Glass Geometries Reflect History
Julia Reimer and Tyler Rock, "Transect," 2017
cast glass, images and stainless steel, 7' x 6.5' (detail), photo by Galla Theodosis
At first glance, Transect seems to channel some of the ambitious spirit behind Buckminster Fuller’s steel-and-acrylic geodesic dome at Expo 67. But this spherical sculpture, created by Alberta glass artists Julia Reimer and Tyler Rock to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary, is just seven feet in diameter.
Affixed to a circular concrete base on Edmonton’s Capital Boulevard, the sculpture – with its connective stainless steel rods and handcrafted circular tiles in blue glass – both absorbs and reflects light. Its precise sphere-within-a-sphere geometry may inspire the imagination of the mathematically inclined and the despair of everyone else. The artists, however, prefer to focus on the rhizomatic function of their first piece of public art, and cite the work’s emphasis on “the interconnections of people that make a community.”
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Julia Reimer and Tyler Rock, "Transect," 2017
cast glass, images and stainless steel, 7' x 6.5' photo by Galla Theodosis
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Julia Reimer and Tyler Rock, "Transect," 2017
cast glass, images and stainless steel, 7' x 6.5' (detail), photo by Galla Theodosis
To look closely at any of its 60 laminated glass tiles is to blend the present with reflections of the past – photographic images the artists culled from the Provincial Archives of Alberta and Calgary’s Glenbow Museum relating to the frontier and the relentless colonization of the Prairies. There are images of First Nations and Métis people, Fort Edmonton and the fur trade, the construction of the nearby Beaux-Arts legislature and, in an odd moment from history, a cart pulled by two moose, harnessed but still magnificently antlered.
In addition to the laminated discs, some 100 cast-glass tiles are embossed with designs of what the artists simply call “things that are always here” – animal tracks, teepee rings, native plants and so on. This combination of two types of glass and imagery by two of the country’s top glass artists creates an engaging synergy.
The sculpture, unveiled this month on 108th Street between the Alberta legislature and MacEwan University, is one of five works commissioned to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary. The other sculptures include a piece by Red Deer’s Dawn Detarando and Brian McArthur that features three canoes and a silhouette of explorer David Thompson. The other commissioned artists are Ken Macklin, of Gunn, Alta., Edmonton artist Sandra Bromley and Leo Arcand, of Alexander First Nation.
Reimer and Rock are known in the Canadian glass community for their sophisticated pieces. For the last decade, they have worked out of their Firebrand Glass Studio, a retooled garage behind their modest bungalow in Black Diamond, a small town in the foothills southwest of Calgary. Both studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and both have won awards and have been invited to prestigious international residencies. Rock, who earned a Master’s degree in 2013 in Australia, teaches in the glass program at ACAD.
Julia Reimer, "Gossamer Vessels," 2017
blown glass, 17" x 7" photo by John Dean
Reimer, a glass blower, grew up near Black Diamond and has loved the area's crisp light since her childhood. She knew immediately that she had found her vocation when she was introduced as a student to the ancient craft. “I was always drawn to the muted luminescence of river ice on bright brisk winter days,” she says. “So when I had a chance to combine the essence of light, colour and movement with a material, it was a perfect fit.”
Reimer was the inaugural recipient in 2008 of the RBC Award for Glass, a national prize for emerging artists. She used the $5,000 prize to research the influence of Japanese design and culture on modern Western craft. The impact of that research, coupled with the spare landscape along the Sheep River, resonates in her work, influencing its simplicity, its connection to nature and its gossamer forms of late.
Early in September, Reimer will return to Edmonton with Rock to exhibit in Landmarks, a show about the Prairie landscape at the Alberta Craft Council Gallery that also includes fellow glass artist Katherine Russell, of Elkford, B.C.
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Tyler Rock, "Antlers," 2017
sculpted glass, 7" x 24" photo by John Dean
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Tyler Rock, "Still Water," 2013
blown glass, water and light, 30" x 24" photo by Chris Boha
For Rock, who has developed an extensive body of sculptural glass ranging from exquisite darkly coloured wall-mounted pieces to multi-coloured and bravely posed pedestal works, Landmarks is a chance to show some of his latest work. His singular vessels are replaced with clustered glass in the shape of tree branches and entwined antlers. The work, he says, is a meditation on the destructive floods four years ago in southern Alberta.
Rock, who grew up in northern Saskatchewan, says he doesn’t like to “wax on about the intense heat, the physicality, the importance of centrifugal force and gravity, nor about the work, once started, staying in constant motion until completion.” Instead, he says it is the intrinsic qualities of glass that are important to him: colour, transparency and light.
Alberta Craft Gallery
10186 106 St, Edmonton, Alberta T5J 1H4
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