“Superposition” co-curator Helen Lee named winner of purchase prize in Ball State University glass e

Helen Lee, Prince Rupert Drawing #2 (detail), 2012. Glass and ink on paper. H 19.75, W 25.75 in. courtesy: david owsley museum of art

The David Owsley Museum of Art of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, has just announced the winner of its biennial glass art competition (this year titled “Glass: A Juried Art Show 2012”). Berkeley, CA-based artist Helen Lee, who made news last year by curating “Superposition” with fellow artists Alexander Rosenberg and Matt Szosz, is the recipient of the exhibition’s first purchase award, which was made possible by the generosity of glass collector Patricia Schaefer. Lee’s winning piece, a black ink print titled “Prince Rupert Drawing #2,” was created in three simple steps. She formed a number of Prince Rupert Drops, dipped them in ink, and “exploded” them in a tube lined with paper so that she would be left with a three-hundred-sixty degree record of the explosion.

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In a telephone interview with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, Lee said that, in the same way “Superposition” was an exhibition based on the idea that glass has the potential to conduct multiple silent dialogues with fine, craft, and performance art, the allure of “Prince Rupert Drawing #2” lay in its tacit connection to the explosive event that created it. “People don’t encounter that piece and immediately jump to glass,” she said. “It takes subtlety to figure out how it relates back to the material.”

Lee’s piece will have the distinction among the other works in the exhibition, which was juried by Katherine Gray, assistant professor in glass at California State University, of joining the museum’s permanent collection. In a prepared statement, museum director Peter F. Blume said, “We at the David Owsley Museum of Art are delighted to add this wonderful work of art into our collection. The work is part of the recent trend within performance art to focus on the glassmaking process.”

—Isabella Webbe