41st Annual Glass Art Society Conference Journal
I have been incredibly humbled and appreciative to receive an invitation to speak at the 41st Annual GAS Conference this year…especially in considering the fact that I am a fairly unrecognizable member of the international glass community. With this in mind, I used the opportunity to introduce myself, my work, my methods of making, and the ideas that motivate what I do and how I go about doing it within the presentation.
The nature of my work is very much rooted in narrative and its content always involves or revolves around a highly abstracted and fictitious rendering of some kind of observation of my many human shortcomings. I wanted to use this presentation to address my personal interests in utilizing glass, imagery, and the written word within a sculptural context in relation to my work. In referencing historical glass, contemporary craft, and popular culture I discussed the relevance of these sources to the development of the ideas and processes that guide my practice. I also discussed my approach towards the narrative aspect of the work in relation to my interests in the essence of human fallibility, the human response to personal conflict, and the virtues within struggle, humility, and failure… discomforting factors that, whether we like it or not, allow us to continually redefine ourselves and, therefore, serve as highly transformative opportunities.
As a child, I was a shy and awkward boy who took interest and comfort in the fictional glories of favorite super heroes within comic books and animated television. At the time, I believe the attraction was consciously upon the emphasis on color, simplistic shapes, and fantastical sequencing of both action and suspense. However, now in hindsight, I believe there was a subconscious response to the super hero as a model of the ideal…a being of thoroughly flawless characteristics physically, emotionally, intellectually, and morally. My boyish aspirations of developing into an equally perfect being dissolved gradually year by year as maturity and experience revealed the fact that being human is actually quite the opposite of what I had once believed. I can’t say that I take pleasure in my inadequacies and occasional lapse in judgment, but I do acknowledge significance within it. Comic book storylines have always been structured around the presence of conflict - portrayed traditionally between physical engagement between the hero and his or her nemesis. Although this aspect of comic books holds current contemporary relevance politically and socially, I find the concept of struggle to be of great fascination regarding an individual’s perspective of the self.
Since my youth I have come to recognize that comic books had, undoubtedly, left a tremendous impression upon me. They are responsible for my interest in images and drawing. They are responsible for my interest in words and writing. They are responsible for my value for imagination and making. But, most importantly, they are responsible for laying the conceptual foundation with which I’ve built my artistic development upon. Initially, the superhero comic character was adopted as a personal and legitimate catalyst for change. However, the ideals represented within traditional heroic fantasy that I had been inspired by during my adolescence do not translate well during such an antiheroic age that we live in at present. Aside from their visual potency, comic books have served as a personally relevant medium that examines difficult issues simply in the way in which the stories are canonically structured. These elements of confronting personal conflict, questioning identity, and of undergoing radical transformations are the thematic pillars to every comic book character narrative. They also happen to be points of interest that motivate the basis of my work.
I’ve always taken special interest in the metaphorical properties of specific glass objects or processes of glass working in particular eras of glass history that were commonly associated with hosting graphic content – relishing not only in their unspoken poetic potential as objects commonly associated with pictorially ornamented glass, but of the conceptual relevance of translating their significance into a modern-day formal vehicle of self-expression from the perspective of a young man of American descent. In drawing from the goblet, the bottle, and glass painted portraiture, I spoke in the presentation of how I utilized these historical instances as platforms – or formal motifs – with which to speak from with personally applied narrative content.
The work involving the goblet motif was an effort to create a modern day rendition in glass of everything I was attracted to with the black-figure painted pottery of ancient Greece. In acknowledging the Greek strict obedience to mathematically based structure of form and lustful aesthetic to craftsmanship, I drew a connection to a shared virtue in the making and prestige of European cup making of the 17th to 19th century. The goblet has primarily been personally considered as an object of metaphorical purpose - a luxurious form to commemorate particular individuals or events by means of imagery and/or text applied upon or into its surface. With that in mind, I pulled inspiration from the mythical narratives upon the ancient Greek pottery and created proportionally enhanced goblet forms to host fictitiously adapted narratives inspired by my own human shortcomings. In using the graphic stylings of the comic book format and look I felt that this particular mode of present day storytelling was a fitting extension of Greek lore; that super hero comics in particular serve us as a contemporary society as modern day mythology. The attraction to the Greek value in the tragic hero also serves as an impetus in what motivates the content of my narratives: protagonists destined to “battle” - and ultimately lose to - unforeseen forces of conflict. I acknowledge this to be an odd fascination, but personally meaningful, nonetheless.
The materials used to apply graphics are selected to be intentionally primitive and non-traditional. In using spray paint, Sharpies, and children’s Crayola markers the motive is to find the extraordinary potential within very ordinary means of self-expression…to make these materials “pass” in a visually glorious manner. This is a constant consideration within how I go about my work as an attempt to externally implement the process of radical transformation…of hoping to find my own capacity of substantiality as a common individual by uncovering the unique and unforeseen potential of the most unsung of mark-making tools.
