OPENING: Canadian gallery features new sculpture exploring familiarity made strange

From September 18 to December 31, 2016, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery  will feature dual solo exhibitions by artists Lou Lynn and Ione Thorkelsson, both of him explore similar themes. Well-established glass casters that exhibit widely in Canadian galleries, Lynn and Thorkelsson's exhibitions will each display a combination of new and previously exhibited glass works that explore the strangeness in familiar things and question aspects of our present social reality. Lou Lynne's exhibit entitled "COMMON/unCOMMON" is comprised of works from her "utensil" and "fastener" series, works that re-interpret the familiar beauty of historical tools and household objects. Ione Thorkelsson, known for her unorthodox casting techniques, presents "A Natural History of Utopias," a grouping of sculptural castings that explore the imperfections of the ideals we project onto the natural world.

Lou Lynn's work is driven by an interest in archaic implements and tools that have, as her artist statement puts it, lost the "once prominent place they held in industrial and domestic environments." Combining glass and bronze, in pieces like "Tracing Wheel" Lou Lynn highlights the tension between strength and fragility inherent in utlitarian obejcts whose use value has expired. She re-interprets these once mundane tools as new kinds of objects with new kinds of value. Far from emphasizing these object's utilitarian potential, Lynn's work asks the viewer to "reconsider the beauty inherently found in functional objects" by blurring the line between fiction and reality, using glass to render functional objects non-functional while maintaining a functional aesthetics.

 Ione Thorkelsson's A Natural History of Utopias posits the dystopic reality of an attempted biological utopia in which "the adaptive responses of biota have been outstripped by climate forcing," resulting in a world full of strange, half-formed creatures. The exhibition is populated by vitrified denizens of Thorkelsson's imagined world like "Fledglings," a volumetric form enlivened by life casts of animal bones. In the words of the artist her pieces are imbued with personality, "heroic, likeable, and droll" in turn, highlighting and humanizing the potential dystopic outcome of humanity's interference with the natural world. 

Lynn and Thorkelsson will expand on the themes of their exhibitions at an artist talk hosted by the gallery on September 17 at 7:00pm. The opening reception for the shows follows on Sunday, September 18th, at 2 PM.

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