Vicki Torr Emerging Artist Prize 2021

When I received the phone call I flushed pink with excitement. It feels amazing to have such good news after what feels like a really long dry spell. Hearing that Portal won the Vicki Torr prize this year made me buzz with energy and motivation.

Close up of Portal: The Closed Door during the Glass Armours Solo Exhibition, 2021

Portal will be the first of many in the jade series. Although I call it the jade series, it’s actually made of cast recycled glass; a process I’ve been experimenting and developing over the last couple of years.

Although glass is a beautiful material to work with there are so many areas/steps in the making of glass artworks that could create waste. So as I’ve learnt more about the process, I’ve become more in tune with ways to recycle/reuse material. Some of them involve crushing up one off moulds that have been fired and mixing them into fresh raw material for mould making. (A process I learnt from Dr. Angela Thwaites, who calls the new mix ludo.) And sometimes that involves looking around at the discarded and shattered glass lying around, and giving them a new life.

The last two years have really opened my eyes to the effects of climate change. As an artist working with cast glass I realize that it is impossible to be completely carbon neutral but I guess I want to make as much of a difference as I can, however little it may seem so this series is an important step in that direction for me.

Thank you to the Ausglass members for voting me in and keep a lookout for a new body of work!

First Solo: Facing the Fear

February, 2021. Opening night of Glass Armours at Gallery Lane Cove.

We must be getting somewhat used to how my entries here are generally after the fact (what can I say journaling can be hard and it’s always best to live in the moment when it’s happening right?) But in a way, writing it after the fact allows me some time to process and reflect deeply on all that’s happened rather than just give a recount.

I remember when Rachael Kiang (the manager and curator of Gallery Lane Cove) first approached me in September last year (2020) to invite me to do a solo exhibition at her gallery as part of a 4 venue program, now known as the Lunar North Confluence, which focuses on the practices of Chinese Australian artists.

I went in for an initial meet and greet, to see the space that was going to be allocated to me 5 months later and I remember the absolute excitement and dread that ensued in that week. I couldn’t sleep for days agonizing over how big the space was and how small my works would look in a 9 by 9 meter room. Especially considering how my worst nightmare as an artist is having a solo exhibition and not having enough work to hold up the space so I had been putting off having a solo for a really long time as I worked to develop a body of work I could be proud of. But the space was gorgeous and I had some time, 5 months was a little tight working with glass where one artwork could easily take half a year to make, but as they say time waits just long enough for those who use it wisely.

The next 5 months were intense.

I don’t think I have ever worked so hard in my life. Everyday I was sculpting, molding, polishing, hammering, carving and making; working desperately towards a deadline. It was liberating. Before then I didn’t realized how tied down I felt by all the proposal and submissions I was writing up (one big surprise about being an artist is that it requires an inordinate amount of writing and not just writing, rejection after putting all the time into a proposal), it was all eating into my time and energy for actually making art. It’s hard to be motivated when you don’t know how or where you will exhibit your work after you’ve made it. So now that I had a vision to work towards I felt free. Ideas flowed forth, it gave me a chance to dream again and motivation to work on all those projects I had on the back burner came in torrents.

But even if the spirit was high, sometimes your body just can’t keep up though I surprised myself with how many times I managed to coax my body past its limits, constantly telling myself I can rest in March when everything was well and truly done. That now was the time to do and I can crash into my burnout later. It’s amazing what a deadline will do for you. So if you’re a young artist like myself, give yourself a chance and take on an ambitious project that you care about and you’ll be amazed by how capable you actually are.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see all my work in one place and how much work it actually took to put it all up (there was a lot of shuffling around and considering and minds being changed). Working on this exhibition made me think of space in a whole new dimension and I am so lucky to have the help of experienced art installers and a curator like Rachael Kiang who understood the space intimately and could intuitively figure out how the audience would feel navigating the exhibition. I had general suggestions of how I would like the work to be seen - the Birdsong series a little segmented away from the other pieces and the Portal at the entrance of the exhibition there to both greet and challenge the audience to enter the space as it is the façade that guards my inner thoughts, which every piece in the exhibition is.

After 3 full days of install (where Jenna, Jo, my dad and I worked tirelessly), everything was up and I wondered the room alone in almost a trance. It was strange thinking that this was 5 years of work and hard to believe that these were all my creations that I have sweated, bled and cried over haha. There was an indescribable joy in my heart and I think it was a sense of belonging. A moment of ‘oh’. I don’t know how to describe it, I think if I did it would be gone.

The exhibition itself was an amazing experience but not for the reasons I expected. At the opening I saw curators, artists and art enthusiasts but I also saw people I had not seen in a decade, my friends from all the different social circles that I had engaged in at one point of my life came and for me it was like a colliding of worlds. I imagine it was what a wedding would feel like, a gathering of all the people you know who want to support you. I didn’t even know I had so many friends! I felt privileged to have created a space for people who may never have otherwise met talk and connect. Because what is an exhibition good for if not to spark conversation? What is a conversation good for if not to make friends out of strangers?

