Leah Wilson & Cynthia Morgan
March 25-April 27

 
Leah Wilson’s paintings are of flowing waterways and the view of rocks and trash that lie beneath a layer of water. She is drawn to distortions created by the river on objects and the rivers themselves.  She is also intrigued with the relationship that we have with the river – the interplay of the natural components of the river with the things we introduce into it, both the tangible and intangible. Wilson records the colors of the waters and looks for the intersections of humans and the natural landscape. She views things like garbage and man-made material as a bridge between the natural wild areas and ourselves, markers that we have been here, leaving bits and pieces of our passing behind. She looks for the things that usually go unnoticed, the small things and the slowly changing things.

Pictured Left: "Ophelia" oil on wood panel

Cynthia Morgan creates glass sculpture using cast glass and pate de verre techniques.  Her work for this show inextricably links humanity and the environment. The major pieces are all based on what water does: flowing, surging, calming, birthing, dripping, breaking, and eroding. Her technique allows for precise, subtle shadings to create sculpture with both color and translucency.  The pate de verre method has many similarities to the lost wax method of casting in bronze.  Beginning with a clay model to create a silicone mold, she uses that mold to reproduce the original model in foundry wax, and “invests” it in a special refractory plaster. She melts the wax out of the mold, saturates the mold with water, and painstakingly packs layer after layer of colored glass powders into the mold.  The packing process can take up to 12 hours; packed molds are fired for up to three weeks in a specially designed kiln. Once cooled, the plaster is removed & polished.  A single work can take up to three months to complete.
Pictured Right: "Currents Breaking" Cast glass