Compulsive Colour
Delicate, intense, liquid and radiant, colour provides glass with its most seductive quality. From its earliest human creation glass was coloured, and that colour has enthralled us. Historically, glass manufacturers – like the Muranese during the fifteenth century – spent much of their energy developing truly clear glass, but those same factories also developed a kaleidoscope of colour to accompany that pure transparency. As a result, contemporary glass manufacturers now create colours in every shade, tone and intensity, a palette only made more powerful by the possibilities of both transparency and opacity within this material.
For some glass artists and makers, the abundance of colour presents an opportunity to explore, as they slowly gather a personal palette that suits their needs. Other makers show little interest in their options, as they have long ago become obsessed with one specific tone. Then there are the makers that can’t be satisfied and seek to create the colour they need by combining, thinning down or even mixing in other materials. Each glass maker has that compulsive colour, the one they keep going back to, the one they can’t kick. I first noticed this colour compulsion in my own practice when my glass supplier sent me an order with Sea Blue, a dark blue–green transparent colour I had requested in every previous order but that I hadn’t ordered that time. I was, in truth, relieved to see it when I opened the packaging.
That realization led me to wonder about other glass makers and their compulsive colours. So I interviewed six Canadian glass makers, each one in a different stage of their career, using different types or methods of glass-working, and each having a colour that they can’t stop using, that either defined their career or changed their thinking.
Laura Donefer, Yellow Heart Amulet Basket, 2014. Blown and flameworked glass, 91 x 86 x 41 cm. Photo by: STEPHEN WILD
Laura Donefer: Reclaiming Yellow
Laura Donefer has been a crucial part of the Canadian glass scene for over three decades. When she began a new basket series that incorporated the complicated brightness of yellow, it was with a purpose: to heal.
Donefer was preparing for a show in Manhattan shortly after September 11th 2001, and two things were on her mind: the horror of the attack on the city and a recently discovered family grief. “My father had been doing research into the family name at the Holocaust Museum,” explains Donefer. “In the records he discovered a large section of his family had been part of the extermination.” To help deal with these tragedies, Donefer conceived the Amulet Series: expressive multi-coloured baskets with splashes of varying colour, created with course granules of glass colour known as frit.
One of the vessels Donefer created for the show used a variety of yellow frit. It was an attempt to recreate the milky yellowness of the Star of David that Germany’s Jews had been forced to wear in the late 1930s. “The first yellow piece was very specific,” she says. “Once that went out into the world I began to gain hope and happiness from using brighter yellows.” Influenced by her love of Matisse, colour and expression have always been imperative for Donefer, and this work was an attempt at “reclaiming yellow” as a painful expression of hope.
Charlynne Lafontaine, Choice Edible, 2016. Flameworked borosilicate glass, steel mesh, bronze screen, copper wire, steel wire.
Image courtesy of: THE CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS IMAGE
Charlynne Lafontaine: Furry Lilac
Speaking of Matisse, Charlynne Lafontaine’s wearable artwork Choice Edible is a perfect employment of Matisse’s greatest colour development: releasing colour from the bonds of reality, allowing it to inform an object’s emotion or meaning.
Lafontaine is the sort of conceptual maker who employs glass, and in this case glass colour, for its ability to refine and change the context of the familiar in art. So, when confronting the impracticality of feminine fashion, she chose to recreate the texture of her grandmother’s fur coat in a context-shifting, transparent lavender glass. “I was looking for a colour to represent women,” explains Lafontaine, “[and] rather than opting for the more obvious pink, I chose lavender.”
Each pointed spike of ‘fur’ is separately flameworked from an Asian borosilicate tubing that appears almost clear as a single tube, but when gathered together they create a lavender glow. To add mystery to the work, the lavender tubing employed by Lafontaine also shifts in colour to a soft blue under certain light.
Charlynne Lafontaine, Choice Edible, 2016. Flameworked borosilicate glass, steel mesh, bronze screen, copper wire, steel wire. Image courtesy of: EARL HAVLIN PHOTOGRAPHY
This choice of material and colour creates a twofold effect. Firstly, lavender, which “represents beauty and femininity,” reinforces the object’s relationship to women’s clothing. And, secondly, the glass material gives the coat a heavy and pointed feel, highlighting the unwearable nature of clothing often related to societal expectations regarding women’s appearances. But, in a further twist of context, Choice Edible was worn in its first appearance – in Laura Donefer’s glass fashion show at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2016 – by a man.
Jared Last, Circuit (Uranium), 2019. Blown, cut, sand carved and polished glass. 22 x 22 x 14 cm. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Jared Last: Unnatural Green
Jared Last’s blown vessels are graphic and bold; his black and clear or shifting-colour aesthetic is the sign of a maker laying all his cards on the table. So how do you add mystery to such striking work? Uranium green, of course.
