They don’t call Toledo the Glass City for nothing.
Our town’s history as a pioneering force in both industrial glass production and art glass ensures that significant artists working in glass and the collectors who love them will often make their way here. A case in point: John Brekke and Jane Bruce, two accomplished artists from Brooklyn, whose creative ambitions extend far beyond the limitations of traditional art glass, have arrived at River House Arts.
In this two-person show, JB Squared, the artists combine conventional glass techniques and materials with video, installation and conceptual art to create distinct works.
John Brekke
John Brekke is a documentarian of the everyday, pre-occupied with recording overheard conversations, altercations and occasional soliloquies. Then he etches these bits of talk onto the surfaces of vintage enameled bedpans and cooking pots, creating a kind of jive poetry.
Truncated phrases and absurdist nonsequiturs are spangled across the surface of the utilitarian and vaguely embarrassing artifacts in his Pissoir Series. Into the orifices of these found objects, Brekke has introduced globes of blown mirrored glass, transforming them from receptacles.
The nine blown, engraved and enameled glass rondels on display around the gallery appear, at first glance, to be more conventionally pleasing examples of art glass. Fishes, birds and airplanes provide most of the imagery in this body of work, all of them benefitting from the translucency of the glass that can evoke air or water. Brekke’s signature etched letters make a reappearance in the background of the composition, but in this case, they are used as a decorative element and can also be read as fish scales.
Jane Bruce
Jane Bruce is a memoirist of the natural world. Her lyrical recollection of the timeless and unending northeast Scottish coastline, inhabited only by birds, informs her mixed media pieces Constructed Landscapes. These tabletop assemblages manage to be both intimate and monumental; the air of timelessness and silence they evoke is reminiscent of Stonehenge or the pyramids. Wish I Was There, a related collection of 12 small translucent, kiln-formed glass tiles, charmingly recalls hand-colored vintage postcards. Their washed-out pastel colors paint panoramas of hazy, deserted seascapes and cast a spell of dreamy nostalgia.
Bruce heads in a more formal direction with a series of wall-mounted wooden constructions, entitled Constructed Space. Bruce gets more literal with two pieces that feature motion-activated videos of a meadow with butterflies and a bird-populated seascape.
Both John Brekke and Jane Bruce use the special qualities of glass to reach for larger themes, while refusing to be seduced by the undeniable attractions of the medium.
JB Squared / John Brekke and Jane Bruce is on view through November 16.
River House Arts, 425 Jefferson Ave.
419-441-4025 | Riverhousearts.com
