North Lands Creative Glass

25 Sep 2005 in Highland, Visual Arts & Crafts

The Design Element

GILES SUTHERLAND looks back at proceedings at the Northlands Creative Glass 2005 Conference.

IN THE KEVIN COSTNER film ‘Field of Dreams’ a mysterious voice intones the enigmatic phrase – “if you build it, they will come”. This, in fact, referred to a baseball pitch carved out of a maize field in Iowa, but could equally well apply to the inspired vision to build an international centre for glass in Lybster on the Caithness coast.

Established in 1996, Northlands Creative Glass has gone from strength to strength with a year-round programme of residencies, master-classes and an annual conference held during the first week of September.

This year’s event addressed the idea of ‘design’ as an essential component in the processes and functions of glass art. The varied range of speakers came from different areas of art and craft and were not confined solely to the small but vibrant international glass community.

In the keynote speech Gordon Burnett, Reader in Craft at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, considered how computer-aided design “has altered the classical logic by which forms are signally informed by a mode of construction”.
Despite the impenetrable jargon Burnett did show how technological developments have changed both design and manufacturing processes in recent years. But surely this is part of an evolutionary continuum? Technology usually always affects methodology, both in predictable and unexpected ways.

An object can often be idealised, intensified or even transformed by the accomplished photographer.

Continuing this theme Gilbert Riedelbauch showed how forms can now be designed on computer in three dimensions and these ideas translated into physical prototypes literally at the click of a mouse. The hewing and crafting of objects and the various stages between idea and product have now been reduced to a series of simple steps.

Designer/maker Simon Moore looked at the current state of blown glass design and offered insights into future developments. Moore noted: “An artistic imagination coupled with skill is talent. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art”. It was very tempting to go along with Moore’s assessment but with one proviso: there is, sometimes, technical skill in what he loosely labels ‘modern’ art; there is also, sometimes, great intellectual skill.

Andrew Page, Editor of the New York-based ‘Glass Quarterly’, looked at the role of photography in recording, promoting and interpreting glass art – an object can often be idealised, intensified or even transformed by the accomplished photographer. The moral: your work may be of the highest standard but unless it is professionally photographed it will have little chance of being published in an international quality journal.

Jeweller Susan Cohn in a dense and uncompromisingly ‘post-modern’ lecture ranged far and wide through street culture, virtual reality, love songs and uncool craft in an attempt to illustrate how design issues are addressed and translated from idea into object. It was fun, but both lecture and lecturer seemed oddly incongruous in the poetic, still setting of a Highland fishing village. Perhaps that was part of the charm.