Explorations: Beneath the Blanket

Late this winter, when I was beginning to come out of the dark space I had inhabited after Tony died, just after I had finished making the glass for "A Grief Observed" and for another not-quite-yet finished figure piece, I decided to play. I wanted to explore something more abstract. I had been following the advice of several friends and had been examining the work of several abstract expressionists.

(Can I say that I am now gaga over Sean Scully? - more than his paintings, it's his photographs which speak to me. The photos I have taken over the years, while not the same quality, portray similar subjects, similar moods. It was like opening a scrapbook of my photos when I looked at his -- they took my heart to the place it wants to go when I explore through the camera lens.)

So, I wanted to explore a different direction, and I wanted to play. And I decided to play in neutral colors, not at all my palette -- but it felt right, like it would be soothing, as comforting as a blankie or a bowl of cereal on a rough day, as safe as the fort I built with a blanket and a table.

This is the piece born of that exploration. It wasn't quite right until I sandblasted the surface, taking the gloss off the glass and giving it the warm silk feeling I like so much. The cold gloss may work for my figure pieces, but this one needed to be more comforting.

People have seen all sorts of things in this piece of glass, mesas, gardens, a room, a journey. For me it was about comfort and integration, a visual assurance that all would be right for me again.

This was a significant departure for me, in both the colors I employed and the design. There was none of the chunky visual texture I almost always use, no color reactions, no metals, no fumed glass. It didn't feel organic to me. But neither was it as graphic as the figure pieces set in texture. And perhaps the texture was in the placement of the elements, the repetition of color and form, the movement.

Everyone who saw this went nuts over it. Maybe I am onto something here? I have continued to explore these while still working on figure pieces. Eventually they will come together. In the meantime I find comfort in the space, in the palette that calms, in the safe place I find in these neutral pieces.