Gale Scott

(American)
My early work combining glass and copper was informed by process.  As a student in the Metals and Glass departments at the University of Illinois, I learned the skills of soldering, fabricating and manipulating semi-precious metals, as well as the techniques or glass blowing and casting.  I also began to experiment with alternative processes such as fusion welding copper, and copper electroforming.  Copper electroforming is an electro-chemical process that slowly deposits copper onto a non-conductive surface.  This growth process results in a very organic and textured surface, the object often appearing to be a strange sea animal or an artifact long buried.  This process inspired me to investigate forms and textures found in nature.  For example, many of the textures I used on my early works were from microscopic images I discovered in the University of Illinois libraries.

Just as every living thing exchanges with its environment in order to grow, I began to see the work as a sum of its history: the processes through which the materials have gone.  It is my goal to develop a personal and unique aesthetic through mixing media, which become inter-dependent when they are integrated.  My recent work consists of glass blown into intricate and ordered copper structures.  These two materials differ in many obvious ways: fragility/ malleability, transparency/ opacity, non-conductivity/ conductivity.  Yet, the characteristic they share, which allows them to be interdependent in my work, is that they expand and contract at the same rate when heated or cooled.  This allows them to be combined when the glass is molten, and as the two materials cool, the glass does not crack.  The result is a soft, pillowing effect where the glass bulges through the openings in the rigid, cage-like structure.  Many of my pieces convey this tension of the forces of expansion/ contraction, which are kept at equilibrium.

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