Contemporary glass art fills gallery’s July exhibit
The Baton Rouge Gallery, 1515 Dalrymple Drive, shares the latest works from three of its artist members best known for their signature use of glass, including Mary Ann Caffery, Paulo Dufour and Craig McCullen through Thursday, July 26.
Caffery’s exhibit, Changing Landscapes, draws on a 2011 trip to the southern Louisiana coast.
She wrote in her artist’s statement that the “startling beauty of the colors, the variety of textures and the linear horizontality of the landscape” struck her. The trip spurred an ongoing series of paintings based on the changing coastline, many of which were included in her last Baton Rouge Gallery exhibition.
This time around, with glass being the focus of this three-person exhibition, Caffery decided to “paint her feelings of the ever-changing south Louisiana landscape in glass.” Her leaded stained glass work is freeform.
With her intuitive, collage style, she hopes to communicate the beauty she experienced through the colors, light, lines, shapes and forms in the landscape.
Caffery has been an artist member since 1987. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Interior Design Department at LSU, where she teaches color theory and graphics. She also is the artistic director of Caffery Gallery.
With Tides of Desire, Paulo Dufour explores the thematic nature of desire and the imperative forms of attachment.
Using undulating layers of clear and multihued, deeply saturated jeweled colors, he combines sculptural forms with vessels that are organic and seemingly writhe to capture light.
Dufour describes longing, separation, attachment, yearning, addiction, lust and covet as the motivations, “which swell and ebb as the tides in our lives and are the underlying forces which drive us to depths of despair; and yet, often fuels the passions of creativity.”
Dufour is the son of artist and LSU Professor and Baton Rouge Gallery founding artist member Paul Dufour.
He’s been an artist member since 1985 and lives in Covington, where he is a full time teacher in the public school system and operates a glass business called Incredible Glass Works.
McCullen’s latest exhibit, Precious Things, is the result of both a lifetime of thinking about glass — and the techniques and compositions he is able to create using the medium — and, as he puts it, his “love of shiny things.”
For this show, McCullen reflected on the fact that he and his co-exhibitors all hail from the same exceptional art program at LSU more than 30 years ago.
This program, which focused on glass as an art form, was initiated and overseen by the late Paul Dufour.
With Precious Things, McCullen seeks to reflect the spirit and culture of southern Louisiana with his colorful compositions as well as spark some intrigue on the part of his fellow exhibitors.
He explains, “My works in this exhibit are designed to show my friends some of the things I have come across while spending a life thinking about glass. The materials, techniques and compositions are specially done to intrigue their thinking.”
McCullen has been an artist member since 1987. He has had opportunities to work and study with leading glass artists from around the world and has taught at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and with the Acadiana Arts Council.
Admission is free.
For more information, call (225) 383-1470 or visit http://www.batonrougegallery.org.
Baton Rouge Gallery