Articles - 21 June 2005
Clare Belfrage
Art Gallery of South Australia recent acquisition
The article has been reproduced on the Craft Australia website with the kind permission from the Art Gallery of South Australia and was first published in the Art Gallery of South Australia magazine June/July2005 issue.
Belfrage entered the glass arena through Monash University in Melbourne where, in 1988, she completed a Bachelor of Arts. At this time Nick Wirdnam taught glass-blowing and Klaus Zimmer stained glass. Her early hot-blown and 'encalmo' work was a mixture of functional forms and vessels that used colour and the natural transparency of glass for effect.
She has since become much admired for her unique surface decoration, for which she developed a technique for applying fine threads of glass to the surface of her vessels. This slow repetitious process allows Belfrage to build up a quiet rhythm of threads which eventually play across the complete surface. Her interest in glass threadwork began when she outlined designs on bowls in the early 1990s and was more fully resolved in the Line drawing series of 1999. Shifting lines #1 and #2 are from a recent series and map further changes to her practice, the most significant being the move away from traditionally inspired vessels to irregular organic forms. Only the vestige of an opening remains in these forms, but it is the focus from which Belfrage's threads of glass radiate out across the surface towards the base, crossing earlier horizontal threads. The multi-layering creates a net that is literally melted onto the surface, its lines at once accentuating and distorting the form.
Unlike most glass-blowers, Belfrage's recent work does not use the transparency of glass; she prefers semi-opaque glass forms - even the threads of coloured glass are acid etched to a soft matt finish. As a consequence, Shifting lines #1 and #2 absorbs light, and as the intensity of the light changes, so do the density and tonal range of the blues and greens. Displayed in small groups such as this, Belfrage's work achieves a quiet brooding monumentality. The acquisition of Shifting lines #1 and #2 was made possible through the generosity of the Hon. Diana Laidlaw. These works are currently displayed in the collection exhibition Contemporary Australian Glass in gallery 19.
Robert Reason
Curator of European and Australian Decorative Arts
Art Gallery of South Australia
Image:
Clare Belfrage, born Melbourne 1966
Shifting lines #1 & #2, 2004, Adelaide
blown glass with cane drawing, acid etched, 35.0 x 22.0 x 10.0 cm, 17.0 x 35.0 x 18.5 cm
Gift of the Hon. Diana Laidlaw through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2005
