An array of stunning pieces of local glass artwork is to be found at Gibsons Public Art Gallery for the next few weeks.
The show, entitled “Vibrancy,” brings together some of the Sunshine Coast’s most accomplished artists working in glass including Claire Folstad, Susan Furze, Lou Guest, Wayne Harjula, Sue Millar, Chris Motloch, David New Small, Miyuki Shinkai, Robert Studer and Dyan Vidulich.
Shinkai is curating the show, the fourth of its kind staged at GPAG, which features a number of her own playful and unique mixed media creations.
“Each piece is in a different language,” she said in an opening-reception talk last Saturday. “‘Vibrancy’ is just a name. The individual pieces have many, many stories.”
As the gallery aptly noted in its release, the dozens of works variously demonstrate “the vibrancy, luminosity, brilliance, colour, manipulation and difficulty in handling this material.”
Sechelt artist Claire Folstad, for instance, produces fused pieces that look like she’s captured 40-cm-diameter (16-inch) spills of molten glass in mid-splash.
It’s painstaking work with some works requiring four different kiln firings of 16 hours each. But producing them is both artistically satisfying and therapeutic, Folstand says.
“I break glass or cut it into hundreds of little pieces,” she explained. “They’re broken, like we are, and I make them into something that can be beautiful again.”
A work by Mary Lou Guest is the biggest piece in the show and catches the eye from the back wall as you walk into the gallery. It’s called “Growth Spurt” and is Guest’s take on a section of garden – in a medium of mostly mirrored glass in swirling mosaic shapes.
“I was a master gardener at one point in my life,” the Gibsons artist explained.
Included in the materials used for the garden’s flowers are pieces of slug-repellent copper mesh and cleverly deployed dichroic glass which shines in two different colours, depending on the angle that you tilt your head.
Every piece in the show is worth a good look, from Robert Studer’s striking, striated long shapes, to Susan Furze’s framed glass layers and Chris Motloch’s geometric designs. And don’t overlook the delicate and diminutive vase by Dyan Vidulich and David New Small.
Realtor Russ Qureshi and dentist Evangelo Papoutsis are sponsoring the show, which runs through Oct. 8.
