OPENING: Carmen Vetter’s kiln-formed glass panels, skin self-portraits, at Traver

Opening today with an evening reception at Seattle's Traver Gallery, the exhibition "Surface" features Carmen Vetter's latest body of work — studies of texture and pattern rendered in layers of powdered glass kiln-fired to look like weathered landscapes. Monochrome or muted in color palette, the surfaces of the work take center stage as the artist selectively built up or removed layers of glass powders to evoke close-up maps of territory altered by unseen forces of erosion and time.

"I am truly interested in what is intrinsic, rooted, and deep," Vetter says in reference to the show title. "Surface is what we see, but only the indicator of what cannot be seen." Fifteen new glass panels by the artist will be supplemented by a new series of large-scape photographs that deal directly with skins, in this case close-ups of Vetter's own skin. The photos brings to the fore what Vetter is up to in both her glass and photo-based works -- investigations of the relics of life lived, probing for the telling artifacts of the passage of time and celebrating the how everything is marked by that which has been experienced.

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