Evelyn Dunstan Continues to Amaze

I made use of my newly retired person's new-found leisure time last week to visit Evelyn Dunstan's exhibition Influence at Orexart Gallery in Auckland.  This is the first time I have seen a whole exhibition of Evelyn's work (she doesn't often show in New Zealand), and I was just amazed.  Her work is intricate in the extreme, achieving complexities in the form and colour of the glass that boggle the mind.  My reaction to the exhibition was a mixture of appreciation of its sheer beauty, with an intellectual curiosity as to how on earth she manages to achieve these forms technically.  I know it has to do with sophisticated casting materials, but it has more to do with inspiration, creativity, tenacity, perseverance and sheer hard work.

Evelyn's website (http://www.evelyndunstan.co.nz/about/bio/) tells us that she started glass casting in 2003 after 25 years as a graphic artist, designer and illustrator, combining a full time career with raising 4 children. In 2002 a life-long passion with clay, the need to develop her own style of art and more family time resulted in the change of career to a full time sculptural artist setting up a home studio.   

Paua 2004 (Stuart Park collection) 

After working with colour all her life, Evelyn discovered in leadlighting the properties of glass, combining colour with light.  She followed that with a basic night class in glass casting (2003) adding to sculptural forms the depth and dimension of glass.  In 2004 I went to an exhibition at Uxbridge in Howick of work by the students of that course and was delighted to purchase for my collection what Evelyn tells me was the first piece of glass that she sold.  The way she had incorporated colour into the simple, naturalistic form of the paua attracted me to this work.

After continuing to experiment on her own, Evelyn undertook further training at ArtStation in Auckland in 2004.  It must have been a good course, since she had two works selected as finalists for the Australia - New Zealand Ranamok Prize in 2005, another two finalists in 2006, and then won the Ranamok Prize in 2007 with the remarkable Ngahere Karauna (Forest Crown) (http://www.ranamok.com/2007_detail_pages/Dunstan.htm).

 That basic crown form has continued to provide a basis for some of her work, there being a variety of karauna in the Orexart show.  Two of them (including the one shown above) were entitled Te Turituri, the threat.  By chance Evelyn was in the gallery when I visited, so I asked her about that title.  She explained that the beautiful convolvulus, with its intricate intertwined vines she captures so well is a significant threat in our gardens and bush.  The mix of beauty and danger is an enduring message in art, it seems to me.

The exhibition also included several of Evelyn's remarkable masks, reminiscent of Venetian Carnevale masks, but with a variety of Maori and Pacific cultural references, as well as European ones.  Evelyn's installation  of 24 masks Transparent Illusions was one of her two finalist works at Ranamok 2010, and won the People's Choice award that year. 

 I didn't see it in Canberra, but it was included as a complete installation in Influence at Orexart, a real bonus.

NZ Society Artists in Glass Conference at Glassplant, Inglewood April 1983

The New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass was founded in August 1980 at the first New Zealand Glassworkers' Symposium held in Taradale. The next year the first NZSAG Conference was held at The Hot Glass Company in Devonport.  Since then, NZSAG has held a conference every other year, where glass artists meet to discuss and demonstrate their work.  An important element of these conferences has often been the invitation to international glass artists to come to talk, to teach, to demonstrate, as one way for New Zealand artists to augment their skills. The Devonport conference was attended by Americans Richard Marquis and Ed Carpenter, in hot glass and flat glass respectively.

In April 1983 NZSAG held its Conference at the Glass Plant in Inglewood, the studio of Tony Kuepfer. This coincided with the holding of the first major exhibition of art glass in New Zealand, Pacific Glass '83 at the Govett Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth.  The exhibition and the conference marked a major milestone in the development of glass art in New Zealand, and in public perception of it as a new and vibrant art form.

Rear (standing): Marvin Lipofksy; unknown cameraman; Peter Viesnik; Jenny Granville (obscured); Mel Simpson; Holly Sanford (yellow); Julie Podjursky (Peterson); Ken Cooke (behind by door); Johannes Schreiter (behind); Peter Minson; Ede Horton (behind with mug); Linley Adams (Main); Jo Shroff; ; unknown (behind); Libby Gray; Piers Anderson (behind); Victoria Noble; Robert Middlestead (obscured); John Croucher; Rob Hooper (waving); Pat Grove-Hill; Roger Pemberton; Fred Daden (back turned); Marg Osbourne (leaning on sign)

 Front (kneeling): Keith Rowe; John Abbott; Tony Kuepfer; Makoto Ito; a gap ; Lyn McLean; James Walker; unknown; Garry Nash; John Leggott (with apple); Ann Robinson (with the milk for tea); Marg Osbourne (with camera)

Serendipitously I recently came across some photographs taken at the conference by Tim Edwards, then an architecture student writing a thesis on 'Art in Architecture', who took lots of photos with a view to using them in his thesis work.  Now an antique dealer in Wellington (excellentantiques.co.nz), Tim kindly provided me with copies of some 70 of his slides. I've been in correspondence with quite a number of those who were at the conference, as well as some who weren't, and with their help I have identified most of those in the photos.  In particular, two group photographs posed outside the converted former church that was Glassplant present pretty much a who was who of NZ glass at the time (though a number of people either couldn't attend, or were somewhere else when these photos were taken). Many of these people are still active in glass 29 years later, some are no longer working, and one or two are deceased.  The photos include international guest lecturers Fred Daden (UK), Makoto Ito (Japan), Marvin Lipofsky (USA), Johannes Schreiter (Germany), and Australians Peter Minson and Keith Rowe (in fact a Kiwi, but a long time Oz glass artist).  Ito, Lipofsky and Schreiter were among the exhibitors in Pacific Glass '83.  The two photos are similar, but there are some people in one and not the other, so I include them both.

