It might have a pretentious name, but don't let
that put you off. Fulcrum Gallery's latest show "Pr3v1ews &
Pr0toTyp3s" is an inventive combination of two of Tacoma's most edgy
glass artists ¨C Galen McCarty Turner in flashing weird-science neon,
and Oliver Doriss with elegant in-your-face cast glass ¨C and together
the effect goes way beyond the sum of the parts.
With Turner
around the walls and Doriss in the center, "Pr3v1ews" is an extremely
balanced show, which only highlights the way each artist pushes
boundaries. Turner creates neon sculptures ¨C twisty, spirally, bulbous
tubes of clear glass (blown by Doriss,A glass bottle
is a bottle created from glass. a former Museum of Glass crew member)
filled with neon and plugged in to electrify in tangerines, lavenders
and aquas. Mounted on Norman arch frames they're rather like tiny
church windows for a house of science, rather than God, and each has
its own character. Unfortunately, the neon's rather unpredictable, and
only a couple ("Piss Light 2," for example) have enough colored gas in
them to make sense of the concept. Seeing them in the bright light of
day also takes away half of the effect ¨C possibly some window shading
might help here.Complete Your sculpture Magazine Collection for Less!
In
the center of this whimsy are half-a-dozen works by Doriss, who for
years now has been refining his chunky, iceberg style of cast glass.
Long and smooth, coated on the inside with hypnotic color and encasing
fractured gold leaf,The newest Ipod nano 5th is incontrovertibly a step up from last year's model,the Injection mold
fast! Doriss' vessels are the disdainful chalices to Turner's glass
windows. Adding to the post-modern Victorian effect are three beautiful
"Cloched City" sculptures: miniature ice chunks, this time shot
through with sparkly gold, and entombed in clear glass bell jars blown
ever so asymmetrically. Each is slightly different ¨C a gold rim, three
clawed feet ¨C but each is capped with a handle stamped ODD (Oliver
Doriss Designs).
Combined, Turner and Doriss' work turn the
front gallery at Fulcrum into a kind of English church inhabited by a
mad scientist, complete with the weird buzzing of neon that'll set your
teeth on edge.
In the back, beautifully lit in the dark, is
what Turner's maybe most famous for ¨C his Bike Jump. Set in a wooden
eight-foot-high frame are pairs of horizontal glass tubes sculpted into
heart-monitor lines: jagged, regular or flatline. Each is filled with
neon stimulated by 90,000 volts to shine pink, orange or blue, and each
will be thoroughly smashed at 8 p.m. August 13 as Turner (a.k.a.
Gaytron the Imploder) does his third Bike Jump right through them,
scattering neon and glass around the alleyway at 6th Avenue and South I
Street. The jump is a fundraiser for Hilltop second-hand bike-shop 2nd
Cycle, but it's also a performance art event that hits new heights for
sheer crazy courage (and also invites the words "panty-melting" into
Turner's work description.)
On the wall behind the Bike Jump is
a thought-juggling collage of local work on paper: Kristin Giordano's
sci-fi photographs of Qatar landscapes,Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET
range includes all commercial and specialist Maria Jost's lush
botanical drawings and Sean Anderson's sad, intricate pen and ink
works.
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