Through a glass brightly
Published 11:00 am Thursday, June 5, 2003
Sculptor Steve Maslach believes glass can be more than pretty form and shiny surface.
The artist invites viewers to look into the heart of his cast-glass figures – new work Maslach shares with viewers this month in a three-sculptor show at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts.
Noting that the glass work which truly attracted him tended to be figurative, Maslach began contemplating a foray of his own 15 years ago.
Now, the well-known artist has stepped back from his public glass career in order to develop the new series, establishing a second studio devoted to fine art rather than production glass.
“I’ve done the large expensive commissions. I’ve had a career in glass,” he said. “I’m at the time in my life when I’m more focused on human issues. Time is short.”
Glass, Maslach believes, is the perfect medium to serve as a metaphor for the human condition; brittle, transparent, layered, the headless glass figures with partial limbs are objects whose interior state is both transparent and mysterious.
“I’m interested in ‘damage’ and ‘repair,’” he said, “and therefore, in the pieces, I’m trying to show both of those things.”
Cutting edge
Maslach, who began blowing glass in the 1960s, has been on the cutting edge of this country’s glass revival of the last 30 years.
His glass art has been exhibited at the Louvre and the White House, and included in collections at the the Smithsonian, the Corning Museum of Glass and the American Craft Museum, among others.
But when he moved to the island, Maslach says, he dropped out of the glass world, resigning from boards and committees and turning his back on the field’s politics.
Although the artist still maintains a production glass studio in the San Francisco area – the oldest continuously producing glass studio on the West Coast, started in 1970 – Maslach built a new studio here, designed specifically to cast his nearly life-size figures.
He adapted a technique of casting glass into graphite molds that he learned from Oakland glass-blower John Lewis.
“When you cast into sand you pick up the sand surface,” he said. “I like the roughness in some pieces, but the graphite gives me clarity for others.”
Maslach makes his own glass from fine glass sand and a precise mix of some 10 chemicals, including sodium sulphate and borax ash – a part of his artistic process he calls “dusty, dirty, one of the worst chores.”
In contrast is the excitement of the pouring molten glass heated to 2,400 degrees, a process similar to bronze casting.
The oven, capable of accommodating a 3-by-7-foot piece, is set in a unique spot – hung in a steel frame above the door.
After lowering the oven to the floor with a chain hoist, Maslach detaches the sides – another special design feature – to turn the floor of the oven into a platform on which the artist works directly. Once the piece is cast, the whole apparatus can be hoisted aloft to anneal for days, cooling the glass slowly to remove stress.
With 30 years invested in learning his material, Maslach is well-positioned to stretch the demanding medium toward three-dimensional figuration – a challenge he relishes.
“This is really early for this particular work and every piece is an adventure,” he said.
“It’s a gut-level thing, a gut-level response. So I feel really compelled to do this.”
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Nationally known artists Amy Roberts, Robert Carlson and Steve Maslach exhibit glass sculpture June 6-16 at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts. The show, entitled “Island Glass: Three Bainbridge Artists,” salutes the Glass Art Society’s 33rd Annual Conference being held in Seattle this month. Information: 842-3132.
