Glass Menagerie

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Mireille Perron, "Poodle," 2015

cyanotype, 10" x 8"  (photo courtesy the artist)

In the striking installation, Anatomy of a Glass Menagerie: Altaglass, a profusion of vintage glass animals – horses, bears, fish, dogs, cats, lions and birds – parade down a brightly lit path between walls lined with cyanotype prints created using them as lenses.

Calgary artist Mireille Perron is best known as the founder of the Laboratory of Feminist Pataphysics, an umbrella she uses to deploy critical yet quirky exhibitions in diverse media, often framing relationships between the human and the non-human.

The glass animals in her latest show, curated by Christine Sowiak and on view until April 13 at the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary, are products of the old Altaglass factory in Medicine Hat, where unsold inventory and a small donated collection are housed.

Altaglass, active between 1950 and 1981, produced pressed, blown and freely modelled functional and decorative glass objects that were marketed across the country. Their clean lines and flowing forms exemplified modern design for Canadian consumers.

Essentially a family operation, the studio employed craftsmen from Europe and elsewhere, making it one of the first examples of studio glass production in Canada. Perron’s inclusion of the animal figurines challenges conventional craft histories and recuperates Altaglass into a broader understanding of creative production in Alberta.

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Mireille Perron, "Bears," 2015

cyanotype, 10" x 8" (photo courtesy the artist)

Her use of cyanotype, a process of camera-less printing developed by John Hershel in 1842, pays homage to Anna Atkins (1799-1871), an English botanist who embraced the technology for documenting botanical specimens. Mimicking Atkin’s scientific process, Perron placed individual animals on sheets of treated paper and exposed them to strong sunlight.

Techniques used to create the glass artifacts govern how light penetrates them, generating what appear to be mysterious X-rays of their anatomy. Isolated against a sea of blue, the shadow animals float like ghostly jellyfish or nebulae deep in outer space.

More complicated compositions with multiple components characterize a second series of prints. As a further nod to Atkins, many include local plants. In one, a tiny ballerina rides a unicorn. In another, a rabbit and cat confront each other across a leafy divide.

Furthering the references to scientific research, these works are presented on clipboards hung in salon-style groupings on one wall.

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Mireille Perron, "Large-Scale Narrative Composition," 2015

cyanotype, 34" x 30” (photo by Dave Brown, LCR Photo Services; courtesy of Nickle Galleries)

On the opposite wall, larger prints float within white frames that mark them as art rather than science. These larger works also include plants and are arranged to form narrative compositions. Polar bears gaze transfixed at a sky filled with unicorns and fish; tiny horses race across a broad field, and a small rabbit shelters beneath a deeply serrated fern.

Looking across the gallery one sees both the source – the glass animals – and their uncanny representation as spectral images glowing white against a velvety blue surround.

In her exhibition essay, craft historian Julia Krueger draws on American intellectual Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia, an ironic and fragmentary form of longing. Krueger compares layering in the prints to the layering of memory, opening a path to what she calls “multiple planes of consciousness.” 

Perron, in imagining a range of new possibilities, initiates a dialogue, critically rethinking craft, art, science and the natural world. ■

Anatomy of a Glass Menagerie: Altaglass is on view at the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary from Jan. 31 to April 6, 2019.