SYLVIA GLASS
by Nancy Kay Turner
(Jan Baum Gallery, West Hollywood) Since the end of the last century, when Japanese woodblock prints flooded the European markets, Western artists have been fascinated with the Japanese culture. It is a culture which combines elegance with brutality, a refined aesthetic sensibility with an extreme commitment to the group. It is a beautiful country, steeped in spirituality, where even the written language is composed of drawn symbols. Even today Japan can be an enigma to the Westerner--a country where each morning men dressed in western suits burn incese as they pray in front of temples on the street.
Sylvia Glass displays collages, four boxes, mixed-media paintings
and four artist-made books inspired by her second trip to Japan.
In this body of work, Glass weaves poetic narratives by combining
scraps of papers, brushes and other gleanings onto canvas, muslin
and paper surfaces. Many of these pieces are small in scale and
extremely intimate. Indeed, Glass requests that guests to the
exhibit be allowed, even encouraged, to touch the books and boxes.
It is clear that Glass is a sensualist whose prime interest is
the surface. She layers thin pieces of muslin into which she
tucks small dolls or parts of them. The surface, which is corroded,
faded, decaying and mottled with age, becomes the vehicle used
to express her view of art as archeological--literally, a sacred
object that one might uncover in a burial mound.
"Japan Revisited #11," mixed
media, 12 x 10", 1997.
"Japan Revisited #4," mixed
media, 14 3/4 x 22 1/2", 1997.
