Greetings! 

Please join us on Friday, July 18 at 5 pm for the opening of COLD+HOT 2008, Mica�la Gallery's annual summer exhibition of glass sculpture.  Rich in visual pleasure, "COLD+HOT 2008" introduces the work of Mark Abildgaard, Ned Cantrell, Alessandro Casson, Gary Clemenceau (digital media), Grant Garmezy, Taliaferro ("Tali") Jones, Weston Lambert, Karen Nyholm, Lorraine Peltz (painting), David Ruth, Thomas Scoon, James Walker and Sasha Zhitneva, whose works remind us of the specially lyrical and timeless qualities of glass sculpture.  The exhibition title, "COLD+HOT 2008," derives from distinct processes used by glass artists for millennia - sculpting its form, or cold-working it while cold (actually, room temperature), very hard and brittle; and working hot glass, shaping it while molten, using blowing and/or kiln forming techniques at temperatures ranging from 1500 to over 3000 degrees. 

With works in two and three dimensions, the exhibition reflects on the fleeting nature of life and contemporary human experience.  The artists share an illustrative and dramatic quality possessed by their work, of visual metaphors associated with the passage of time and natural life (its celebration and loss) which occasion the viewer to consider personal humanity and question perceptions of reality.

Kiln casting master, Mark Abildgaard, recently presented a lecture before the Glass Art Society in Portland, Oregon celebrating his 20 years of kiln casting glass.  He received his BA in 1979 from San Francisco State University, and his MFA from the University of Hawaii in 1983.  After graduate school, he traveled and worked in Japan at the Tokyo Glass Art Institute, where he learned about making kiln fired glass in plaster molds.  In 1985, he was accepted to work at the Creative Glass Center of America in Millville, New Jersey for a 5-month fellowship, where his focus changed from blown glass vessels to sand cast sculpture.  In 1986, he returned to California and set up his studio for kiln casting glass sculpture.  Abildgaard presents sculptures developed from kiln cast and sandblasted glass forms joined by precisely machined stainless steel.

Ned Cantrell, a UK export to Denmark, derives great pleasure from blowing glass forms that surprise and delight the viewer.  An expert glass blower, he uses the graal technique and hot work to sculpt figurative imageries ranging from intricate millefiori and sprawling chandeliers to seemingly banal cleaner bottles and milk cartons.  Idea contrasts of ancient/modern, high culture/mass culture, fluidity/plasticity, and function/impotence prevail in his works.  A 1997 graduate with honors of the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Cantrell also studied at the Glass and Ceramics school in Bornholm, Denmark.  He has worked with illustrious glass masters, Tobias Mohl, Trine Drivsholm and Finn Lynggard, and shown his works throughout Northern Europe.  His more recent sculptural work was recently shown at SOFA Chicago 2007 with resounding success.

Alessandro Casson resides in Venice, Italy.  He designs and collaborates with master glass artists to create sinuous organic sculptures showcasing the beauty of battuto and cold-worked glass. Battuto is an Italian word that means "struck" or "beaten," and refers to a cold working technique in which glass is cut to create depressions in the surface of the glass.  The effect is achieved by grinding the glass to produce numerous small, pebble shaped crevices adjacent and parallel to each other over the surface of the glass.

Gary Clemenceau began as a photographer.  He became a musician, a painter, sculptor, poet and author.  His return to photography is startlingly beautiful and seems impossible to explain.  Using technologies that employ complementary metal oxide semiconductors and magnetic fields, he discovered a method to add myriad saturated colors into his pursuit of texture and image.  The whole is preserved as a photograph on archival paper and encased in an aluminum carbonate matrix.  The resulting brilliant color fields compel visual attention.

Virginia-based Grant Garmezy is the privileged winner of the RSA Benno Scholtz prize recognizing him as the most promising young sculptor during his prestigious North Lands Creative Residency at Lybster, Scotland.  Awarded a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007, Garmezy's work formalizes memories that would otherwise be fleeting, using a combination of solid and blown glass sculpting.  While his forms and work are unique, they evoke a sense of familiarity with every day life.