Glass Armours

NC QIN SOLO EXHIBITION

3 - 27 February 2021, Gallery Lane Cove

This exhibition focuses on the complexity of identity, separating our ego from our self into a physical manifestation of the heavy glass armour that we carry in our lives. Despite the project being composed of glass sculptural objects, my work is always about the humanity and the story of the piece, the object never quite the central subject matter but letting itself be shaped around an absent human subject. The cast glass armour is constructed with the cultural acknowledgement of the symbology and iconography of armours to Asian culture; as a mark of status and an object of familial and patriotic pride and expectation. By using glass to create the armour I render it ineffective in its mechanism for defence, with the aim of subverting its meaning and to explore themes of guilt, shame and repression that are often sourced from frustrated efforts to attain an ideal that is fostered by expectation, particularly within Asian social structures.

National Emerging Art Glass Prize 2020

“Head Cases” in the National Glass Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga

This post has been a long time coming. I first found out that I was awarded the National Emerging Art Glass Prize 2020 in April, but it didn’t feel appropriate to be celebrating when the whole world was reeling and mourning from the shock of all the COVID19 deaths in Italy. I was conflicted and thought it best to be satisfied with my mini fist pump and celebrate when times were better.

Well...times aren’t really better, 2020 is destined to be chaotic it seems (which is fitting considering how started off with the massive fires in Australia burning at their worst in January). But despite all the damage and the chaos, I also find it to be hopeful, like there will be a metamorphic change after this. And since there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, I might as well take this time as good as any to celebrate, to continue making art and find reasons to be happy even amidst so many reasons to be sad or angry.

It was the first prize I have ever won as an artist. It felt validating and encouraging. I felt seen. Not just by the audience but by the people closer to home for me. My parents have always wondered if I had chosen the right path (even though it has already been 5 years since I graduated with my arts degree), they love and support me but they also worry for me.

I truly couldn’t have gotten here by myself. That is not to say I don’t believe in myself, but the path of an artist can be so fraught that I think even the most confident person can falter and be riddled with self doubt. If it weren’t for those who believed in me even when all evidence pointed otherwise and urged me to keep applying, keep making, keep trying, I don’t know if I would still be on this path. 

So I want to thank all those people who have been cheering me on since the beginning and those who saw me and believed in me when I needed it most. You are the reason I am still here. You guys are my treasure.

Without further ado, here are some images of my work up in the National Emerging Art Glass Prize 2020!

I have yet to go see it in person because of the quarantine, but I do hope to catch all the beautiful entries before the end of the Exhibition in September 2020! In the meantime I’ll keep creating and pushing myself in my craft. :)

Growing Part 1 - Facing Potential

It’s been a while since I updated my artist journal on here, I’ve had a few false starts that never made it to publication but I’m determined this entry will not be one of them. My last entry was a year and a half ago and as you would expect, a lot has happened since then! I had entered my first glass prize and cast my first crystal piece. I had reflected on my journey as an artist who had started off so lost and gradually crystallized into someone made of much tougher stuff. So sit back and enjoy, this is gonna be a long ride!

Where should I start? I’ll start where I left off, with sketching. I had undertaken a challenge to sketch a handful of portraits each week, most of them reproductions of old masters so I could glean insights off them - I had started the series for various reasons, I missed sketching and painting, I wanted to warm myself up for the Archibald (a prestigious portraiture prize in Australia) but there was also another motivation that I didn’t want to admit. I was getting scared of glass, of how much effort it took to make each piece, of how long it took for each piece to come out, of how little success I felt like I was getting in that area. And I was scared of all the ideas I had built in my head and all the work, all the work, all the work, they would take and no idea where to start it all. So I fell back on something that was easier and more familiar to me. (Not that sketching is easy, I had just been doing it a lot longer than I have glass and they were much quicker to resolve.)

In the end what made me go back to glass was a brief trip with my Mentor, Kate Baker, to Wagga Wagga, where I was helping her install her solo show at the National Glass Art Gallery. It was an intense five days of installation work with brief breaks to see the National Glass Collection upstairs. It was exhausting and exhilarating seeing how many different forms glass can take and the more we talked about it and all the work the other glass artists put in the more touched I felt but also the more confused I became. I began to question myself, whether I was really content with sketching and painting when I had access to a glass studio. Was it really the most I could make of my prime when I was still young and strong enough to take on the laborious work of glass. Whether I would have any regrets when I didn’t. And on the quiet 5 hrs drive back to Sydney, I had a vision of what I wanted to make - the first seed of Potential.

Potential 2018
Cast Spectrum Glass

Potential was to be my glass baby (in more sense than one, I actually carried the idea and nurtured it into being with the same term of time it would have taken someone to give birth to a real baby - a full 9 months).

