National Exhibition for Our Glassblowers The National Glass Gallery is set to open a important exhibition - titled Glass shadows The Gordon Family, two generations of contemporary Australian glass artists.
The exhibition will be held at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery from March 18th till May 16th.
It will trace the links and influences of the family, in a remarkable search for the beautiful and ineffable nature of glass.
A familial gift that touched and inspired two generations of the Gordon Family to seek their own interpretations of this difficult and magnificent art form.
Five members, two generations, each have achieved significant reputations in the world of Australian art glass for their different skills and highly individual works.
The shadows cast by this family extend not only through time and between each other, but also in the separate inspirations and within each of their works and it s viewer.
This is an unusual exhibition of living artists, similar to the Boyd family, but until now under-recognised.
Eileen Gordon s father, Alasdair, was already internationally regarded as a significant glass engraver when he was invited to Australia in Amazing Garden Art Janet and Mike Green stated working at the Enchanted Maze Garden as gardeners and artists in residence two years ago.
Both are artists and Janet is also an expert gardener so the results are stunning.
The large head in the Conifer garden was one of Mike Green's early projects.
Two years ago when I started working with Michael Savage, he asked me to help get his beautiful conifer garden into shape.
It hadn t been effectively pruned for several years and was starting to make the paths difficult to use.
I didn t really know much about conifers and really wasn t very fond of them, but 1979 for Western Australia s 150th Anniversary celebrations.
Falling in love with Australia, he and his wife Rish decided to emigrate and now are considered amongst Australia s most eminent glass artists.
In 2007 they were both nominated by FORM Australia as Living Treasures.
Today studio glass is arguably one of the most vital, innovative, highly professionalised and internationally acclaimed field of craft practice in Australia.
We certainly should be proud to have the Gordon Studio Glassblowers, Eileen Gordon and Grant Donaldson living and maintaining their fabulous studio in our community.
Michael encouraged me and I studied quite a bit and started on pruning the least valuable species.
The Maze has the most beautiful conifer gardens and it was a daunting challenge.
Slowly they won me over and I became more confident.
Today I am very proud and protective of them and I feel really good when I see that people say they absolutely love it.
About 9 month s ago, Michael asked me if I could carve something into his front hedge to make the entry more interesting.
It turned into something quite large possibly the largest relief topiary hedge in the world we are waiting classification from the Guinness book of records It is about 2 1 2m high, by 76 m long.
I have to trim it about 4 times a year and it takes 5 days from start to finish.
THE GUILD ART GALLERY Situated in the Craft Village at the rear of the Tyabb Packing House Mornington Tyabb Rd, Tyabb Mel Ref 148 H10 Ph 5977 4399 www.guildartgallery.net Open 10-5 Thurs-Sun Public holidays the first 2 weeks of January Original paintings by award winning artists in oil, watercolour, pastel acrylic 54 good life, february -march, april 2011 Local Artists Works on Display THE GUILD GALLERY remains one of the Peninsula s silent gems as a premier independent realist art co-operative, exclusively representing and exhibiting original classical representational works by local artists with a smile.
Member artists are on-duty to provide technical advice information, share their knowledge the gallery has a desirable reputation for its reasonable pricing.
ARTISTS PROFILE - VAL WEATHERLEY I m inspired by a wide range of subjects and enjoy the challenge which each one presents.
I usually work with oil pastel occasionally in watercolour.
My work is held in private collections both nationally and overseas and exhibited at the Guild Arty Gallery, Val is a member of the McClelland Guild of Artists and the Peninsula Arts Society of which she is a Life Member and past President.
Up-to-date examples of pictures by Guild artists may be viewed at www.guild artgallery.net - drop in and be delighted.