Taliaferro ("Tali") Jones, originally from California and currently of Canada, also presented a lecture before the Glass Art Society in Portland, Oregon this month celebrating her work.  She is a glass sculptor and photographer who uses water as a metaphor illustrating the constant alchemy of life. Jones' work explores the fluid and refractive nature of water in kiln cast crystal sculptures and in photography.  A graduate from Tufts University (BA) and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (BFA), with studies at the Glass Program, Sheridan College, Canada, her work has been in numerous solo/group national exhibitions and international exhibitions in Spain (Biennale), the UK (solo), the Netherlands (Biennale) and the Beaverbrook Gallery, Canada, among others.  Jones' commissioned works can be found from London to Hawaii.  Notable collectors of her work include MAVA (Museum, Spain), the Canadian Fund at Rideau Hall.  Both Bravo and TVO featured the artist making large-scale works.  She is well published, including an article by Richard Yelle in International Glass.

Weston Lambert is a young 2007 graduate from University of Hawaii at Manoa (BFA, Maxima Cum Laude), with apprenticeships that include Pilchuck Glass School and the Glass Furnace (Istanbul).  Lambert's current work is precisely laminated and ground, presenting luminous, seemingly liquid organic objects.  He states he utilizes glass and stone to document the passing of time - layers of stone to represent geological sedimentation as a natural record of time, layers of glass to mark accumulation of time in relation to human history and archaeology.

Danish artist, Karen Nyholm, is crazy about hot glass, with her greatest pleasure from using glass in combination with other materials such as wood, rubber, nylon, laser cut stainless steel, precious metals etc.  Her goal, when using glass with other materials is to use them to accentuate the visual qualities of the glass.  Nyholm uses the transparent nature of glass to create an interaction between the exterior and interior forms, and states, "I think that the interior space is often overlooked in favor of the surface." A Pilchuck Glass School alumnus, she is the recipient of numerous awards (GAS Student Exhibition, 2d place) and grants.  Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions from Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.

Lorraine Peltz' recent paintings articulate fresh ideas about place and identity, presenting evocative images that explore feminine ideograms that become landscapes of an exterior world and her interior space of dream, desire, hope and memory.  Peltz' imagery co-mingles the language of objects with pop life and society.  Lisa Wainwright, Dean at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Professor of Art History, wrote in 2006, "These paintings glow with uncanny resonance and optical sheen...symbols in their speech bubble niches hint at a narrative that unfolds from picture to picture.  Both of nature and from culture, her icons speak to the polemic between essentialism and social construction..."  Born in Brooklyn, New York, Peltz received her MFA from the University of Chicago and her BFA from the State University of New York.  A participant of numerous solo and group exhibitions, her next exhibition "Excellent Hostess" Selected Paintings: 1995-2008, is a retrospective at The Center for Fine and Performing Arts, Munster, Indiana.  Peltz lives and works in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

David Ruth studied under Roger Darricarr�re, who showed him how light can play on the depths created inside a thick glass body. He states, "I love the interplay between glass and light.  Opacifying agents, when added to glass, produce myriad shadow and texture within the glass, controlling the amount of light passing through the object.  The effect is that of a glowing object, alive with light."  David Ruth opened his studio in 1977, casting sheet glass and dale de verre, and experimenting with fusing in Santa Cruz.  As a graduate student under Marvin Lipovsky, he studied painting (to illustrate his ideas) and sculpture.

David Ruth's large scale sculptures are joined by glass at temperatures that create hard and soft edged windows of glass within glass.  Fragments with small streaks of color fuse into the clear block of the whole, and become a colored mark suspended in the space of clear solid glass. Challenged to create large internal spaces in glass, he equipped his studio with stone working tools, and began to carve and polish glass, taking direct control over the quality of the surfaces of large slabs.  His sculptures became architectural units with highly polished glass surfaces.  Continuing his study of the glass body as an alternative space, David Ruth adds, "Standing next to my work, a form appears that cannot exist, yet there it is, suspended in the glass body like a three dimensional painting.  This is not negative space.  Alternative spaces have been designated as places where non-standard or experimental ideas can happen, applying new rules to our ideas of dimension and gravity.  Paintings become three dimensional, creating a world of paradox.  The application of light transforms the inside of a transparent...material to a world of light and color....My process is one of building forms using fused color trails, surrounding them with clear glass, and polishing after the work has been annealed.  The true finish is when light pierces my sculpture."

