Red Line Service, Chicago, IL
Glass fusion is just plain cool. I mean obviously not, it’s actually extremely hot, conducted by joining sheets of colored glass in a kiln fired to a temperature of nearly 1500 degrees. Over a dozen RLS artists took classes in the process, creating a series of pendants, magnets, small plates, and brooches, mostly geometric and with some forays into lettering (tricky!) and robotic faces (cute!). Participants included Shay Jones, Lacey Harris, Efren Paderes, Magda Escamilla, Tracy Byer, Denis Dunlea, Tracey Christmas, William Robinson, Dave Scott, Sheba Peaker, James Williams, Reverend Van Ferdinand, and Carlos Guevara. Sam Banerjee’s slumped square dish, offset by forest green rectangles on the diagonal, has a yellow center like a pat of butter. Lorenz Joseph’s concoction is a mystery——a mash-up, or rather a meltdown, of every shape and color, once neatly arranged, then entrusted to the heat of the kiln for finishing. The result is something like a painter’s palette and everything like the kind of art that emerges from a thing allowed to go beautifully wrong.
—Lori Waxman 10/5/2024 6:28 PM