Like most of my ideas, this one was also a personal test I gave myself - after my last fiasco with my grad piece Icarus (a story I have yet to tell, I’m still recovering from the trauma), and an aborted attempt at casting a large piece for a subset of the Persistence series, which both ended in kiln emergencies and serious anxiety - I hadn’t dared to cast with a quantity over 1kg of glass. But as time, experience and knowledge made me a little braver I felt it was time I tried again. Afterall, how do we grow if we don’t face our fears? And if Potential was about anything, it was most definitely about facing my fears.

I have a lot of ideas for my art (as I’m sure most artists do), as I’m making one piece inspiration comes for another - it can take shape in the different avenues of exploration for a concept or it could come in the shape of a mistake or problem I need to tackle. Most of my ideas greatly vary in form and sometimes even the techniques required to make them, but they all have one thing in common... they’re out of my current skill level. Haha.

The beauty of it is that it stops me from ever getting complacent and to always set my sights higher.

A hint of lips in the belly of the baby with her glass arms covering the eyes of the hidden face.

There’s a little secret in the baby, it’s a secret because most people aren’t aware of it until it’s pointed out and even then it’s hard to see in its murky depths. There’s a matured face in its belly - it’s a cast of my face. The baby in a sense is all of us when we’re faced with a challenge we’re not sure if we’re up to; young, uncertain, vulnerable and afraid - yet unknown to the potential swelling up inside us, of what we can grow to come. But the possibility is already there.

The plaster positive cast of my face within the belly of the baby pre-investment mould.

A juxtaposition of the positive and the negative figures in wax and plaster right before the investment mould for glass casting.

Opening night of the National Emerging Art Glass Prize exhibition in Wagga Wagga, the ‘birthplace‘ of Potential.

It truly felt like a turn of fate when after 9 months of loving labour, I was to see my baby in the public eye; right in the place of where I was originally inspired to create her.

It’s a been a long journey and I’ve learnt a lot from her, challenging myself further in terms of figurative sculpting, mould making and glass casting but I’ve also been taught that I still have a long way to go - I had yet to work with crystal and if I wanted that face/potential in the belly to be fully realised one day I was going to have to once again face another set of my fears in my artist life, which leads to the second part of my entry… :)

Persistence - The Strength behind the Beautiful

On the Opening night of Love Letter: Be With You , my Mum raised an interesting critique on my ballet slippers in the exhibition. (You can always rely on parents for that. Haha.) 

She asked: Why do the shoes appear to be so strong and borderline bulky? Why aren’t they more like the soft satin slippers that ballerinas use, elegant and exquisite – characteristics they’re known for portraying?
 

I wondered if anyone else had similar questions, so I decided to write up a more comprehensive context to the makings and concept behind the glass slippers.

For me, this is a work on the persistent strength of character. I’ve always seen ballet dancers as warriors, which I guess could be strange to think about at first but it’s more to do with their stoic attitude to physical pain and transformation of the mental limits into seemingly effortless grace. It’s also about the unseen struggle of the dancer who keeps silent about her pain to the audience. Ballet for me is an intensely feminine but strong type of art, it shows the mettle of feminine endurance.

I had made them out of glass, because glass has an indomitable and wild nature, especially during its casting stages. But there’s also an element of sensitivity and transparency and this is the effortless elegance that holds its spectators captive. When we see the finished product, we don’t see the weeks of effort that goes into each piece but only of the intrigue it presents itself in. That’s art. Beauty with Depth. But it’s a depth we can only feel.

Photo by Tyler Shields

I have included ribbons but excluded the feet. Even though it’s the physical body that keeps the shoes aloft and full of life, why is it missing? Is it just because it is more beautiful that way? Perhaps. But you would only be half right if you answered so. It’s because you never see the feet of the ballerinas on stage; you only see the soft satin that wraps like a medal around them. The slippers represent the prestige of being on stage, in the spotlight, in front of the audience. The slippers also represent what shields the audience from seeing what it took to get there. In a way, my shoes are trying to represent what is missing rather than what is there.                                                                                     

It’s a piece that depicts the struggle of the artist. Of any artist in any field. Because it is a battle for every artist to get there: on stage, in front of an audience. It is a battle to believe what you’re trying to do matters, to get up again every time you take a fall and it’s a process of saying, “This is not the end!”

The quiet before the opening. Dancers watching each other. Tension and energy in the air.

Photo taken on the Exhibition Opening Night by Mark Jones

I would like to thank everyone who came to the exhibition on the opening night and afterwards. It was truly a pleasure to meet all the new faces and get reacquainted with familiar ones. :)

I would also like to thank my Mum for inspiring further attention to the context of this series.

Each piece was developed to have its own character in the ribbons and colour scheme, allowing it to bring a different energy when it interacts with the rest of the “dancers”. Did you have a favourite?

Edit: Udee Online Magazine has done a feature on the Persistence series! It has been a pleasure getting to know Laura La Rosa (editor of Udee.) and talking more about the future of my artistic trajectory.