The Iowa Hall Art Gallery at Kirkwood Community College welcomes an exhibition by Barbara Shultz-Hetrick, entitled, "Odyssey In Glass: Fierce, Fragile, and Illuminated."
The exhibit runs Oct. 6-31, with a reception on Thursday, Oct. 9, 3:30ā5 p.m. Free and open to the public.
š Iowa Hall Art Gallery, Kirkwood Community College
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Artist Bio
As a child, I realized that I loved making art and that my six-year-old peers thought I had enviable skills. Since that early launch, I have relentlessly pursued the study, teaching and production of art.
During my career as an artist and educator, I have worked in many media, with my special love of drawing and art history always forming the foundation of my work. Since 2019, I have focused exclusively on fused glass art, always seeking to push the boundaries of this relatively new art form. As I see light traveling through the colors of glass, the luminous effect opens inexhaustible possibilities for expression that are completely unique to this material.
Although my studies and travels have led me to many countries and experiences that have influenced my art, I grew up in Iowa and remain grounded in the heartland today, with strong ties to the beauty of the land and to my family and friends here.
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Artist Statement
I work with fused glass as a painter does with pigment, while taking full advantage of the luminous capacities of this medium to both reveal and obscure. By constructing portraits and landscapes that explore the intersections between mythology and mystery, my gods, goddesses and warriors form an investigation of power and beauty seen in cultures throughout history. I find glass to be a compelling medium, one that conveys the energy and transcendent beauty of otherworldly beings while also expressing the ultimate fragility of their strength. Iām intrigued by the dual nature of both glass and the characters that I create, fierce, dangerous, eternal, yet highly mortal and vulnerable.
Alongside my mythical portraits, I create moonlit landscapes that examine the poetic mysteries of night. Through shifting transparencies and layered surfaces, I explore the quiet capacity of darkness to provide space for contemplation. Glass provides a conduit to channel the essence of nocturnal ambiguity, with its transparency and opacity synchronized with the manner in which the material world is both revealed and obscured. My work provides a space to contemplate the perception of that which is seen and that which exists only in the imagination.
In my art, glass functions as a threshold through which the viewer considers enduring themes of power, myth, and beauty, a space where boundaries dissolve.
