(Above): Susan Thomas' Exhibition Passages - February - March, 2014 Portal Gallery
August 1st - August 30th, 2014: Mixed Media on Panel by Gary Davison, Ceramics by Andrew Nagengast & Jeff Kuratnick
Opening Reception: Friday, August 1st 6pm - 9pm
September 5th - October 25th, 2014: Harvest - Glassworks by Barry Hood
Opening Reception: Friday, September 5th 6pm - 9pm
Glass, admits Montana artist Barry Hood, can be overwhelmingly seductive: the flowing shapes, the gorgeous colors, the luminosity of the medium itself. And yet Hood's newest works have little of the "beauty" associated with glass objects. They are not refines, smooth, or instantly eye-dazzling. Instead, they remind the viewer of natural processes, of volcanic rock or ice riven by the sun and frozen again. They resemble the remains of something as yet undiscovered. And as manmade objects, they suggest an affinity with Japanese, and particularly Zen, aesthetics, in which spontaneity, earthiness, apparent rusticity, imperfection, even corrosion and contamination are found in works that are spiritually rich and that embody a quiet beauty, in Leonard Koren's words, "of the inconspicuous and overlooked aspects of nature."
As a youth, Hood spent three years in Japan, and he was profoundly influenced by the artfully arranged relationships between the manmade and the natural - the vastly "different visual order" - he encountered in Japanese temples and gardens.
Barry Hood has been a glass artist since 1974, working primarily with etched glass and creating large-scale commissions for public buildings and private homes. His etched panels have been featured in - Glass Art, Glass Artist, Sunset Magazine, and Southwest Art, as well as the book, Etched Glass, Techniques and Design (Hand Books Press, 1998).
Despite his evident success, in the 1990's Hood turned his energies to exploring a new body of work that has taken him far from the precision and control of his etched glass. Not only was Hood eager to move from the appearance of spontaneity to real spontaneity, he sought also to move from depictions of the natural world - the etched landscapes of his windows and doors - to an approach that produced glass objects that were, as in Zen tradition, "only slightly abstracted from the earth." He wanted to acknowledge, as directly as possible, the "beautiful gifts" the natural world has given him over decades spent among Montana's rivers, mountains, and prairies.
In 1998 at Pilchuck Glass School, Hood tried something new. He found a downed tree, hollowed out a section, and poured molten glass into the log. Unlike a traditional mold, where the material is impervious to temperatures upwards of 2,200 degrees, the wood burned. As the glass moved toward solid state, it continued to interact with the burning wood, a process that was impossible to control (and hence all the more exciting because it was wholly spontaneous). This shifting of the glass within the log created an impossible-to-replicate texture: ridged and pitted, bubbled and bumped: the product of a burning tree's heart.
"I'm not interested in something that's simply pretty," Hood Says. While Hood's etched glass has always been without color - he achieved the effects he wanted through subtle gradations of shading - with his new work, he finds himself drawn, not to a rainbow of colors, but to color nevertheless. Using dyes and natural earth pigments, Hood achieves colors of a simplicity and elegance congruent with the rugged shapes and surface textures of the works themselves.
Barry Hood's new works represent a spectacular leap of faith, a willingness to relinquish control in favor of an improvisation that owes its success as much to the character of wood and the nature of fire as to the artist's design. Like the great Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, Barry Hood "works more in Grace, than in one's own power," and by so doing, he has created his finest, his most powerful and spiritually resonant, work to date.
- Rick Newby - Poet & Cultural Journalist
November 7th - November 29th, 2014: Macro/Micro: Paintings & Assemblages by Rachel Kaiser
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7th 6 - 9pm
A new body of work about Montana’s Big Sky and the details that make it memorable. Great Falls’ Public Muralist Rachel Kaiser exhibits her new body of paintings and assemblages at Portal Gallery for the month of November.
Rachel Kaiser has received several national and local commissions including a 4-foot hand carved wood relief called "The Spirit of Healing" in the surgery wing of St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu. Her diverse background and emphasis on studying the spiritual nature of art is evident in her works, which include paintings, woodcarvings, drawings, shrines, as well as murals and custom-made ceramic tile.
While working toward a bachelor of fine arts degree at the Viterbo University in LaCross, Wis., Kaiser studied wooden mask carving and dancing in Bali, Indonesia. Upon returning to Viterbo, Kaiser recieved an award from the Kennedy Theatre Foundation for excellence in mask design for her creations in the Greek comedy, The Birds," by Aristophanes. Eventually she went on to incorporate her hand-carved wooden masks into various aspects of dance, including fire dancing with several live performances in Hawaii and Indonesia.
Kaiser also trained at the Vermont Studio Center with professors from the Chicago Art Institute and Yale University. In 2001, Kaiser was a co-founder of On The River, a multi-media art gallery, and predecessor to the prominent Ong King Arts Center in Honolulu, featured in "Juxtapoz" magazine.
"Juxtapoz" gave Kaiser and her partner, Jonathan Heraux, credit for being the visionaries that started the underground art movement in downtown Honolulu.
December 1st - December 31st, 2014:
Mixed Media on Panel by Gary Davison, Ceramics by Andrew Nagengast & Jeff Kuratnick, Mixed Media and Painting by Rachel Kaiser
Opening Reception: Friday, December 5th 6-9pm