In speaking of things uncelebrated, another body of work was again inspired by a significant object of glass history commonly associated with hosting a variety of images and text upon its surface. However, an object also known for it’s humble simplicity as opposed to the goblet’s opulent demeanor. The hand-made bottle of colonial America was quickly and crudely made…a no-nonsense approach to its production, therefore, leading towards its rough and tumble aesthetic. Yet, for all of its faults and faux pas – it’s thickness, it’s wonky stature, it’s loose posturing, the blemished glass it was blown with – these trademark foibles of the colonial bottle had introduced me to the idea of integrating a bit of humanity into how I worked with glass. Ultimately it inspired me to begin “undoing” my obedience to symmetry.
A second consideration of the work involving the bottle motif was in regards to its para-function: it’s ability to undergo a great variety of identities and serve many different purposes far beyond its initial function of holding fluid. Once its contents are gone, the bottle essentially serves its owner of no importance. Although coming across as a simple and lowbrow poster child in the archive of objects commonly associated with glass, I find the bottle to be a highly iconic visual motif – especially once emptied and considered “useless.” In fact, the bottle is at its poetic best once its initial purpose has been served. Under this light, the bottle serves as an ordinary thing capable of serving tremendously extraordinary and unforeseen purposes due to functional reinvention under peculiar circumstances (as seen by the Molotov cocktail) or by metaphorical association (as represented by the hopelessness of an emptied and strewn brown-bagger). This body of work was pursued under a variety of intentions. The most important, however, was to establish a reciprocal dependency between form and imagery in accordance to the content of a piece, to pursue the application of the graphic material in a way that utilized the physical/visual properties unique to glass, and of doing all of this in service to ideas based on the callused grandeur of being human.
The third body of work that I discussed was a radical deviation from the previous two. Putting blown form to the side, my interests in using graphics led to questioning how I could use imagery and the written word within more of a sculptural context; as abstracted visual components that contribute to a bigger idea as opposed to drawing upon the legacy of vessel surface ornamentation. In capitalizing on my value for doing a lot with a little even further, I wanted to compose a body of work that thrived on resurrecting discarded float glass and other abandoned materials.
In using ink, pencil, and enamels I am thinking about a variety of new considerations within this work: the transparent nature of glass and how I could literally and figuratively layer information, the role a flat image could have in space, the relationship between materials, the quality of the marks being made, and the significance of even removing them and what that implies in some accounts.
All of this “flat” work is, most importantly, inspired by the idea of reinterpreting the conventions of glass painting and framed portraiture. In considering the frame as a housing unit of portraiture in general I use it as a symbol for order and pursue this work with the idea of playing against this structure in a variety of ways. Also, this body of work is pursued with a desire to add an ironic twist to the idea of a portrait as serving as the rendering of one’s likeness and approaching this abstractedly – not interested in portraying how one looks, but how one is. Actually, I should clarify that the work is exclusively in regard to myself…perpetually learning even still who I am and how I operate and trying to assemble some sort of meaning out of it all.
The nature of my work has always been highly introspective. Although seemingly stable and confident, I am often fascinated by my own faults and failures that often lend to an overwhelming sense of personal uncertainty and insecurity. For me, making is an activity with which I can impose order upon my mental and emotional processes and find a sense of meaning amidst the occasional clutter of doubt and disappointment. I don’t usually intend to make statements with my work, but I will admit that I do make testimonial confessions of a certain callused grandeur in being human. Whether or not this remains a significant aspect of my future work, I think it is a natural thing for one to take a curious interest in that which distinguishes him or herself as an individual. Ultimately, I will always be drawn to the human response to personal conflict …not necessarily because I romanticize about tragedy, but because there is an ironic beauty within the purpose of experiencing struggle, humility, and defeat. Whether we like it or not, these discomforting factors allow us to continually redefine ourselves and, therefore, serve as highly transformative opportunities. There are pluses to all of our minuses.
I am so incredibly happy to have had the opportunity to introduce myself to the international community within my presentation at the 41st annual GAS Conference. Of course, there is so much more I wanted to share within my lecture that time just wouldn’t allow. Similarly, there is still so much more I’d like to convey through this essay that the spatial guidelines of the GAS Journal cannot permit either. As a result, I encourage anybody who’s interested to visit my website at davidschnuckel.com. It is there that one can further investigate my work and find links that lead to sites which host various writing about it.
The way in which “Wandering Female” is standing makes a certain formal connection with the small company within her hands.
The clay study of this form is colorless, yet fleshy.
A second version of the woman is also seen in cast glass.
