Moments Frozen Under Glass
Ever been in a creative frenzy?
It seems to happen a lot to chronic artists. Immersed completely in their craft, they tune out all external stimuli not directly connected to their immediate needs and process. A strange, obsessive madness occurs in which a technique is plumbed to its depths and iteration after iteration of work is produced…
Er, what month is it?
So, what has brought on this MindGarden MIA status?
I have discovered a new medium.
Ooooh, the shivers! The itchy fingers! The frantic firings of fantastic flowing forms flitting through my brain!
What is said medium, you ask?
Glass.
I have had a love affair with glass ever since I was in grade 11. I saved up the money I earned after school and weekends working at the local IGA deli so that I could go on a group tour with the ‘Travel Club’. We visited Italy… oh my gosh. We started in Venice. Everything after that paled in comparison. Burrowing through the cobblestone alleys, ducking into the warren of tiny shops, hesitantly touching the handmade Commedia dell’Arte masks. We were there in March and the misty rain in the air made it feel like we’d never left Vancouver Island. Our group booked a demonstration at a glass gallery. We watched a man turn molten lava into a dancing horse. It was amazing. It was like watching Vulcan at the forge.
Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed. I relished the opportunities I had to go into Starfish Glassworks and watch the artists at work from the balconies. Carefully peering through the exotic jungle of sinuous, stretching forms, the flying eyeballs with iridescent wings, the disk with the swirling vortex of black crows etched into it, along with the lightly and cheerfully menacing mixed-media hanging from the walls and ceiling has been one of my all-time favourite memories here in Victoria. I have had nothing but the internet to observe since they closed their downtown Victoria studio a couple of years ago.
That is until now…
I’ve discovered the most exquisite of mediums. Glass with a microns-thick crystalline structure not unlike gemstones grown onto its surface. This illusion of stability (glass is actually a liquid) that I can create my own unique gemstones out of has become the obsession of my creative heart. Dichroic glass is the most beautiful, most radiant material I’ve ever worked with. The best thing is that I’ve discovered how to work it so that it can take on a specific design or pattern. Layering this glass, not unlike traditional silkscreen printing, creates a composed image of incredible detail!
I have included a couple of examples of the process so far. I’m still perfecting my technique, but I hope to have many gorgeous pieces like these up in the shop soon! The photos truly do not do these pieces justice. Due to the nature of the dichroic layer (which literally means 2-colours), the glass transmits one colour and reflects another. This means that when you look through the glass, it appears to be one colour, but when it’s backed by an opaque glass, it actually reflects (looks like) a different colour. Cool, huh? As such, it’s pretty much impossible to capture the glory of these beauties in a digital medium, but I’ll do my best!
Dichroic Glass Art Pendants
I’ve created these using different colours of dichroic glass including iridescent green, purple and silver. The amazing thing about dichroic glass is that it gradiates between the most amazing colours. For example, the green actually shifts from cyan to spring grass green to golden yellow. The silver can have shots of magenta and/or cerulean blue. The purple is as dark, rich, deep and mysterious as any Byzantine Emperor could dream of.
Dichroic Graphic Art Pendants
I’m so excited about these! The detail on them is absolutely amazing! So much better than I could have imagined. You can see images of poppies, a fan of silver and one of purple foliage, three intertwined oak leaves, and a pine bough with a cone and a graceful green curl of seaweed.
Lost in Translation
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- Tempest Necklace
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- Graceful Ghost Comet Earrings
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- Pomegranate Seeds Necklace
Think about this: your eye is an evolutionary wonder. It collects and focuses reflected light onto sensors lining the back and your brain interprets it into shades, colors, shapes, and depth. Think then, of how much that same visual information is translated and re-shaped when a digital picture is taken, edited, and translated on to your computer screen.
First, it is refracted through a lens onto a digital sensor which converts the received image into 1’s and 0’s (which is, essentially, high and low voltage differences). It’s like taking a grassy, life-laden, infinitely subtle hill and trying to recreate it with Lego bricks.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE fan of digital imaging technology, especially my awesome little digital camera. It’s just that after taking the original image (which is a digital interpretation), Photoshopping it to look more like what I see in natural light, translating it again into first pdf and then jpg format, and then hoping that the bazillions of computer screens out there display something CLOSE to what I took a picture of… Lets just say our Lego bricks go all impressionist blender and leave it at that.
