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Museum of Glass Presents Transparently Built, an Exhibition of Glass Installations
Transparently Built: A Group Show of Glass Installations
September 16, 2006 – May 27, 2007
Organized by the Museum of Glass
Sponsored by Russell Investment Group, Heritage Bank, and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass
Tacoma, Wash. (July 17, 2006)—The Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art announces a new exhibition that explores diverse architectural properties of glass. Transparently Built: A Group Show of Glass Installations comprises four dynamic installations created by four prominent female artists working in glass—Jean Shin, Jo Yarrington, Mildred Howard and Anna Skibska. Two of the pieces are site-specific, or created to respond to and interact with a specific architectural space, while the others create their own environments. Each reveals the versatility and variety of glass form, from architectural glass to recycled wine bottles, and from lamp-worked to blown glass. The pieces will be installed in the Museum’s Viola A. Chihuly Gallery and Grand Hall from September 16, 2006, through May 27, 2007.
Jean Shin’s Glass Block (Tacoma), 2006 will fill a portion of the gallery from floor to ceiling with hundreds of stacked wine bottles. Working with architect Brian Ripel, Shin uses the flat bottoms of the bottles to create a dynamic stain-glass window of circular patterns transmitting various pixels of colored light into the gallery. On the reverse side, the protruding bottle necks with their colorful wrappings appear as an
impenetrable, opaque obstruction. The installation reveals the underlying beauty of a familiar object when amassed, while bringing together two local traditions in Washington—that of glassblowing and winemaking.
Lavabo, 2006 by Jo Yarrington, the second site-specific installation, incorporates the artist’s performance-based photographs which are enlarged into transparencies and then attached to the 60 feet of glass panels that comprise the eastern façade of the Museum’s Grand Hall. Referencing the Museum’s architecture, functionality and natural surroundings, Yarrington cleverly directs the viewer’s attention to structure and the poetic nuances of color, light, and passage of time.
Mildred Howard’s Blackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House), 2002 will be familiar to many Museum of Glass visitors. Originally displayed alongside a reflecting pool filled with floating red glass apples on the mid-level plaza, it will be reconfigured and reinterpreted by Howard for an indoor setting. This time, the apples will be placed inside the house, preventing entry into the structure and challenging the viewer’s perception of shelter and home.
The final piece is a new creation by Anna Skibska. Skibska’s work was also displayed at the Museum of Glass in 2002 as part of the Some Assembly Required exhibition. Best known for her large-scale yet fragile glass objects, Skibska employs a technique that differs greatly from glassblowing. With a small blowtorch she molds thin, transparent glass rods into slender ribbons and fuses them together to form delicate sculptural webs, which often replicate massive architectural elements. Her work is a combination of sculpture, architecture, three-dimensional drawing and storytelling.
