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Arresting glass sculpture at Norton bridges visual arts, death

Beth Lipman’s “One and Others” was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of studio glass in America, but you might say it’s site-specific.

In outline, it’s a table setting resting on a black coffin. Why the coffin? When Lipman was walking to the Norton Museum of Art for the first time, she couldn’t help but notice the large cemetery right across the street.

The juxtaposition of art, which aims to illuminate life, and death, for which no illumination is possible, was too rich to resist.

In broad formation, the large glass sculpture consists of eight or 10 specific objects – a pineapple on its side, a dead rabbit, some beautiful carafes and gazing globes, a pear, a basket with splayed melon, some stemware, a painter’s palette and a candelabra – surrounded by foamy waves of glass that represent disrupted tablecloths and other linen.

Overall, it resembles a more-or-less sumptuous feast interrupted by some ambiguous but encompassing disaster.

Beyond the specific inspirations, that range from a cemetery to native Florida produce, Lipman’s overall conception is heavily influenced by Dutch master paintings, as well as Courbet’s Still Life, from 1871, which is displayed in the same gallery as the Lipman. These were painters who delighted in paintings of fruit and dead animals that were all about delineating the line between ripeness and rot.

“So many of those paintings are about death,” says Lipman. “Dead animals, and some of the fruit is obviously decaying.”

It all sounds rather ominous, but Lipman is far from that. A young mother who lives in Sheboygan, Wis., she’s cheerful about explaining her work process.

She doesn’t sketch the sculpture, but rather decides on specific components, makes them, then moves them around the setting. Once she’s decided on the individual placements, creating what she calls “the vocabulary of the piece,” she creates the bonding glass.

It’s obviously her favorite part of the process, perhaps because she sees it as analogous to life itself – a work in progress where perfection isn’t possible and may not even be desirable.

“Working with hot glass is all about your skill on any given day. And I’m interested in the still life tradition, which means that some pieces are better crafted than others. I need that – the good, the bad and the ugly. I need all that.”

Lipman’s sculpture is in the equivalent of black and white, i.e. mostly clear glass with silver highlights. “I’m interested in triggering memories of objects. If I would use colors… I just think that glass is a decorative art, and colors can become campy or kitschy.”

Source: http://www.pbpulse.com