Maura Ilan Shenker Artist Statement

These pieces are from a current body of work that started last summer a a workshop at Bild-Werk Frauenau in Germany.

I was looking for a way to incorporate my interest in drawing and printmaking with my love of the fluidity of form that glassblowing allows.  One of the instructors was Robert Carlson, who demonstrated reverse enamel painting on glass.  I was very excited by the way that glass acted as a lens, different thickness in the glass distorting the images.  Also, there was the possibility of covering the images, keeping them "inside" the glass and allowing the viewer to be surprised as they look into, rather than at, the work.  For me the vessel has always been a metaphor for the body and blown glass is especially skin-like.  In these pieces I am exploring the deceptive nature of the relationship between interior and exterior surfaces.

In the beginning I was using only found imagery, from such diverse sources as old medicine texts and porno magazines.  But I wanted the work to become even more personal, so I started drawing the images using watercolor pencils on translucent paper. For "Spine" I made each vertebrae individually and then decoupage them on the surface of the glass opposite the row of lenses.  I then painted the entire vessel with the sign painter's enamel.  The enamel adds a layer of color and film in the slight ridge between the paper and the glass so that the surface is smooth again.  Then the metal leaf was applied.  The next step was to decoupage over the metal leaf with a different spinal column that trails around the form.  The final step was to shellac the surface so that it is sensually smooth to the touch.

As I continue with this series, the forms become more figurative and torso-like, such as "Window" and "Green".  I now incorporate found images and text with my drawings and prints on both the interior and exterior.  I'm interested in the process of watching a classic sculptural torso, reinvented through the process of glassblowing, become hyper-personalized with a collage of images and words.  And although my feelings are crystal clear to me, as the viewer tires to look inside and understand, the optic properties of the hand blown lenses insures he is confronted with only distorted fragments of the whole.  For me, this is emblematic of all communication, as we can never truly know what is 'inside' another's mind or heart.