Emeryville, CA - In Glimmer, a solo exhibition at Bullseye’s Resource Center Bay Area, Jenn Shifflet’s kiln-glass panels demonstrate a painterly approach by way of delicate color transitions and hazy gradients while simultaneously providing a site for contemplation and reflection. Glimmer is on view November 26, 2019 to March 14, 2020.
Deftly using powdered glass, frit balls, and reverse-painted glazes on panels and mirror, Shifflet creates horizontal expanses of color that gently shift from one hue to another. While the surfaces of some works are sheathed in diminutive glass globules and spheres reminiscent of dewdrops or star clusters, others such as Opaline Blue Drift employ frit balls sparingly to create patterning in particular areas. The effect in both cases is one that invites the interaction of light and responds with shimmering refraction.
The ephemeral, dreamlike quality of Shifflet’s work is suggestive of the fleeting nature of time and existence. The artist describes her interest in creating, “… a visual language that points to how the beauty of life is held within a profound fragility of impermanence.” Through her current body of work, Shifflet directs awareness precisely to that liminal state.
Jenn Shifflet is a painter and glass artist. She was awarded an affiliate residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2004 to 2007 and was an artist in residence at Bullseye Resource Center Bay Area in 2015. Shifflet received the Smithsonian Museum's Resident Associate Honors Award, an honorable mention from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Rotunda Gallery and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland. Solo exhibition venues include the SFMOMA Artists Gallery and Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, California. Shifflet's work can be found in private and public collections in the US, Asia, and the Middle East.