First, a confession. I study at the NGC so all I needed to do, to see the glass artwork submitted for the NGC prize, was to pop upstairs. I finally ‘popped upstairs’ on Monday 14th March – the day after the exhibit closed! Yes, I’m a complete idiot, but also a lucky idiot as a kind gallery attendant let me sneak in as the displays were about to be taken down. I’m so glad I did – the quality of the work was really amazing and the number of different techniques on display was fantastic.
Did I like everything? Of course not, but many of the ideas were inspirational. That said, this was a prize – so what did I think of the winners? Hmm – pause to scratch my head and reflect on the fact that I have NO CLUE why some pieces are chosen by the judges over others. So with that caveat, let’s go through the first three:
In first place was a piece by Karlyn Sutherland, entitled Pilchuk, Autumn. For the uninitiated, Pilchuk is a famous glass studio and school in Washington State and this piece was created as ‘a response to memories of early mornings at Pilchuck Glass School, pre-pandemic; folding shutters on windows revealing muted skies through misty air and changing light, and the promise of a new day’. It is a beautiful piece – hung on a wall and not large (37x74x2cm) – yet it reminded me of large Rothko canvasses that hang heavy with emotion despite depicting almost nothing at all. The more I think about this piece, the better I like it – yet in the NGC, surrounded by showier items, I was astonished to find it had won.
In second place was a Collection of Contained Boxes by Andrea Walsh. Again, very unshowy – a seemingly simple set of three glass containers that each ‘cradle a small ceramic box within’. The blurb in the programme says that these were created using a series of slow techniques, with the pieces being continuously refined at every stage – but I just couldn’t quite get it. Maybe my problem was that, as a naughty late visitor, I’d promised the attendant that I’d stand well back from the displays, so I didn’t have a chance to examine these boxes in detail – but still, it was hard to see what was quite so special.
In third place was one of the largest and ugliest of the artworks, but nonetheless fascinating. Five Frames was made by Ida Wieth (all three winners were women – yay) and was a piece that challenged the usual processes of hanging and displaying glass. The forms were a little organic and a lot weird – bizarrely these came closest to my own recent attempts to make a hanging glass ‘proggy mat’ made from recycled glass fragments. My pieces weren’t at all lovely and neither were these – but they did leave you pondering…