Gust Gallery - Fine Arts

My work examine the shapes and acts in nature that are awe inspiring, and seeks to allow the viewer to gain an appreciation of the every day miracle that is the force of life unfolding before our eyes. Through the use of texture, the delicate nature of glass and it's ability to transform light, highlights the mysterious potent spaces that house life. This work was inspired by the quiet moments of reflection and reverence for this everyday event. The basis of this work is derived from one of my earliest childhood memories of visiting my father working on an oil well in the grasslands of Alberta. The vastness of the oilfields drew me to play and explore among the abandoned barns and homesteads. While the force of the machinery worked furiously conscripting time for its own purpose, I became aware of how nature revealed itself through its own time clock; that it waited to re-invent itself, to reclaim these places. The grass grew between the cracks in the building foundations, the erosion of the wind turned planed wood to soil.

My experiences on the prairies have given me an appreciation of the crisp light and straight horizons, the curve of a slope and the cut of erosion caused by a creek. Within the simplicity of this setting there are landmarks that draw the eye to particular points. Likewise this is what I seek to achieve in my blown work - precise lines, clear light infused with translucent colour that charms the eye through a meditation on the lines and curves within the assembled forms.

When Julia Reimer was introduced to the craft of glass blowing she immediately knew she had found the right form for expressing her creativity. She says, "I was always drawn to the muted luminescence of river ice on bright days in winter. So when I had a chance to combine the essence of light, colour and movement with a material, it was a perfect fit."

Julia grew up between the mountains and prairies in Canada and her aesthetic, based on the simplicity of light and form, is derived from this environment of crisp prairie light, undulating hills and grasslands carved by wind and water.

After first studying glass blowing in 1996 at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD), she has continued her studies through travels to Scotland, the United States, Spain, France and Hungary where she acquired a knowledge of design and traditional European glass making techniques. She completed her course work at ACAD in 2000 and now owns and operates Firebrand Glass Studio with her husband, Tyler Rock.

Her original design and meticulous craftsmanship have been recognized through several awards and scholarships, such as the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2008 she received the first ever Canadian Clay and Glass National Glass Award for Excellence. She has been chosen as an Artist in Residence at several prominent art institutions such as the Corning Museum of Glass, The Jam Factory Art Centre and the University of South Australia. As well, her sculptures are featured in the publication 500 Glass Objects. She has also been commissioned by the office of the Prime Minister to create a gift for the Emperor and Empress of Japan. Her work has also been selected for the Cheongju International Craft Biennale as well as the official Cultural Olympiad, at the Museum of Vancouver.

I am interested in moments within the act of seeing where perception shifts, moments where we are present through engagement, while being transported through experience. Aspects of the 'experience of seeing': perception, cognition and embodied experience, have pre-occupied many philosophers since Kant, and are rich areas of contemporary discourse within the visual arts and craft theory. My interest is in how the descriptive function of an artifact can register or create an embodied experience beyond the object's tangible presence; a moment of engagement with otherwise unseen or unnoticed phenomena.

Glass possesses the unique ability to be visually present as an object while it simultaneously melds into the surrounding area. This material has the ability to embody, shape and cast light. I contend that these properties of the craft object can provide the potential to activate moments of heightened awareness of space, and in doing so can function as a medial point by which everyday experience might be transformed into a moment of awareness of temporality and space; a moment when a 'slowness of seeing' can occur.

For the past 20 years Tyler Rock's studio practice has been focused on vessel aesthetics and the exploration of the intrinsic properties of glass as a material. Increasingly his interest within form and design in the glass blowing studio, has turned to the creation of sculptural objects that explore models and model making as a form of artistic inquiry.

Rock, who hails from western Canada, has been an instructor in the Glass program at the Alberta College of Art and Design glass program since 1995. He has served as the head of the Glass program at ACAD and as president of the Glass Art Association of Canada. He has taught workshops and lectured at schools, studios and institutions in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, France, Spain, and Japan.

Rock's work has received recognition from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Alberta College of Art and Design and the Canada Council for the Arts. He has exhibited work extensively in galleries both in Canada and the United States. Rock's work can be found in many private, corporate and public collections in Canada including the private collection of the Premier of Alberta, the offices of the Prime Minister in Ottawa and the Department of Foreign Affairs.