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Christine
Barney
Artist's Statement
With
notebooks filled with sketches, I rent furnace time and work
with a hired assistant, coaxing the molten glass to follow my will,
not its own.
Lifting heavy glass all day is physically
exhausting and there is no time for contemplation. The sculpture
will only be fluid and beautiful if done quickly, with sure
movements and immediate decisions.
Every time the sculpture is
returned to the glory hole for reheating,
a little bit of
stiffness has entered deep into its core.
The goal is to avoid
this rigidity until that part of the sculpture is completed,
balancing the molten and solid states.
The time-consuming and
complicated techniques of enclosing color into solid glass allow
for only a few pieces to be completed in a day. The thick,
sculptured pieces are then annealed for several days before the
meditative rearrangement begins in my studio.
A crucial aspect of each sculpture is the finishing that occurs
by cutting away glass to dislodge another sculpture within,
releasing light from the core.
The use of optical effects
enhances the ability to disassociate color from its source, such
that color becomes a sculptural component. Hundreds of hours are
required to carve and polish new relationships which blossom
into fruition when excavated layers of transparent color
suddenly expand with light.
Another
important consideration is the presentation of the sculpture
through the use of marble, stone, glass or Plexiglas bases.
Each
base is carefully considered
at the completion of every
sculpture.
I cut myself the stone bases with the diamond saw,
individually from raw blocks.
They are then beveled with
grinding wheels and polished.
The process often entails
producing several different bases until the appropriate
connection is made
which enhances and completes the sculpture.
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