Thomas Scoon's sculpture focuses on the human figure.  While abstracting the form, he emphasizes the essence of gesture, gender and other human characteristics.  His works vary from small-scale figures to recent life-size sculptures.  By pairing or grouping figures, he explores familial and generational relationships, which he hopes address the viewer's personal narrative and universal construct.  Scoon's process begins by choosing stones from natural habitats he visits (over years) as the pieces evolve and from several quarries where he sifts - gathering stones from the same site for consistency of color and texture - and using wax molds, casts glass to fit the stones.  The cast glass shapes the rest of the figure, organically, like ice.  The translucent quality of the glass is activated best by natural sunlight, rendering his figurative sculptures qualities of spirit or soul.  Scoon taught glass blowing at Pilchuck Glass School in 1984, and sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and the University of New Hampshire.  He received his BFA from Illinois State University in 1988 and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1990.

New Zealander James Walker's work in glass and sculpture consistently focuses on ideas for sculpting the mass, optic and color qualities of cast glass.  His first work with glass began when he and John Croucher set up Sunbeam Glassworks in New Zealand. Walker's work with glass and its integration into architecture developed under Ludwig Schaffrath and Johannes Schreiter, of Germany. Awarded an artist-in-residence stipendium at Wilhelm Derix Glasgestaltung on the recommendation of his professors, he completed numerous commissions in both public and private buildings throughout the 1980's, and continues to receive various additional awards and grants underscoring his successes. As a Teaching Assistant at Pilchuck Glass School, he met Stanislav Libensky, initiating an artistic dialogue, subsequent friendship, and recognition as outstanding pupil under Libensky's instruction.  He resided in the Czech Republic during the 1990's to continue his development of sculpture in cast glass.  Walker's philosophies of elegant practicalities are integral to his compositions, employing everyday ideograms that incorporate his wry sense of humor, love of humanity and desire to imbue an essentially cold material with sensual warmth.  He is credited with extraordinary power of judgment and knowledge (Schaffrath) and correct creative spirit (Libensky) because of his use of light, color and shape.

Sasha Zhitneva received her MA and BFA from Moscow State University.  Her contribution, entitled, "Illuminated Pages from the Book of Seconds" is a set of works inspired by the Book of Hours, a medieval illuminated manuscript containing a collection of brilliantly illustrated prayers, in reference to worship and devotion.  Inspired by the beauty of these books, Zhitneva was drawn to present the concept in glass, to register, experience and celebrate every hour (or, fleeting second) of life, and its related questions and issues.  Her process seeks to match the vibrant colors of the illustrations in the Books.  As medieval artists used ground gemstones and gold, ensuring imageries that withstood the trial of centuries, Zhitneva's work retains a similar permanency resulting from her fine understanding of gravity and glass viscosity.  She employs thin veils and transparent washes of color created from opaque sheet glass through repeated firings in a kiln and manipulations in-between, not paint. Her work, a single page, becomes ready for viewing after a kiln-firing process of a month or more.

Glass, a mysterious substance found in nature as raw crystal and in grains of silica, is an extraordinarily difficult medium to sculpt and possess. Mastery of its form and color is steeped in dramatic history spanning continents and politics over thousands of years - yet we continue to delight in all its permutations and marvel at its unique relationship with light. Mica�la Gallery is proud to present this beautiful exhibition of sculpture and exceptionally talented artists to you. We invite you to visit our gallery or explore our website at www.micaela.com.  For high resolution images or additional information, please contact Natalia Pudzisz by email at natalia@micaela.com or telephone at (415) 551-8118.

Left to right/top row image: Mark Abildgaard, Alessandro Casson, Ned Cantrell, Gary Clemenceau. Middle row image: Grant Garmezy, Taliaferro Jones, Karen Nyholm, Weston Lambert. Bottom row image: Lorraine Peltz, Thomas Scoon, David Ruth, Sasha Zhitneva. Bottom image: James Walker.