Exhibition Dates: January 9–April 10, 2021
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 9 from 11 AM–7 pm
Gallery Location: 434 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Now She Sings, Now She Sobs, Now She Sings, an exhibition of work by Stephen Paul Day. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger@434, located at 434 Julia Street, from January 9–April 10, 2021. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist in attendance on Saturday, November 9 from 11 AM–7 PM.
In Now She Sings, Now She Sobs, Now She Sings artist Stephen Paul Day’s love for distilling historical content, cultural antiques, and aesthetic alchemy are on display in the exhibition celebrating the unique and complex diversity of the city of New Orleans. The focal point of the exhibition is a wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities) composed of over 100 apothecary jars containing some distillation based on historical and physical elements that reflect the unique quality of New Orleans. With a nod to the Victorian obsession with vivariums, Stephen Paul Day has bottled the city’s history as if in an alchemist’s studio mixing song and sorrow in a narrative atmosphere.
In keeping with trying history to the present, Day has created 27 glass sculptures that at first blush appear to be classical in nature but upon further inspection reveal modern elements. A Victorian bust sits upon plumbing elements expertly cast in glass. Day reinvents a rare complicated process of sulfides or inclusions, which all the rage in the nineteenth-century cameo paperweight, to cast imagery of New Orleans past into the contemporary glasswork.
Lining one wall is a group of 20 circular mirrors with the text “Now She Sings” and “Now She Sobs” inviting the viewer to see themselves in history and to look towards a brighter future when “Now She Sings” once again. In creating the mirrors Day uses a process perfected by French glassmakers in the 1320s know as crown/bullseye glass. The title of the exhibition is a positive spin on Chick Corea’s album “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” encouraging all to see the bright horizon for New Orleans and the world.
Stephen Paul Day was born in 1954. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University in 1977 and then attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris where he received a Diplôme Technique in lithography, intaglio, and stained glass in 1980. In 1984, Day received a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and glass at Louisiana State University where he also studied video. In 1985, he was awarded a residency at the Experimental Glass Workshop in New York City. In 1988, he was invited to help develop a visionary new summer academy in Frauenau, Germany where he remains an instructor and advisor of the school to the present day. In 1990, he received an Emerging Artist Award from the Pilchuck Glass School, where he later taught for years alongside German glass artist Erwin Eisch. Day has received many other prestigious awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Grant; a Médaille de Bronze for the Salon du 14eme Arrondissement, Paris, France; and a career grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation for an installation exhibited during the 2008 Prospect.1 Biennial in New Orleans. Day has exhibited in the United States as well as internationally, and his work is in many collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Quebec, Canada; the Kunokube Glass Museum, Nagahama, Japan; and the Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Stephen Paul Day lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Berlin, Germany.
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