by Elizabeth Monks Hack
The month of May can be full of warm sunshine and clear skies. It can also be moody, and even stormy when the winds come howling through. The artwork of Kristine Kelly, our featured artist at the Cypress Gallery this month, brings both those states of weather and feeling to her show “Painting with Glass.” Kelly is a painter, who uses the unique medium of glass.
Kelly began her art adventure in glass art thirty years ago, making fused glass jewelry and decorative pieces formed in molds. Once she discovered the art of landscape painting using kiln-fired glass, there was no turning back. Her work exploits the colors, opalescence, and translucence of glass.
Glass as a medium brings the outside world into the the work of art. Reflections, transparency, and even the movement of the viewer will effect it. In “Spring at Jalama,” light flickers and glides across the surface, catching in highlights on the clouds. The viewer can peer into many of the pieces, as into a tide pool. In “Fields of Gold” this effect is enthralling. You are in the artist’s world.
Kelly creates environments of heightened sensitivity. She has the ability to give the viewer a feeling of distance using opaque glass, or a feeling of nearness through the use of tactile three-dimensional glass. This show is a pleasure for the senses, full of beautiful things to inspire you. It is up through May 25.
In the main galleries our artists continue to show works of variety and visual delight. Jasmine Gonzalez has on display painted collages that take you on a journey through contemporary culture. Her moniker “Manic Creative” describes the intensity with which she approaches art-making, evident in “Eye Will Die Trying,” a flurry of abstract brush stokes and images of eyes.
Painterly strokes and spontaneous line is found in all of Carol Wood’s art. Look for it in her series of watercolor and ink gift items, as well as her “Kids,” a more formal pastel. Claudette Carlton often uses watercolor to express states of harmony and order, as in her charming composition, “John Brown’s Farm – Lake Placid, NY.”
Ellen Thermos has crea ted a lively “still life” composition, in which a free-spirited order plays a part, a la Cezanne. In her acrylic “Spring Still Life” objects, colors and brushstrokes dance into place.
The Cypress Gallery has an abundance of gift items, always, and in every creative medium. Anna Look’s small ceramic pieces, from wall-mounted vases to pendants to match holders, have muted glazes contrasted with pale stoneware, creating perfect works of art. Perfect, like Lee Hill’s small painting of a big horn sheep. Or Linda Gooch’s tiny watercolor of a sparrow encased in a manipulated frame.
Members of the Lompoc Valley Art Association love to create, to make art and share it with you. Families stroll through our gallery, as do people from all over the world, giving them a wonderful memory (and sometimes a work of art) to take home. We hope you join them this month!
