David Ruth, Sculpture from the "Light Maker" series: Tabueran, Pinaki and Rapa, 2006. courtesy: the artist
The Thoreau Gallery in San-Francisco is opening a group exhibition tonight entitled “57 Degrees.” The exhibition which will feature an opening reception this evening from 5 to 7 PM will feature the work of David Ruth and 20 other bay area artists.
Ruth will show work inspired by his recent trip to Antarctica—where he lived for over a month. It is a place where it never really gets dark—the sun goes down at about 11 PM and rises at 3:15 AM —the water is suspiciously blue.
The National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs, awarded Ruth an Artists and Writers grant for travel to Antarctica. There in the wondrous cold, Ruth studied ice textures and forms at National Science Foundation facility at Arthur Harbor on Anvers Island named “Palmer Station“ from November 16 to December 23, 2006.
Ruth referred to Anvers Island on his blog as his “island paradise.” “Certainly the most beautiful place I have ever been.”
There, Ruth and his team gathered ice textures and photographs to translate to glass, all the while chronicling their journey on a blog. In this way Ruth turned glaciers into glass.
“My project was to take texture molds off the glacier ice and stone and composite it into glass sculpture” Ruth wrote in a written response to an email from the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet.
Although most of his pieces were created upon his return, Ruth did create a small glass sculpture in the Palmer Station lab using ice molds. For weeks, Ruth and his assistant Art Quinn took several silicone molds off the surface of ice pieces they found in the water around the station. Ruth melted some paraffin wax into different silicone textures and built up a small wax model for the glass using textures from the ice. After embedding the wax in dental casting plaster, he melted out the wax in a small lab bench furnace at about 200°C.
Three of David Ruth's digital prints developed and printed from his expedition to Palmer Station, Antarctica in 2006.
Once broken from the mold, the glass embodied three different textures just as its ice counterpart. One part smooth, one part snowy granular ice—the third was a slightly wrinkly texture.
Ruth wrote on his blog that his project in Antarctica was to gain an understanding of ice and its relationship to glass.
“The mission here is to capture the textures of the ice, both photographically and also with molding material in order to recreate those textures back home in the studio, using the lost wax process to cast textured shapes into glass sculpture.”
It was important for Ruth to maintain a precise and accurate record of the ice, as he attempted to recreate it in the studio with glass—making something impossibly permanent lasting.
At one point in the trip, Ruth expanded his project to include casting rock instead of just ice. In his proposal to the NSF he requested he be allowed to cast the local rock if he decided that it was more interesting than the ice. Ruth was granted permission to spread the silicone mold material on sea-washed rocks next to the station.
“I have been in love with rocks for years, but here they are so prominent. Although I love the ice, the variety of textures is not all that great. After ten molds we had most of them,” he wrote on his blog.
—Suzann Caputo
Thoreau Gallery will be showing at least three digital prints that are images Ruth developed and printed from his collection and expedition to Palmer Station. Three sculptures from the “Light Marker” series will also be shown. These are borosilicate castings that Ruth completed previously to his Antarctic trip but they represent the icy look Ruth has become so interested in.
IF YOU GO:
“57 Degrees”Thoreau Center for SustainabilityOpening Reception: February 2nd, 5 – 7 PMPresidio Building 1014 (Lincoln Blvd. & Torney Ave.)San Francisco, California 94129Tel: 415.561.6300