New work by Baldwin and Guggisberg at Sandra Ainsley Gallery extends ongoing boat series

Husband and wife artistic collaborators Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg continue to explore the metaphor of journey in their exhibition Thinking in Glass that runs through May 6, 2017, at the Sandra Ainsley gallery in Toronto. Assemblages of blown forms gathered into water craft is not new to this artistic duo, who have been experimenting with boat vessels since their initial series, "Sentinel" in the mid-1990s.

In the Winter 2011-12 edition of GLASS (#125), artist and educator Scott Benefield wrote about Baldwin and Guggisberg's work: "This theme of journey hasn't only been in a geographical sense. The momentum of their professional life together has taken them from a small glass production studio where they made utilitarian wares, to designing lighting and tabletop ranges for the glass industry, to making and exhibiting sculptural glass in museum installations. These people really get around.”

The work in the current exhibition sees an evolution of their boat structures to convey deeper narratives. What started as a desire to create an identifiable object became the distilled, essential hull shape rendered in metal or wood we see today. These archetypal crafts carry a multitude of glass pieces, which are usually repetitive in size and shape. One of the new works, Boat People (2016), is a departure from the usual cool distance of the works, with its highly contemporary subject matter of desparate refugees evoked through a boat crowded with anthropomorphic blown-glass shapes in various somber shades of color.

Other works leave the subject of journey more open to viewer interpretation.

This solo exhibit shows the evolution of work produced through this wonderful partnership and includes pieces from their boats, frames, and mobiles collections. Honing Italian cold cutting techniques from the couple’s time with Muranese cutter Paolo Ferro back in 1994, Baldwin and Guggisberg create repeating spherical and cylindrical glass shapes and arranges them within metal structures. Each piece of glass is exquisitely blown, its muted colors made practically mate through expert Battuto, an Italian cold cutting treatment created in the 1900s using a grinding wheel to mark the surface of the glass. The precision of the work is at times distancing, but the use of negative space as well as the subtle mixing of opaque and translucent colors, builds intrigue. In Benefield’s article, Baldwin describes their repetitive technique as “disciplined training, even as an aesthetic approach to learning: a kind of yoga, in which skills are continually absorbed. This philosophy of practice has always infused our work, right up to the present moment, even through the nature of what we do has evolved considerably over time.”

This mission is unique compared to most contemporary artists. For Baldwin and Guggisberg, who have worked together for over 35 years, this idea makes the best sense for their cultivated metaphor. Even with their simplistic and extremely clean aesthetic, the substance of their work remains complex. They force their viewers to think in glass.