Conversation with curator of glass exhibition in response to top Canadian painter

Curator Christian Bernard Singer, formerly of the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, has held the position of senior curator at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in West Owen Sound, Ontario, since October 2015. He recently spoke with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet about his current exhibition entitled "With a Destiny," which features work by Canadian glass artists Laura Donefer, Susan Edgerley, and Karina Guevin. Painter Tom Thomson (1877 – 1917) is arguably Canada's most renown artist, and he ushered in a new, raw style of landscape painting at the turn of the 20th century that continues to resonate through Canadian contemporary art today. The art gallery that bears his name houses one of the largest collections of Thomson's paintings, but its mission also includes connecting the artist's trail-blazing work to the latest contemporary art in a variety of media. The glass exhibition on view through September 18, 2016, finds a connection to Thomson's work in a frank exploration of the natural landscape, as well as meditations on the idea of destiny, according to the show's curator Singer.

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: Can you elaborate on how the work of Donefer, Edgerley, and Guevin relates to Thomson's paintings?
Christian Bernard Singer: I think all three of these artist are very aware of, and observant of the whole idea of destiny, and each of the artists in this exhibition is questioning that in her work, albeit in very different ways. All subvert the idea of what glass can be. Their work always has an aspect of beauty that draws you in, like humor. And once you’re in, you’re confronted with it and you react.

Laura Donefer has done a lot of work around the Holocaust, 9/11, terrible things happening in the world that she can’t comprehend. The ensuing suffering affects her in a very visceral, emotional way, and Laura gets right into the despair of it. She feels things in a very immediate real way, there’s no filter that way, which is great if an artist can find ways to share that with the public.

In this show, Laura has gone back to her basket works that originally came out of the 9/11 event, but here she’s creating new works based on the landscape using colors taken from specific palette in Tom Thomson’s work. She is reinterpreting the landscape, capturing a feeling of the wildness of the landscape. One is winter, completely white, while the other two are colored. And the fourth piece, Blood Basket, is a sort of a warning for where we’re headed, and Tom Thomson did a series of paintings painting what he saw. One of them was the evidence of improper logging 100 years ago. Laura's work shares this concern about the environment, like Thomson's warning of over-logging. Laura's work references Canadian environmental issues such as the tar sands and climate change. Her piece has this feeling of a witch combined with a saint with arms outstretched, almost like a standing figure. It’s as if the energy of the land personified as a standing figure.

GLASS: Tell us about Susan Edgerly's work, which is completely different, certainly in terms of color.
Singer: Susan was also inspired by Thomson’s work, especially in her engagement with Thomson as an exploration of "destiny," as something that plays with chance and fate. We can’t possibly know, and yet we cling to the idea of things happening not because of chance but it being predetermined somehow. Susan doesn’t posit anything in the work, but in the work, you’re invited in a way to explore the idea and come to your own conclusion.

This is especially evident in her work Wishing Pool, which Susan created especially for the show. Here in the region of Owen Sound, Ontario, on the shores of the Georgian Bay, you observe things that are magical and special. The experience of viewing Wishing Pool is similar to when it snows so hard you can’t see the division between the ground and sky. You feel you are hovering as if you’re in a fourth dimension. The work creates the same sensation, but at the same time it has this platform below that reflects the glass-fritted disks, and your eye is immediately drawn to that reflection, as if you’re looking at the stars. Of course, it also has a wishing pool, and there is the feeling as if you could drop coins in it though there’s no water there. It’s all just reflections. This is one of the centerpieces of the whole exhibit.

GLASS: Karina Guevin works at a smaller scale, how does her work relate to Thomson's?
Singer: Karina, did this series of five works "Murmure," which mean "murmur" in English. It looks like a little forest of flameworked and extremely detailed trees. When you look inside the bell jar, it’s as if there are some windswept pines that Tom Thomson painted. But looking closer, you see that these bunches of shapes, it’s not a straight up and down plain tree, but it's as if there’s little mountain of shapes. There are many of these bell forms, and inside are the animals that live in the forest, and all of the animals, rabbit or a deer, any of the animals in the forest have antlers, also branch-like, everything is 100 percent clear glass except for the little birds on the antlers and the branches, and those birds are taken from the Tom Thomson painting palette of colors. So she created the work out of the idea of what would it be like being in Tom Thomson’s shoes. She felt it was something mystical and magical, and so the work is born out of that.

GLASS: Is it just coincidence that the three contemporary artists responding to Thomson's work are all working in glass, or was it intentional?
Singer: The exhibition was originally programmed by Virginia Eichhorn, who preceded me at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and who is now the director of Tom Thomson Art Gallery. Like Virginia, when I was at the CCGG, I was really conscious of exploring ceramics and glass in a way that would push the material, would push conceptually the possible ways of entry for the public. We both wanted to see glass as a sculptural material. Even the artists who are very traditional craftmakers, we wanted to see work that spoke about things that were universal. And so when you do that, you kind of go out of any mold, whether it be painting or sculpture or installation work or traditional craft, when you go into the idea of exploring universal themes or the human condition new things come out of that. There's a connection between the body and the material, you see the material in a whole new way from a different context, and you see the material in a way when you use a medium not traditional for that context.

Also, I think it's significant that Susan, Laura, and Karina all know each other really well. Susan and Laura have sisterly friendship that goes back 30 years, and Karina was their student. All three of them are constantly exploring and pushing the material, and it was just natural to bring the three of them together.

IF YOU GO: