 |
Artiste créateur et designer OWENS PAT
128 Oxford Ln
PA 19454 North Wales
USA
| |
|
|
Objet
Pièce unique
|
I began working in glass after making the transition from over twenty years of oil painting to flameworking and blowing glass. Because of this background of formal training and experience in painting, I look at glass art through a painter’s eyes.
Just as in painting, where color can establish depth and dimension, color in glass can elaborate and define mood, context, and emotion, and the color vibrancy that is unique to glass immediately draws active participation and interpretation from the viewer. I elicit this narrative interpretation and interaction in constructs which include flameworked figures. Though my glass art is formally directed at fully realizing a synergy of two- and three-dimensional forms and shapes within a fully developed formal color context, the realization of the art has been in representing human figures in flameworked glass and presenting them in a context or juxtaposition which creates a narrative communication with the viewer.
The figures are the product of flameworking techniques which I have mastered and modified for my own ends. The forms are constructed from clear and opaque soda-lime glasses which I manufacture. These are pulled into rods for manipulation in the Oxygen/propane bench torch. The figures are representational, but they are subservient to the more pervasive demands of the narrative in which they are placed. Because the narrative is intended to be interactive with the viewer, the figures are made and positioned in a narrative context relative to each other. A skew or bias toward manifold interpretations of the interactions of the figures is intentional and is encouraged by the context in which they are placed and presented.
Developing this context draws on my training and experience as a painter, since a major contribution to the narrative is made by painting on glass. The paints, instead of opaque pigments dispersed in the oxidizing oil medium common to oil painting, are based on pulverized colored clear glass powders dispersed in a pyrolysable binder. After application, the glass pigment is fused onto the plate glass by firing in a kiln, which also serves to volatilize the binder. The final color is often the result of multiple overlays of clear glasses, with each layer being independently fused and annealed. The character of the color can also be modified by etching or sand blasting the plate glass before or after painting.
The final piece is mechanically assembled (steel, stainless steel, rubber, copper) to be either hanging or free-standing, depending on the breadth of the narrative interactions that have inspired the piece. Both the free-standing and hanging pieces are constructed so that light is allowed to pass through the painted plate glass, allowing the refractive qualities of glass to enhance the visual impact.
More recent works have emphasized a three-dimensional context by placing the figures with bronze castings. The bronze is made by hand forming a wax positive and then having this made into the bronze through the Ôlost wax’ casting process. After hand finishing, the bronze casting is patinated by reacting the hot metal surface with appropriate oxidizing and reducing chemical mixtures to provide custom colors and color textures. To date, all of the pieces which employ bronze castings as part of the context for the glass figures are constructed to be free-standing.
Because of the amount and types of work involved in the design and implementation of each piece, they are each done as Ôone of a kind’ creations, though the larger themes that inspire the work are often recursive from piece to piece. As should be expected, the techniques developed to complete each piece serve to inspire and be expanded in subsequent works, so my work is continuously evolving.
|
Technique
flameworked glass with copper electroplating and fired-on
enamel on plate glass
Dimensions
43.2 X 35.6 X8.3
|
|
|
|
|
