The detail of Bertil Vallien's "Boat," 2019, shows the artist's signature works - elongated canoe-like glass boats that become vessels for metaphors.
Bertil Vallien's "Blues," 2019, are created with sand-cast glass, which is more common for metal work but creates interesting effects when used with glass.
The exhibit is currently on view at the Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge through Sunday, Nov. 3. The next show will be by William Morris.
The detail of Bertil Vallien's "Boat," 2019, shows the artist's signature works - elongated canoe-like glass boats that become vessels for metaphors.
Bertil Vallien's "Blues," 2019, are created with sand-cast glass, which is more common for metal work but creates interesting effects when used with glass.
The exhibit is currently on view at the Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge through Sunday, Nov. 3. The next show will be by William Morris.
Stockbridge — A piece of glass artwork can occupy several spaces at once. It can be an object that revels in its physical space and surface textures like sculpture, or an image that bends light itself to its own purpose. In the hands of Bertil Vallien and his unique sand-casting technique, it is a way "to capture a shift of light or expression and wrench the secret from the glass" with patience and purpose to describe some of the depths of the human experience.
A selection of Vallien's recent original works are on display now at the Schantz Galleries in Stockbridge, where owner Jim Schantz described the work as "about the surface above and outside, and the world within." It runs until Sunday, Nov. 3.
Vallien is based in his native Sweden and over his decades-long career has perfected a technique called sand-casting, which is more common for metal work but creates interesting effects when used with glass. It begins with a box of sand, usually mixed with some sort of binding agent, in which negative mold casts are pressed to create space in which hot glass can be poured. Once cooled, the block of glass can be sanded and polished, or left rough, which presents another surface for the artist to create textures and effects.
The possibilities of this technique are explored in works like his "Landscapes" series. These are cubic works placed atop an individual post, usually at eye-level so you can get up close. The top of the block looks like the natural topography of a satellite image, suggesting fields, forests and structures, and looks more like ceramic than glass (and includes a few clever touches, like depicting a passing cloud with a stone impaled on a piece of copper). Beneath that is a clear glass space, colored or not, or full of bubbles or not, and some molded images on the very bottom that are reflected into the space above.
"He loves playing with different realities," Schantz said. "There is the actual surface on top. Then the interior, mysterious, transparent space underneath. And the virtual reflected reality at the bottom." Vallien, who is now 81, was born in Stockholm and originally worked mostly in ceramics. After training and spending several years in California in the 1960s, he returned home and began working with glass, eventually becoming a designer at Kosta Buda, a major glassworks that has operated since 1742. It is in the province of Smaland in the southern part of the country, a region once known for its forests that provided the wood to fire the kilns and created a whole region of glassmaking that is still known as "the Kingdom of Glass."
Many of his works here circle around a few repeated themes. In addition to his landscapes and maps, there are several of what may be his signature works — elongated canoe-like glass boats that become vessels for metaphors about the passage of time and the content of memories. Each of the clear glass hulls holds objects and imagery inside, including faces, what may be sarcophagi, and objects loaded with meaning like ladders and stairs. They are deliberately vague in their intention and not particularly literal, and seem to speak to something in our collective unconscious.
Another collection of works is about images of the Roman God, Janus, the two-faced watcher over doors and transitions. Each of the wedge-shaped works feature a contrast between rough sand-casted edges and clear crystal glass, along with a face embedded deep inside. The works rely on the glass' natural refractive properties to recreate the faces, adding up to an object designed to be walked around and considered from many angles.
Other works include a series of tall, totemic abstract figures he calls "watchers," and a wall-installation of several small figures he calls "idols." There are also two traditional blown-glass pieces, which are colorful and abstract, which he calls "Super Eggs." And for the first time in the United States, the gallery is showing a few of Vallien's two-dimensional prints. The images of horses work the same way with layers of textures and colors as his glasswork.
With its painstaking technical challenges and heavy demands for being practical or purely abstract, glass is not a medium that always lends itself to work that is quite so representational and ambitious.
"That's what makes these works really stand out," Schantz said. "In our medium, you don't see any other artist that has such a wide range of surfaces within one work of art. That really defines it as sculpture — he wants to be recognized as a sculptor who uses glass. He's helped to define glass as an artform."
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