The Canberra School of Art is world-renowned for its glass workshop and for the talented generation of Australian artists that it spawned. Intersection spotlights a gifted trio of young Americans whose time at the program left an indelible mark on their art. The Bullseye Connection Gallery, March 24 – April 24, 2004.
Portland, OR – After their time in American university programs Nicole Chesney (BFA, Mass Art, 1997), Johnathon Schmuck (MFA, RIT, 1997), and April Surgent (College for Creative Studies, Detroit, 2000) each journeyed to the Australian National University at Canberra to study at one of the world's most rigoroous programs in the glass arts, the Glass Workshop founded by Klaus Moje in 1982.
Taken as a body, the works exhibited in Intersection must be seen at least in part as a tribute to this academic background: their meditative qualities, the sensitivity to quiet detail and the technical expertise in cold-working and kilnforming. Yet, it is not the glassworking methods or materials that speak first in the work; glass in these pieces hides its more common aspects, giving way to mood, atmosphere and idea.
The legacy of Canberra is difficult to miss in the nuanced surface treatments and quiet coloration: the spirituality of the late Stephen Procter, the land-based forms of Kirstie Rea, the incisive precision of Jane Bruce. Chesney, Schmuck and Surgent are heirs to an unmistakable tradition that has for over two decades fused Old World craftsmanship with a fresh Australian vision.
Anyone experiencing the vast emptiness of the environs about Canberra can feel its impact on the stone-like, light-filled works of Schmuck and Surgent, The physical - and sometimes specifically geological - environment, is a starting point. But, like the medium, it is just a beginning.
In the best of these works, the journey continues through the inward reflection that natural phenomenon exercise upon the artist and the viewer. So the “Night Water” works of Nicole Chesney, created in Rhode Island four years after taking her degree at CSA, resonate still with the spirit of the program. The psychic communion between dark water and human emotion, while inspired by the writings of Gaston Bachelard on one level, seems no less saturated with the remarkable integration of material, craft and idea that defines the Canberra moment.
For more information please contact Rebecca Rockom by phone at 503-227-0222 or by email at rebeccarockom@bullseye-glass.com.
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Download: Intersection 2004