Essential to creativity is freedom—freedom to explore the dark and the light, to give all ideas the expression that they demand, and, as Chuck Scalin is amply aware, to move with the tides of inspiration. He is never simply a painter, a graphic designer, a photographer, or an assemblagist. He is an artist, and he continues to produce bodies of work in a vast range of media. Three years ago, glass was the thing that caught his oeuvre, and you can find the fruits of his labor at Quirk Gallery this month in his Rush: Explorations in Glass show; the title serves as a helpful reminder that these works are not quite what they seem. In fact, the impossibly lightweight and invulnerable pieces floating on the walls might lead you through the space thinking that you’ve stumbled upon a room full of sober, elegant metalwork, especially given the darker, more melancholic tones that suggest iron and rust. “While experimenting on the surface of the glass, I developed techniques that altered the look of the glass to resemble metal… [it is] most evident in the large 9-panel piece. At my opening for this show, I must have had 15 or 20 people come up to me and say they thought this was a glass show. No, it doesn’t look like traditional glass, but that’s what is intriguing to me—I’m able to alter the surface to resemble a totally different surface.”

Transitioning from collage and assemblage to glass (on recommendation by glass artist and friend Jude Schlotzhauer) offered Scalin a unique, if at times difficult, tack on the work. Glass affords much less control and power over the final outcome of the piece; once in the kiln, it has its own hot love affair, and it returns as whatever it wants to be. “I soon discovered when working with fired glass that I had to embrace unexpected changes that occur—surfaces can be altered because of bubbles which form from trapped gases due to elements inserted between the individual layers of glass… color changes occur, and there’s also the result of pieces cracking during the firing. Yes, and I quickly learned that glass cracks, breaks and shatters… not having control of the process was difficult at times, especially for someone who was always in control with my former medium. The challenge for me came in accepting the intrinsic beauty of this medium’s unpredictability and incorporating that into each individual piece.” The title Rush refers to the next step: how to take the work to completion once it has been fired, often with components more familiar to him, like wire or graphite. Scalin is Professor Emeritus and former Assistant Chair of the Communication Arts and Design Department at VCU; if you’re interested in following up on him after you see the Quirk show, check out his photographic works at Ghostprint Gallery in November.

WEB | http://www.chuckscalin.com

Great article, Bird! Looking forward to seeing the show on Friday!