Thus are the trials of trying to capture the beauty, depth, and subtlety of my jewelry. I wish you all could see it in person! Every time someone actually holds one of my pieces, they say, “it looks so amazing in person!” The photos I take just cannot capture ‘it’.
Sigh.
Well, if any of you would like to check out my stuff in person, just let me know, I’d be happy to share :)
Painting Dragons
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- Hand Dropping
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- Flying
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- Among the Reeds
I’ve been painting dragons lately. On canvas, in my mind, and with words. Dragons are amazingly, and almost inexplicably present in a huge range of cultures. Scratch beneath the surface of ideas of where they came from and you’ll find that the theories are shaky at best, and nobody really knows how dragons first entered human culture. They are depicted on ancient Mesopotamian pottery from approximately 10,000 years ago.
They were known to change shape, share wisdom and knowledge and were associated benevolently and destructively with water, rain, and crops. Very different from the mad, destructive, fire-breathing beasts that permeate our culture today…
These mysterious creatures seem to have existed, with their own goals, alongside humans for thousands of years. I wonder where they came from, and where they went.
If anywhere…
Irrational Beauty
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- Blue Flowers
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- Sunflower and Bee
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- Tulip
I am constantly amazed by the complex order of nature.
Take trees for example. You look at most of them and they’re pretty random, right?
Wrong!
The branches on many trees diverge according to a proportion known as the ‘Golden Mean’ or PHI (pronounced ‘fie’) which is 1 to (1+5^(1/2))/2) or 1 to 1.6180339887… That is, a little under two thirds of the way up a branch, another branch will begin.
Directly related to the Golden Mean is the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13…) which has a closed mathematical formula based on PHI. The next number in the Fibonacci sequence can be found by adding the last two. For example, the next number in the sequence above is 21 because 8+13=21. This ratio appears consistently in nature in the form of spiral growth patterns (e.g. nautalis shell, leaves around a stem), petal numbers and arrangements, and even human proportions (think of the ratio of the length of your arm from elbow to fingertip compared to the length of your arm from elbow to wrist). That great DaVinci ‘Vitruvian Man’ picture was carefully composed according to PHI.
I think it’s great that some of the things we as humans find most beautiful on a primal level are carefully, naturally, and beautifully ordered. Truly Divine!
PS, If you’re interested, there is a neat book called Divine Proportion: Phi In Art, Nature, and Science
Stalled
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- human in there
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- proof of impact
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- face in a jar
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- public private
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- alone
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- impossible conditions
On Saturday we saw a man trying to commit suicide. He had one leg hooked over the bridge railing and was staring towards the lights of the Inner Harbour. It was night and he was dressed in a dark track suit with sneakers and white socks. He strode purposefully over the bridge and stopped off centre where he hooked his leg and stood staring at the water as we drove by. We turned the car around and stopped in our lane right behind him.
I asked him if he was okay and he didn’t answer. I asked again and he still didn’t answer. He had his leg hooked over the railing and just stared towards the harbour. I could feel the distance between us. It was like a cement glass bubble. The sensation made my fingertips itch.
We drove across the bridge and called the police. He sat down on the sidewalk and put his head in his hands.
We drove across the bridge again in the opposite direction. He stood up again and put his leg back over the railing.
I got out of the car and watched him from one end of the bridge. We were both dressed in black. The water was dark. I spied on this man as he worked up the despair to jump.
Two people drove by asking about him. I told them I had called the police.
I watched. I thought about what would happen if he jumped. I would run into the water after him. I thought about his life stopping. How the world would miss him. like a painting missing a colour. You would notice the absence. The agony his mother would be in without him. My neck hurt with the tension. I watched. It was cold. The street lights were cold and orange. The police came and stopped in the middle of the bridge. The flashing lights of the police car were cold. The siren barked.
I left.
I got into my warm car with my family and we drove to our home that smelled of coffee.
As I write this I want to cry.
