Drop by the Oyster Bay Historical Society’s Koenig Center at 20 Summit St. for an “aha” moment. You will get a quick art glass beauty fix. Members of the Long Island Craft Guild’s Glass Media Group are exhibiting their works in Ancient Art Form: Contemporary Adaptations in Glass, open now through June 7. It is amazing to see what people are doing with glass today; using portable kilns, they are creating fascinating art works.
“It is nice that they are big and little; abstracts and landscapes; jewelry and bowls. It runs the gamut of wearables, useables and the purely decorative,” said Sally Shore, Locust Valley fiber artist and a member of the guild. She will have her work on exhibit at the Ariel Gallery in Locust Valley on May 15.
Today’s art form is very personal.
“That’s why I work in no color,” said Louise Hope, who was wearing a flirty gray lace dress covered by a soft black coat. Her work is abstract and graphic, and as she related, is in black and white.
The LI Craft Guild has meetings every other month. Smaller groups dedicated to a particular medium, such as fiber art, meet in the alternate months at each other’s houses, sharing show and tell and offering encouragement and education to each other.
Julianna Kirk is the glass art media chair. At the show at the Koenig Center, Kirk is exhibiting a triptych, which represents herself and her two daughters.
“I cut the wood myself, and found every bit of material as I searched through antique stores to find the pieces,” said Kirk. “One daughter is a warrior and one is a maternal woman. In the center is me, generating power between the two of them and among the three of us.”
The piece contains pre-fused pieces, gold leaf, and vitreous paint.
“I started working in glass in 1987,” Kirk said. “It is a love and a passion.”
Retired from a teaching career in junior and senior high school, she has continued teaching.
“I teach working with glass at the Art League of Long Island, and from my home studio, and am an art consultant teacher for Eastern Suffolk BOCES,” said Kirk.
In this budget conscious atmosphere, Kirk said there is a demand for art education, but it gets short-shifted by budget cuts. She went from doing five to six workshops a year to one or two.
But, she said, “I do have some PTA associations that help with programs.”
She said this ancient art form had a resurgence in the 1950s that “rekindled the passion.” Today glass blowing is “hot,” but [the artists in the exhibit] were fusing and not using hot molten glass.
“We take cold glass and then put it into the kiln,” said Kirk. “My kilns are in my basement and are full fusing, one large and the other small. You put the pieces in cold and slowly raise the temperature so that the integrity of the glass remains intact. It is a mixture of physics, time and temperature. After a piece is taken out of the kiln it is put in the annealer. If you don’t anneal something it will shock [shatter]. The glass molecules have to hold hands together nicely.”
She continued: “I was never good in science, but if I wanted to pursue this I had to know how to put things in a kiln without being totally frustrated. The hardest part is the firing work. Now I know enough about firing that I can do it.”
The artists exhibiting include Albert Bouchard, who was the drummer in the Blue Oyster Cult and now is a music teacher in New York City. Also included are Anna Fredericks, Kathleen Gerlach, Lesa O’Connell, Pamela Jean Hanna of Garden City, Louise Hope, Stephanie Navon Jacobson, Barbara Kruger and Lilian Masten.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of exhibited art supports the programs and exhibitions of the OBHS’s Angela Koenig Research and Collection Center.
The LICG will meet on Thursday, May 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Syosset Public Library, 225 South Oyster Bay Rd., Syosset, speaker is Robin Moore of Robin Moore Legacies LLC and is on “Estate Planning and Cataloging Your Work.”
