Emeryville, CA – The Bullseye Resource Center Bay Area Gallery presents a group exhibition exploring boundaries and form. Contour, on view March 6 through June 2, features work by Jane Bruce, Mel Douglas, Karlyn Sutherland, and Richard Whiteley.
A contour is a boundary, an outer edge that delineates an object from the surrounding world in which it is situated. We can touch it, as we trace the gentle curve of a bottle with a finger; and we can draw it, by defining a silhouette; and yet it isn’t there at all. It is a transition, a liminal expression of both the container and the contained. Artists Jane Bruce and Richard Whiteley utilize the transparency of glass to emphasize the connection between exterior forms and internal voids. Mel Douglas focuses on the surface of forms by delicately engraving lines across the surface, literally tracing an object's contours. In her recent work, Douglas draws vessel forms with powdered glass that crumbles and shifts. Karlyn Sutherland’s recent body of work re-creates spaces that are personally important. Sutherland distills each space into a simplified perspectival outline.
Born in England, Jane Bruce received a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, and undertook further postgraduate study at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Bruce has been the recipient of a range of fellowships, visiting artist awards and grants, including fellowships from the Creative Glass Center of America and the New York Foundation for the Arts; artist-in-residence at The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass, visiting artist at Museum of Glass, Tacoma, and a New Work Grant from the Australia Council. She exhibits her work internationally, and it can be found in many major museum collections worldwide, including those of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; European Museum of Modern Glass, Rodental, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.
Following study at the renowned Australian National University School of Art & Design in Canberra, Mel Douglas has gone on to exhibit her work at galleries in Australia, the United States, Italy, and Singapore. Douglas’ glass has been featured in numerous international publications and is included in permanent museum collections including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and The Corning Museum of Glass in New York. Her delicate, subtle work has earned Douglas many grants and awards, including the 2002 Ranamok Glass Prize.
Karlyn Sutherland studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art and received a PhD from The University of Edinburgh, where she was later employed as a design tutor and research assistant. She began working in glass in 2009, when her research into topics of place and attachment led her home to Caithness, Scotland, where she enrolled in a master class at North Lands Creative. She has since gone on to exhibit her work nationally and internationally. In 2016, she was an Endeavour Research Fellow in the Glass Workshop of the Australian National University School of Art & Design in Canberra. Sutherland was an artist-in-residence at Bullseye Studio in Portland, Oregon, and at The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass in New York. Sutherland lives and works as an artist, architectural designer, and writer in her hometown of Lybster, Scotland.
Richard Whiteley is the Head of the Glass Workshop at the Australian National University School of Art & Design in Canberra. He received a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Australian National University School of Art & Design, before earning a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.