Rear (standing): Marvin Lipofksy; David Clegg (cap); Peter Viesnik; Jenny Granville (peeking); unknown; Mel Simpson; Holly Sanford (yellow); Julie Podjursky Peterson; Ken Cooke (behind); Johannes Schreiter (behind); Peter Minson; Ede Horton (behind); Linley Adams/Main; Jo Shroff; Libby Gray; Piers Anderson (behind); Victoria Noble; John Croucher; Rob Hooper (beard); Pat Grove-Hill; Fred Daden; Marg Osbourne (with camera)

Front (kneeling): John Abbott; Tony Kuepfer; Makoto Ito;  a gap ; Lyn McLean; unknown; Garry Nash; John Leggott (with apple)

It's been great fun trying to identify these photos accurately.  I accept sole responsibility if I have got something wrong, or if someone I should have picked is labelled 'unknown'; please let me know so I can make any necessary corrections.  I am very grateful to Tim Edwards for permission to publish his photos.

Easter Egg Head by Tony Kuepfer

My latest TradeMe purchase is a paper weight made by Tony Kuepfer - it is signed AWK, though not dated.  I have a number of paper weights Tony made, but this one is unusual in that it has the form and features of a head.  I asked Tony about it, and he told me that whilst he can't remember the exact year, one Easter in the early 1980s he made 6 or 8 of these, which he called 'Easter egg heads'.  The glass is deep blue, with the 'hair' made with the silver chloride colouration Tony liked to use around that period.

 

 

Other paper weights Tony made at this time include these three.  The one on the right is signed AWK NZ '79, the one at left is signed AWK '79 NZ, while the rather splendid larger one at the bottom is signed AWK '80

Not Keith Mahy, but another Kharen Hope

I recently had a tussle on TradeMe with my Australian competitor 'Slumbum'.  Stephen is a keen bidder on New Zealand glass, while I do my best to keep pieces in New Zealand.  Opononi trader Tigerlillie advertised a piece as being by Keith Mahy, with an indistinct signature but probably dated 1990.  'Slumbum' and I both realised a signed and dated piece by Keith from 1990 was unusual, and so we went for it.  He pushed me a bit, but I succeeded in the end.  We more than doubled the reserve, which no doubt pleased Tigerlillie.  In the meantime I had emailed Keith to seek verification that the piece was his.  Alas, after I had won the auction the reply came that it was not a piece Keith recognised as his work.

So I waited curiously to see what it was.  To my delight, the signature was one I recognise readily - now, though I wouldn't have known it until recently.  In that curious way whereby once you see one piece, others turn up, it turned out to be signed Kharen Hope '90, another piece by the Whanganui artist I have blogged about a couple of times recently.  I would have liked a 1990 piece by Keith, but I am very pleased to add another piece of Kharen's to my collection, and a more substantial, more sculptural piece than the scent bottle I blogged in September.

If you've followed the link I gave to Kharen's pieces in the Charlotte Museum collection (http://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/account/3024/object/658/Blown_Glass_Vase) , you might have noticed that one piece was bought by the donor, Miriam Saphira, as she did not want a man to buy it.  I do hope Dr Saphira doesn't mind too much that this piece of Kharen's is in my collection!

Chuck Simpson was not Canadian

A mistake I made in my article on the history of glass in New Zealand came home to haunt me the other day.  In New Zealand Glass Art I described Inglewood glass artist Chuck Simpson as being Canadian.  A trader on TradeMe offering a stoppered bottle by Chuck (at right - TradeMe 428728782) apparently followed my mistake by saying Chuck was Canadian. 

I'm not sure where I got the idea from, but I was wrong. A fascinating article about Chuck Simpson's glass appeared in the Australian journal Craft Arts International (32, 1994-5 p79).  It included biographical information indicating that Chuck was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, in 1944. He got a Bachelor's degree in Education in Pennsylvania, and then taught secondary school for fifteen years, mostly in Victoria, Australia.  In 1985 he began working in the hot glass studio of Colin Heaney at Byron Bay in northeastern New South Wales, before moving to New Zealand and leasing Tony Kuepfer's studio at Inglewood. (Thanks to Trevor Breusch for drawing my attention to the CAI article).


The piece at left I bought in 1990 from Masterworks gallery in Parnell, Auckland - it would have been one of the last pieces Chuck made in New Zealand before returning to Australia and the Vesta Hot Glass studio he set up at Eumundi in Queensland with his wife Lesley (formerly Lesley Justin).

Sadly, Chuck Simpson died in April 2001.