OPENING: Traver Gallery showcases two glass approaches in dual Thompson and Brachlow exhibits

For the month of September 2016, Traver Gallery is displaying new works by artists Heike Brachlow and Cappy Thompson. Aside from their shared use of color as a primary aspect of their work, they are otherwise strongly divergent in their approach to the material. This month's exhibition will see both artists exploring new techniques. Brachlow will showcase the latest works in her "D-Form Series" solid-glass sculptures whose forms were discovered through joining together two flat shapes with identical perimeter lengths. And Thompson will move beyond her prior body of vitreous enamel paintings to unveil a new series of transparent engraved vessels.

Brachlow’s abstract sculptures feature complex geometry and a kinetic energy, as well as an interest in mathematical exploration, but for the artist, they are all about color. In a telephone interview with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, Brachlow said “it’s always been about the color, and working with color in a volume. I think that color can make or break a piece.” This fascination with hue is what led her to pursue a Ph.D, entitled “Color for Solid Glass Sculpture,” which she received from London’s Royal College of Art in 2012. “I’ve gotten into optics quite a bit looking at what light does in glass, but that’s very theoretical," she said. "Really, I just need to get into making and trying it out to understand it intuitively, in a way.”

When Brachlow, who works primarily in her studio in Essex, England’s Parndon Mill, does get into the making process, certain characteristics appear unintentionally. Most notably are her complex geometric forms, which she claims “just happen.” She told us that, “it would not seem like mine if it wasn’t geometric in a way… It’s funny, because one worries a little bit about going too far away from what one is known for… and it’s never really been a problem [for me] because whatever I make has got certain characteristics, that’s just what I do.” Even her new "D-Forms," though starting as formal explorations, are primarily focused on “what the shape does to the color.” Brachlow has taught at Pilchuck Glass School, the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Royal College of Art; her art has been collected by the European Museum of Modern Glass, Dusseldorf’s Glasmuseum Hentrich, and the Tacoma Museum of Glass.

Thompson’s art, in contrast, is primarily two-dimensional, and focuses on figures and tableaus reminiscent of European folk and Medieval art. Her monumental mural, Gathering the Light, welcomes visitors to the Grand Hall of the Tacoma Museum of Glass with its vibrant colors and narrative energy. But her new work on display at Traver will focus on a much more subtle use of color, incorporating the effects of engraving into her compositional palette. Thompson has started to move away from the enamels that defined her past work. She told the Hot Sheet in a telephone interview that, while she loves working with enamels, “they just sit there on the glass.” She envies the way blown glass is “so about the material,” and has found a way to share in this. “What I like about engraving is that I can just carve a drawing and the drawing is integrated into the actual material… You basically have a drawing made out of light.” These transparent works still include subtle coloration, in the form of powder on the bottom of the blown vessels. “When you light the piece, the color kind of radiates, even though it’s just on the bottom. It radiates through the piece so you get this beautiful tint.”

However, Thompson hasn’t completely left her enamel glass paintings, which are represented in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass and the Museum of Arts and Design. The Traver exhibition features eight wall paintings. “I wanted to have some wall pieces that would relate to the engravings,” she told us. This is done not only through the cosmic imagery seen in both, but also through the carving process. “I started putting down complex washes of blue enamels and splashing secondary, tertiary colors into it, and then inscribing a drawing into it… it does have that quality of carving.”

This unity in the exhibition is a conscious concern of Thompson’s. “The installation should be beautiful,” she said. “The wall paintings are hung around the exterior and then the vessels are on high pedestals -- you’re sort of in this celestial space… and the vessels are like little stars inside the gallery. I wanted to have a kind of mood to the whole piece, the whole installation.” All of this will, Thompson hopes, have a cumulative effect on the viewer. “I really want people to just experience a feeling of love, that’s usually behind it -- a sense of well being and beauty and connection.”

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