Opening Reception: Saturday, June 5 from 6–8 pm
Locations: Arthur Roger Gallery at 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130 and
Arthur Roger Gallery Project at 730 Tchoupitoulas Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
From June 5th through July 24th the Arthur Roger Gallery is exhibiting seven artists working with glass. Richard Jolley, Mitchell Gaudet, and Stephen Paul Day will exhibit at the Arthur Roger Gallery at 432 Julia Street. Dale Chihuly, Gene Koss, Paul Lucas and Mary Jane Parker will exhibit at the Arthur Roger Gallery Project at 730 Tchoupitoulas Street, where there will also be additional work by Mitchell Gaudet and Stephen Paul Day. The exhibitions will coincide with the 34th annual Glass Arts Society National Convention being held in New Orleans from June 10th-12th. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, June 5th from 6-8 pm at both gallery locations.
Dale Chihuly, Gold and Amber Chandelier. 2003, glass. 50 x 40 x 40 inches.
Richard Jolley, one of the country’s foremost glass sculptors, will exhibit his most recent series of glass sculpture, “Tabula Rasa,” in the front gallery at 432 Julia Street. “Tabula Rasa” is composed of cylindrical bases that support attenuated discs incised in shallow relief with serene human figures, birds, and plant motifs. Throughout his artistic career Richard Jolley has focused on the human figure as an alluring complex form. His figurative glass work is classically inspired and notable for its sophistication and invention.
Jolley’s first major retrospective exhibition organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art is opening in June at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Richard Jolley (Skira press), a monograph with text by Sam Hunter and Laura Stewart accompanies Jolley’s retrospective, and is available at the Arthur Roger Gallery.
In the center gallery on Julia Street, Mitchell Gaudet will exhibit a collection of knives made of sand cast glass that explore the often piercing language of relationships. Their blades are embossed with typical “relationship statements” – words that eventually wound. Additionally, Gaudet will exhibit two books made of glass pages embossed with icons of relationships, both good and bad.
Mitchell Gaudet, the founder of the Bywater’s “Studio Inferno,” is serving as a co-chair for the Glass Arts Society Convention. He received his MFA from Tulane in 1990 and has taught at the Pilchuk Glass School in Washington, the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle and the Urban School of Glass in Brooklyn.
In the rear gallery on Julia Street, New Orleans based artist Stephen Paul Day is exhibiting an installation based on a fictitious collection of erotic decanters from the Storyville brothel.
Stephen Paul Day began working with glass in Paris at the Beaux Arts Academy in 1979. He taught glass artistry in Germany for several years and has also been on the faculty at the Pilchuk Glass School in Washington and at the Toyama Glass School in Japan. Day will be lecturing at the upcoming G.A.S. Convention.
At the Arthur Roger Gallery Project on Tchoupitoulas Gene Koss, Chairman of Tulane University’s Newcomb Department of Art, will exhibit his monumental sculpture, Coulee Song (1998). Even when working with glass and steel in large scale as in Coulee Song, Gene Koss achieves a lyrical gracefulness.
Beginning on June 7th the Newcomb Art Gallery is presenting “Gene Koss: Projects and Sculpture 1974-2004.” The exhibition at the Newcomb Art Gallery will review the career of the noted glass artist. The catalog for the exhibit Gene Koss Projects and Sculpture 1974-2004 is available at the Arthur Roger Gallery.
Paul Lucas is exhibiting Borostack, a single triangular sculpture employing boro-silicate glass at the Arthur Roger Gallery Project. The work is formally sculptural with no narrative intent. Recently Lucas, also noted for his photography, has been working with boro-silicate glass which has been traditionally associated with use for laboratory equipment. Boro-silicate is more impervious to fractures when being fired but it tends to be more brittle. It must be fired in a kiln at higher temperatures than standard glass.
Paul Lucas came to Tulane to study glass artistry under Gene Koss and he received his MFA from the University in 1989.
Also at the Arthur Roger Gallery Project, the world’s pre-eminent glass artist, Dale Chihuly, will exhibit his Gold and Amber Chandelier. A luminous beauty and exuberance radiate from this hanging sculpture which, like other work by Chihuly, is a marvel of interaction between glass and light.
Dale Chihuly’s glass sculpture is included in over two hundred museum collections worldwide. In 1995, Chihuly placed glass sculptures over the canals and piazza of Venice in his monumental installation “Chihuly over Venice;” and in 1999 the artist mounted his most ambitious installation “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem.”
Mary Jane Parker who lives in New Orleans is exhibiting glass and bronze pieces from her new “Safe” series at the Arthur Roger Gallery Project. The pieces in her exhibit stem from a body of earlier work called “Skywatching.” Both “Skywatching” and “Safe” borrow contorted unusual poses from charts of hysterical women originally drawn by the 19th century psychologist Charcot. Parker is concerned with the vulnerability that the women project and the range of emotion expressed in the positions that Charcot observed when his patients awoke at night. In this “Safe” series the artist has created glass figures in vulnerable positions but she has paired them with bronze vertebrae suggesting both weakness and strength. The tightly enclosed box format of the “Safe” series reinforces the idea of confinement but also suggests protection. Mary Jane Parker considers her work as originating from her own inner conflicts, fears and inadequacies but the means of expression takes her artistic endeavors beyond the personal into the universal.