August 2010 at Vetri Glass-Seattle
Exhibition Dates: August 1st – 25th, 2010
Artist Reception: First Thursday, August 5th, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Vetri Glass-Seattle is pleased to present glass artist Jen Violette in Crisp, her first solo exhibition with the gallery. The new series of glass and mixed media sculptures focuses on the transformations she observes in nature in her Vermont garden. Through her body of work, Violette documents and preserves the scenes of growth from seed to sprout to harvest.
Gardening and glassblowing go hand in glove for Violette; the former connects her with nature while the latter allows her expression of love for the earth’s bounty. “In a single growing season, all the stages of life and its cycles are encountered.” Using a variety of techniques and materials, Violette pays homage to the garden. Watering cans, shovels and trowels transform from simple tools to beautiful artifacts, sand cast farmhouses oversee a neatly painted wood grid and ripe fruit rise up on pedestals of wood and steel. Soft layers of glass powder dusted over the surfaces of the work evoke dirt and earth crusted into the sides of the pots and the rough textures of rind and peel. In one piece, Violette literally “plants” sprouts into terracotta colored glass pots, softening the “soil” with heat, fusing the tender plants to the pot. As the growing season in Vermont is relatively short, the sculptures remind us of the vibrancy of the harvest and provide year-round inspiration.
Jen Violette has worked with glass since 1991 and received a BFA from Alfred University in Alfred, NY in 1994. She has studied with Lino Tagliapietra, William Morris, Dante Marioni, Richard Marquis, Pino Signoretto, Randy Walker and Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen, while attending courses at The Rhode Island School of Design, Pilchuck Glass School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, and Penland School of Crafts. Among her awards are the Cohn Family Trust Prize for Excellence in Glass from the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art and Craft in Philadelphia, PA as well as an award for Excellence in Craft with the American Council Show in Baltimore, MD.
Contact: Susan Marabito, Director
susan@vetriglass.com
1404 First Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98101
phone: 206.226.9608 fax: 206.621.9447
1821 E Dock St. #101, Tacoma, Washington 98402
phone: 253.383.3692 fax: 253.383.3687
Image details: Under Cover, blown and hot sculpted glass, 10"h x 15"w x 5"d, 2010
Photo: Jeff Baird
