"This month's exhibitions at Friesen Gallery are timed to coincide with tonight's annual Pilchuck Glass School auction. Local glass fans and out-of-town collectors can judge the work of Jane Rosen and the health of the Stanwood school's 16-year-old emerging artists-in-residence program (EAiR).
Some of Rosen's artworks are made of glass but most are mixed-media sculptures, paintings and drawings that evoke a lost or endangered world of nature and a fragmented, battered environment involving animal parts, bird wings and animal hooves.
With an echo of glass artist William Morris, Rosen (who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley) is more muted and subtle. Her small painted-plaster plaques are homages to quail, deer and Chinese landscapes. They join larger watercolors like "Anatomy of a Horse" (2005), "Amber (Iris)" (2006) and "Birdseed" (2006), soft-focus nature studies of delicate and pale colors. The latter, especially, is indebted to Morris Graves with its faded-rice-paper appearance and filmy green background.
Rosen's sculptures seem stronger statements. "Marble Wing" (2006) is a carved wing shape that confounds our expectations of soft feathers, here executed in hard Portuguese marble. "Oh Deer" (2005) is a wall-mounted effigy of a deer without legs, smothered in a marble-dust paste. Even more satisfying, "Feet Herd" (2006) is six free-standing animal hooves averaging 7 feet high. They are echoes of a beautiful drawing hanging nearby, "Feet First" (2005).
Best of all, six cast-glass bear and seal or sea-lion heads each juts out from the wall with considerable mystery and power. Done during Rosen's own Pilchuck residency, they prove once again how important it is for artists working in other materials to come to Pilchuck and try out glass. For Rosen, 56, the results are quietly spectacular.
The EAiR program has an illustrious past but seems in crisis now. Subject of an elaborate Tacoma Art Museum survey in 2000 with a lavish catalog, the program's recent shows, hosted by Friesen and other galleries over the years, have been a letdown. Since Friesen has two separate storefront spaces in the Washington Mutual Tower, the Rosen show should have been in the larger of the two. The six women from Pilchuck could barely fill half of the bigger space.
The emerging artists in residence focus on experimental work while at Pilchuck but this does not always translate into a gallery setting. For example, gallery owner Andria Friesen mentioned that more than 25 percent of the work sent was broken in shipment or otherwise unexhibitable. Pilchuck co-directors Pike Powers and Ruth King should help the artists with basic professional practices or junk the whole gallery showcase idea.
Exhibit review
"Jane Rosen: Tracking" and "Pilchuck Glass School: 16th Year of Emerging Artists-in-Resident," 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, through Oct. 25, Friesen Gallery, 1200 Second Ave., Seattle (206-628-9501 or
www.friesengallery.com).
Selected by a jury of eight, there may be too many cooks spoiling the broth. No male artists have been selected since 2003. One artist, Jenny Heishman, simply sent three works that had already been seen this summer in another local gallery a few blocks away. The most talented of the group, Heishman was a big disappointment.
To be fair, there are bits and pieces that may lead to something. Pat Bako's colorful large pâte-de-verre bowls are charming. Rachel Moore's six cast-glass outstretched hands cry out for a larger installation: there should have been dozens. Perhaps influenced by Moore, Cara Meling cast 16 glass half-feet — toes and insteps only — and propped them up on a pedestal, like corpses on a slab. Taguchi's "Sky Mountain" (2005) is the photo-document of her glass house project at Pilchuck. Why couldn't we have the house instead of the color photograph?
One final fear: Are the EAiR artists chosen examples of how talented younger artists are losing interest in glass? Instead of a thriving, emerging future, they may instead be signs of the beginning of the end."
Kangas, M. "End of an Era? A Pilchuck veteran outshines emerging artists" October 13, 2006. The Seattle Times. accessed April 2, 2010. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2003301516_visart13.html
2006 Mike Madison:
"This story in today's NYT about Seattle glass sculptor/industrialist Dale Chihuly only scratches the surface of the bitterness that surrounds his dealings with some members of the arts community.
The case sounds like another “can you copyright nature” kind of claim, but it seems more accurate to say that the case involves whether the plaintiff really owns what the plaintiff claims he owns — since he never, actually, made any of the glass sculptures involved. According to the Times:
He acknowledges that he has not blown glass for 27 years, dating from a surfing accident that cost him the full range of shoulder motion, an injury that struck three years after he had lost sight in his left eye in a traffic accident.
Still, Mr. Chihuly said, he works with sketches, faxes and through exhortation. Nothing with his name on it ever came from anyone but himself, he said.
Did that “exhortation” amount to “authorship” for copyright purposes? Or does the defendant — who blew glass under the plaintiff’s supervision — have his own “authorial” interests at stake?
Take a look at this exhibit: a fax from the plaintiff to the defendant that communicates some sketches — and adds,
“Here’s a little sketch but make whatever you want.” At the least, this sounds to me like the defendant has a plausible claim of joint authorship with respect to at least some of the plaintiff’s works. And the style of those works in general may be a product of the defendant as much as it is of Chihuly. If that’s right, then the defendant isn’t liable for copying — himself. If style can be owned, and if you own your style, then you’re allowed to express yourself. Just ask
John Fogerty."
Madison, M. "Chihuly Glass Sculpture." Madison.net: law, technology, society. Accessed June 2, 2010. Dates: June 1st, 2006. http://madisonian.net/archives/2006/06/01/chihuly-glass-sculpture/