After seeing the glow of uranium glass in other makers’ works, Last began to research phosphorescence in nature. “I discovered a correlation between the forms I was making and the forms of phosphorescent creatures.” This led Last to create a blank with a thin layer of uranium glass encased in a layer of powdered black. “The first time I carved [through the black] into the blank, it made me want to work with it again.” Revealed to Last was a transparent clear glass with the most subtle green tint. But under a black light the clear glass sections glowed acid green. “It was completely different from what I’d expected,” explains Last. “It’s an intense sinister green, an unnatural green.”
That green, derived from uranium oxide in the glass, begs the question: is it dangerous? “I did a lot of research into this,” says Last. “Older uranium glass is dangerous, you couldn’t have it in your house, but your microwave puts out more radiation [than this glass]”. The dangerous history and ominous glow adds to the aesthetic and conceptual depth of Last’s objects, increasing the playfulness of his work through a hidden and sinister green.
Irene Frolic, Ruby, 2016. Cast crystal glass. 47 x 30 x 20 cm. Photo by: OVERSTREET MEDIA PRODUCTIONS
Irene Frolic: Cooking Up Ruby
When Irene Frolic, one of the most decorated and inventive makers in Canada, begins creating with a colour like gold ruby in crystal casting glass, you know the results are going to be unexpected and engaging.
Frolic’s work has, in her own words, “always dealt with the human form,” and more specifically the subtly abstracted face. But her use of colour has gone through a number of stages. Frolic’s early work used metal and powdered glass inclusions to create a muted palette of blues, blacks and browns, but, when she finally started using casting crystal, that intuitive exploration allowed her to think about the material differently.
“I prefer to plan independent of my colours,” explains Frolic. “I can then cook the colours and create my own colour.” By adding other colours and clear glass to ruby gold, and by ‘cooking’ and venting the glass, she can play with the opacity, transparency and movement of the colours.
The raw material Frolic prefers to use is not a true indicator of its final colour, arriving at the artist’s studio as a clear billeted chuck of glass. This adds more unknown elements to Frolic’s process, unknowns that she enjoys and that she feels reference her subject. “It’s a human issue, the colour is about the human,” she concludes. “My medium is my metaphor.”
Cheryl Wilson-Smith, Frosty Balance, 2013. 10 x 10 x 12 cm.
Photo by: SHANNON KELLESTINE
Cheryl Wilson-Smith: The Right White
Is white a colour, is it all colours or is it nothing at all? The sculptures of Cheryl Wilson-Smith, with their crumbling surfaces and paper-thin layers, all made with powdered clear glass, explore white’s true depths through translucency and texture.
When discussing her layered use of white, Wilson-Smith asserts that “white lets you see the object more clearly.” The object’s thickness is also important to the colour, creating depth in the fused surfaces and more transition in that colour: “The thicker colour is more appealing to me.” Wilson-Smith uses a fine granulated clear glass frit, of a similar density and colour to sugar, and a silk screen to create wafer-thin layers that, when stacked and heated at a low temperature, fuse, giving this fragile structure a milky translucent tone.
It’s a technique and colour that was developed through trial and error. “I tried crystal clear frit and it felt too pink,” remarks Wilson-Smith. Regular clear frit was closer to the ice white tone she was searching for. Recently, Wilson-Smith has continued this coloured material research by experimenting with crushed recycled glass. “The recycled glass flows through screens really smoothly,” explains Wilson-Smith. “There’s a depth of colour to the material, it’s almost turquoise.”
John Honey, Duality (Series), 2018. Flameworked borosilicate glass. Dimensions variable. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
John Honey: Smoking Cobalt
The challenging reticello technique is traditionally a net of white crisscrossing lines with a bubble trapped in each square, often found wrapped around a voluptuous blown vessel. So when you see reticello in a soft translucent blue defining the distinctive shape of a John Honey pipe, you take notice.
When discussing his use of blue in reticello, Honey mentions “the density of the colour” as guiding his choice. “I only trust white and blues for reticello.” This technical decision then allows him freedom within a growing palette of blue. “I’m doing a classic technique, and it’s interesting to make in the latest colours.”
Growth in pipe making and collecting has fostered a colour explosion within borosilicate glass. “There are new colours all the time,” Honey says. “Collectors are aware of the new colours and many are building collections wanting these new colours.” The art glass scene is very different, with the gallery serving as the collector’s connection to the maker, and colour in that case is an artist’s choice. Instead, pipe makers, collectors and borosilicate manufacturers are in a symbiotic relationship.
According to Honey, as a result of this relationship, “90% of borosilicate pipe makers will describe a piece, not with an artist statement, but will instead name the colours and techniques involved.” It’s a different approach to colour, one that fosters experimentation from all contributors, making the blue hues of Honey’s reticello a subject of desire and technical discussions unique in the world of glass.
The work of pipe-making, as well as casting, fusing, coldworking and blowing, continues to develop the already complex relationship between glass makers and colour in this most mysterious of materials. I can only imagine the new uses and experiences of colour in glass waiting just around the corner.
This article was published in the Fall/Winter 2019 issue of Studio Magazine
