Glass

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Of all materials, glass is surely one of the most magical and mysterious, marrying opposites in its very essence.  At once hard, sharp, and heavy, it is simultaneously diaphanous, ethereal, invisible.  Impressively durable over centuries, impervious to all manner of toxic substances, yet a gentle blow at the right point will shatter it completely.  It can hold the elements at bay, transmit data at the speed of light, preserve precious liquids, bring images into precise focus, hold bits and bytes for data processing, gather light from distant galaxies, morph into an endless array of functional and decorative shapes, and unflinchingly show how we appear to others.

The ability of glass to hold, reflect, refract, transmit, focus, diffuse, and tint light gives it a spiritual essence that is nothing short of transcendental.  It’s no coincidence that luminous stained glass windows were one of the highest art forms of medieval Europe, bringing awe and wonder into the darkened vaults of Gothic cathedrals.

My own romance with glass came about pretty much by accident, a mix of serendipity and opportunism.  When six of us (three couples) decided we were going to start a communal farm on Cape Breton Island, we needed a source of revenue.  One of the six, a class mate of mine from Antioch College, had taken a stained glass course there.  At the time, it was the only such course in a post-secondary institution anywhere in North America.

Once all six had mastered the rudiments of the craft, we rented an old farmhouse on the Cabot Trail, the main tourist route around the island, and set about producing simple glass lamps and window hangings for the endless stream of tourists who drove the trail each summer.

When the communal adventure fell apart, my partner, Rejene Stowe, and I began to take on glass projects that were far more interesting and challenging, both technically and aesthetically.  Rejene was infatuated with the modernist windows of post-war German artists such as Ludwig Schaffrath, Johannes Schreiter, Jochem Poensgen, Georg Meistermann, and others.  She attended workshops with both Schreiter and Poensgen and began to develop a style based on their pioneering work.

In order to feed her habit, we made annual pilgrimages from Nova Scotia to New York City, the home of S. A. Bendheim, the only North American distributor for Lambert’s mouth blown antique glass, the crème de la crème of glass for serious artists.  Bendheim had several floors in an old Tribeca warehouse, and we’d spend several days hand picking individual sheets (no two alike!), enough to get us through the coming year.  Then we’d pack a thousand pound of glass into our cargo van and drive (very carefully!) back to Nova Scotia.

Over the years, Rejene designed and together we fabricated hundreds of contemporary windows for residential, commercial, and institutional settings.  Images of these are all on 35mm slides.  Eventually some of them will be digitized and posted on this website.

Meanwhile, I was beginning to question whether I wanted to continue on with this ancient technology — the basic process of soldering pieces of colored glass into a lead channel matrix has remained essentially unchanged for a thousand years!  How could I take what I’d learned about glass and use it as a springboard to create a more contemporary expression?  How could I use the glass technology of my own time to make art?

My first step was to explore what was right in my own back yard at commercial outlets such as PPG and Pilkington Glass.  What I discovered, to my surprise, was a lavish array of creative possibilities in industrial materials such as plate glass, float glass, tinted glass, textured glass, mirror glass, coated glass, and more.  I began to experiment.

My first attempts used ordinary window glass.  I would cut pieces to shape, stack them in various configurations, and fire them in a kiln to the exact temperature where they would fuse but not start to melt and sag.  Starting with simple geometric shapes,  I quickly realized that I could use the transparency of the medium to create forms within forms.

I then allowed these stacked sculptures to reach slightly higher temperatures at which they would start to soften and slump.  In order to obtain the desired degree of sag, precise control of heat and timing were essential.  This was dangerous work.  I once burned the tip of my nose on the kiln’s stainless steel jacket while bobbing and weaving in front of the kiln’s peep hole, trying to ascertain the state of the glass.

These simple sculptures had wonderful refractive properties in the way that they glowed, sparkled, and played with light.  But they were also fussy and fragile, requiring precise timing in the firing plus a long, slow annealing time.  If improperly annealed, they would later crack when exposed to a rapid change of temperature.

So my next step was to take the same concept and use adhesives instead of heat to bond the flat glass shapes.  Early experiments with standard two-part epoxies resulted in complex sculptures that came apart over time.

Then I discovered clear silicone.  This amazing adhesive bonds glass permanently; I still have silicone bonded glass sculptures that have not lost their integrity in over 30 years!

After silicone, I discovered optically clear UV-curing epoxies that are used to bond multi-element lenses.  These miraculous adhesives have the same index of refraction as glass (i.e. they are totally invisible), never become cloudy or yellow, and they don’t set up until they’re exposed to ultraviolet light.  This means that one can fuss with the positioning of glass elements until they’re just right, then turn on a sunlamp, and voila! … a permanent bond.  Again, I have a glass panel with appliqued bevels that has been exposed to sunlight for 30 years.  The bond is still intact and perfectly clear.

