{"id":88698,"date":"2024-11-26T07:39:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T14:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=88698"},"modified":"2024-12-02T07:58:48","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T14:58:48","slug":"glass-in-the-garden-is-a-shimmering-showcase-of-art-and-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/glass-in-the-garden-is-a-shimmering-showcase-of-art-and-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Glass in the Garden is a Shimmering Showcase of Art and Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Glass in the Garden is the Glass Art Guild of Utah’s annual show in Red Butte Garden’s Arboretum<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A visitor from another state coming to Utah at the turn of the millennium could not have missed the remarkable vitality of the arts throughout the region and across the range of media. Here, seemingly everyone has at least a little bit of musical skill and practice, with experience somewhere between singing in church and performing at Abravanel Hall. Handicrafts like quilting and wood carving are qualifications for citizenship. And ample opportunity to paint and sculpt is always within reach.<\/h4>\n

But if that skier or backpacker happened to be from Seattle, admittedly the center of the international glass art scene, they might have puzzled over the absence of glass from the local gallery scene. Of course, artists in Utah have their own approaches, and it wasn\u2019t long before the stunning backdrop of the Red Butte Gardens would be brought into play in support of glass. There\u2019s nothing like the sunlight over the Wasatch, through the blue sky and multicolored foliage, to bring to life works that thrive on transparency and reflections the way only glass can, and the spacious headquarters of the Gardens, with their tall, wrap-around windows, make their own contribution. Not only have the members of the Glass Art Guild of Utah absorbed the lessons of a century of Studio Glass, but they\u2019ve added many local elements to the mix, making for a unique experience that will be available until December 21, with new pieces being added as other treasures find new homes.<\/h4>\n

The sheer quantity of high-quality work makes it impossible to give more than a glimpse here, and the range of approaches exceeds even that. Yet surely our primary subject is the Land, and a couple of landscapes will show how much glass can add to the way we recollect it. Barbara Wesley\u2019s \u201cTranquility Lake,\u201d like all glass objects, really needs to be seen in person to appreciate not only the vibrancy of the colors, but their depth in what is, after all, a three-dimensional medium. A hint of this can be seen in the water here. Even greater depth is present in Barbara Busche\u2019s \u201cAspen Grove,\u201d where the perspective on trees near and far is bolstered by their actually being closer to the surface in front and those in the distance being deeper within the glass.<\/h4>\n
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Barbara Busche, “Aspen Grove”<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Not all glass paintings are representational. Tom Stout laminated narrow strips of color together with leaves of clear glass that, when melted together in the kiln, produced a vividly colorful abstract sculpture that exists entirely inside the glass, a visual effect with an impact available only in a glass object. It\u2019s just possible, with the single eye of the camera taking the place of two living eyes, to get a mere hint of this dynamic object in a photograph. In \u201cGolden,\u201d on the other hand, Suzanne Larson used opaque glass with a metallic finish atop white opalescent, a trademark of Louis Comfort Tiffany\u2019s, to produce another kind of third dimension in a contemporary style that Tiffany could never have achieved.<\/h4>\n

It would be wrong to create the impression that all the glass here is essentially painting.\u00a0 <\/span>Thanks to the unique ways glass can be worked, bowls and vases often display both surface details and the sculptural shapes they are applied to, into which they penetrate\u00a0 <\/span>instead of just lying on the surface. Then there\u2019s a wealth of jewels for personal adornment, the sun catchers, and even some surprising functional objects, such as platters, trays and even lazy susans.<\/h4>\n