MIchael Rogers in the studio.
GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?
Michael Rogers: Last year was my sabbatical from The Rochester Institute of Technology, and an important goal was to work two-dimensionally with found imagery as I’ve worked with found objects in the past. The idea has always been to combine objects, imagery, and text in such a way that the final result becomes more than the sum total of its parts. I think of this process as a type of poetic invention, a process of evoking non-linear narratives that trigger multiple associations in the mind of the viewer.
My ongoing interest in engraving images onto the surfaces of my sculptural work has led me to the processes of printmaking. I’ve got little interest in creating multiples, though, preferring to make each work different. There is also an increased desire to work with color as an element feeding into the content of the work. I’ve never used much color in past work as its decorative associations related to the medium of glass always seemed to interfere with the content of the work. Due to the dynamic phenomena associated with glass, the addition of much color on sculptural form seemed to push it all over the edge for me. By simplifying to a rectangular glass format, color now becomes an intriguing possibility I want to explore.
Michael Rogers, Time and Balance (detail), 2010.
For the past six months I’ve been working intently on a series of fused-glass panels with silk-screened enamel imagery encased in the layers. I’ve also worked on a series of prints on paper using plate glass as a printing substrate.
Collections of imagery from old books, particularly those containing early and mid-19th century copperplate etchings are an important source for this current body of work. Metaphors in the process of looking, internalizing, and making are ever-present for me. The composition of imagery and color at the service of narrative within these panels is intuitive. If this intuition is informed it is certainly vulnerable and in search of empathy. There is also an attempt to preserve the ephemera of daily life and to be conscious of the temporal.
Of great importance for me currently are ongoing collaborations. I’ve been working with ceramic artist Rick Hirsch for several years now and this collaboration has expanded to include poets C. D. Wright and Forrest Gander. Multi-media has always been my focus and I’m intensely interested in the area where different disciplines intersect. Poetry in all art forms is essential. “Poetry is a necessity of life,” Wright has said. “It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” I believe this is true of art as well. I’m now working on including the words of C.D. and Forrest into my works.
Michael Rogers, TIme and Balance, 2010.
GLASS: What artwork have you experienced recently that has moved you, and got you thinking about your own work?
Michael: Well, I’ve mentioned C.D. Wright and Forrest Gander. Their poetry is a true vehicle for transporting one from one state of mind to another. I’m astonished at the ability of words to evoke images. Some of the best sculpture I’ve ever seen is by the Scottish poet and sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay. I love the work of poets and writers such as Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino. I like people who defy characterization as being defined as any one thing, Paul Bowles, John Cage, Peter Beard, Vladimir Nabokov, Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, to name a very eclectic few.
Artwork I’ve recently seen in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts is the work of Idris Khan. I’d give you different answers tomorrow but I’ve always liked Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys. There are many others!
GLASS: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions you can talk about?
Michael: I’ve got a one-person exhibit at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, “Palimpsests and Ephemera” which opened on January 30th and will run till March 13. (I’m giving a lecture this Thursday, February 4th, at 6 PM at MassArt, and we’re having an opening reception at the Society on Friday evening, February 5th, from 6 – 8 PM) This is my first exhibition of the new body of work comprised of fused glass panels and prints on paper.
In addition, my work Neruda was selected by Nicholas Baume for “Art on the Edge” opening April 15th and running through August 1st, 2010, at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.
And finally, from July 25th to August 25, I’ll have work in “Messages and Written Narratives,” an exhibition at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.