Eventually it dawned on me that instead of cutting all the glass elements to desired shapes, I could sandblast outlines onto simple squares of window glass.  Then I could stack them vertically to create three dimensional shapes that would float inside a layered clear glass cube.

I even married the two techniques of cut and sandblasted shapes, stacked in combination.

Essentially what I was doing was taking 3D shapes, drawing regularly spaced 2D cross sections, sandblasting these contour lines onto individual sheets of glass, then recreating the 3D shape by stacking the glass layers in the appropriate order.

This led me to the realization that I could use topographic maps as an image source.  These 2D maps use contour lines to represent 3D topography on a flat surface.  I used my new technique to reverse the process, tracing individual contour lines onto individual sheets of glass, sandblasting the contour lines, then stacking the glass to recreate a luminous, abstract, 3D topography with some very interesting and unusual optical properties.

In 1988, I was invited to create three glass works for the Olympic Arts Festival in Calgary.  One of them was a glass reconstruction of Mount Allan, the site of the downhill ski races.  From above, what appeared was a luminous topography …

… but from the side, the solidity of mountains became layers of ethereal waves that rippled and danced as viewers moved in relation to the sculpture.

In his review of the Festival show that included my work, the art critic for The Globe and Mail wrote: ” … although many of the works are far less sophisticated in design than they are in execution, there are some notable exceptions, particularly in the fine layered glassworks of Andrew Terris.”

Another facet of my exploration was the use of reflecting glass to create illusions of space and what I called “impossible structures”.  Initially these used planes of mirror glass facing each other at various angles to produce multiple reflections.  These “optical sculptures” appeared perfectly finite … until you looked inside.

I subsequently invented a technique that used mirror glass and coated glass to build large architectural light sculptures that created a deep, boundless space whose structural elements seemed to disappear into the void.  I utilized this new system for a commission I received in 1985 for a large architectural sculpture in the new Sheraton Hotel in Halifax.  The piece was a wall installation made up of five modular units with an overall height of 5 feet (1.5 meters) and width of 15 feet (4.5 meters).  When facing it, the viewer saw multiple layers of glowing glass waves receding into the far distance.  In reality, however, there was only one wave, and the piece was a mere 8 inches deep!  [I do have photos, but they have to be transferred from 35mm slides.]

This same technique was used for an invitational competition for a glass ceiling in the main entrance to Douglas Cardinal’s Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.  I devised a matrix of several hundred internally reflecting light elements that looked like layers of fractured and fragmented ice crystals.  Sadly, a much less interesting glass construction was chosen.  [Ditto re photos.]

While teaching myself animation software on my new Commodore Amiga computer, it dawned on me that I could animate my layered mirror glass constructions by placing them in front of the computer screen.  I programmed an array of multicolored geometric shapes to perform a choreographed dance on my screen, in front of which I placed a grid of mirror and coated glasses.  The result was rather like a Constructivist painting (à la Malevich or Moholy-Nagy), but instead of being flat and static, my images were dynamic and moved in three dimensions!  I even added a remarkably appropriate soundtrack, Terry Riley’s minimalist masterpiece In C.

Sadly, this was where my career as a glass artist ended.  The more experimental my work became, the harder it was to earn a living.  Galleries and arts councils didn’t know what to do with me, and there weren’t enough commissions to sustain me.

My swan song as an artist finally came in 1992 when fiber artist Suzanne Swannie and I were commissioned to create a large architectural sculpture for the new library at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.  It was to be installed in a tall hexagonal stairwell under a large skylight.  We devised a large (6 x 2 x 2 meters; 20 x 6.5 x 6.5 feet) structure inspired by the tetrahedral kites of Alexander Graham Bell, who carried out all of his flying experiments on the shores of the Bras d’Or lakes on Cape Breton Island.  Our sculpture consisted of a matrix of 66 welded tubular steel tetrahedrons, which I designed and fabricated, into whose triangular openings were inserted translucent fiber “wings”, designed and fabricated by Suzanne.  [Images of this sculpture and its fabrication will eventually be transferred from 35mm slides.]

Following this large and challenging project, I put my inner artist on the shelf and did something I’d resisted for at least 10 years … I went over to the dark side and became an arts administrator.  My prime motivation?  I didn’t want to be old and poor.  Besides, there were some definite benefits.  Steady employment!  Predictable income!  Paid vacations!  The salary wasn’t great, but it was way more than I’d ever earned as an artist.

And this, my friends, is emblematic of one of the great ironies/tragedies of our time.  Something is seriously out of whack when those who give birth to new ideas earn less than the administrative midwives who merely facilitate their creativity.

Looking backward, this is perhaps my only serious regret … that I was unable to pursue my creative inventions at a time when my work was just beginning to reach an unprecedented level of innovation and originality.  But the milk has been spilt, and there’s no use crying.