicit the strong experience of it being, rather than “having being done”.[6] That is, I meticulously labour to remove any evidence of my gesture as the maker, and I do this to release the glasswork from any inferred narrative concerning myself. This glasswork is centred on the interaction between the glass and the viewer. Viewers, guided by the projection of their desires, are free to be consumed in the event of their engagement with the glasswork. In this, imagination can lead them into their own mindscape in what becomes their own improvisation. By interpreting meaning as they view the glasswork, they are creating their own forms from within the ambiguity of glass.
[1] Deb Cox, personal interview, 20/09/10, 8.
[2] George Aslanis, personal interview, 17/07/09, 2.
[3] Keith Cummings, Techniques of Kiln Formed Glass, London: A & C Black, 1997,10.
[4] Osborne, Mind and Matter, 4.
[5] Kenneth Slessor, ‘Five Bells’ in Nicholas Jose, ed. Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2009, 444.
[6] Morris, Continuous Project, 98.
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