Vicki Torr Emerging Artist Prize 2021

When I received the phone call I flushed pink with excitement. It feels amazing to have such good news after what feels like a really long dry spell. Hearing that Portal won the Vicki Torr prize this year made me buzz with energy and motivation.

Close up of Portal: The Closed Door during the Glass Armours Solo Exhibition, 2021

Portal will be the first of many in the jade series. Although I call it the jade series, it’s actually made of cast recycled glass; a process I’ve been experimenting and developing over the last couple of years.

Although glass is a beautiful material to work with there are so many areas/steps in the making of glass artworks that could create waste. So as I’ve learnt more about the process, I’ve become more in tune with ways to recycle/reuse material. Some of them involve crushing up one off moulds that have been fired and mixing them into fresh raw material for mould making. (A process I learnt from Dr. Angela Thwaites, who calls the new mix ludo.) And sometimes that involves looking around at the discarded and shattered glass lying around, and giving them a new life.

The last two years have really opened my eyes to the effects of climate change. As an artist working with cast glass I realize that it is impossible to be completely carbon neutral but I guess I want to make as much of a difference as I can, however little it may seem so this series is an important step in that direction for me.

Thank you to the Ausglass members for voting me in and keep a lookout for a new body of work!

First Solo: Facing the Fear

February, 2021. Opening night of Glass Armours at Gallery Lane Cove.

We must be getting somewhat used to how my entries here are generally after the fact (what can I say journaling can be hard and it’s always best to live in the moment when it’s happening right?) But in a way, writing it after the fact allows me some time to process and reflect deeply on all that’s happened rather than just give a recount.

I remember when Rachael Kiang (the manager and curator of Gallery Lane Cove) first approached me in September last year (2020) to invite me to do a solo exhibition at her gallery as part of a 4 venue program, now known as the Lunar North Confluence, which focuses on the practices of Chinese Australian artists.

I went in for an initial meet and greet, to see the space that was going to be allocated to me 5 months later and I remember the absolute excitement and dread that ensued in that week. I couldn’t sleep for days agonizing over how big the space was and how small my works would look in a 9 by 9 meter room. Especially considering how my worst nightmare as an artist is having a solo exhibition and not having enough work to hold up the space so I had been putting off having a solo for a really long time as I worked to develop a body of work I could be proud of. But the space was gorgeous and I had some time, 5 months was a little tight working with glass where one artwork could easily take half a year to make, but as they say time waits just long enough for those who use it wisely.

The next 5 months were intense.

I don’t think I have ever worked so hard in my life. Everyday I was sculpting, molding, polishing, hammering, carving and making; working desperately towards a deadline. It was liberating. Before then I didn’t realized how tied down I felt by all the proposal and submissions I was writing up (one big surprise about being an artist is that it requires an inordinate amount of writing and not just writing, rejection after putting all the time into a proposal), it was all eating into my time and energy for actually making art. It’s hard to be motivated when you don’t know how or where you will exhibit your work after you’ve made it. So now that I had a vision to work towards I felt free. Ideas flowed forth, it gave me a chance to dream again and motivation to work on all those projects I had on the back burner came in torrents.

But even if the spirit was high, sometimes your body just can’t keep up though I surprised myself with how many times I managed to coax my body past its limits, constantly telling myself I can rest in March when everything was well and truly done. That now was the time to do and I can crash into my burnout later. It’s amazing what a deadline will do for you. So if you’re a young artist like myself, give yourself a chance and take on an ambitious project that you care about and you’ll be amazed by how capable you actually are.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see all my work in one place and how much work it actually took to put it all up (there was a lot of shuffling around and considering and minds being changed). Working on this exhibition made me think of space in a whole new dimension and I am so lucky to have the help of experienced art installers and a curator like Rachael Kiang who understood the space intimately and could intuitively figure out how the audience would feel navigating the exhibition. I had general suggestions of how I would like the work to be seen - the Birdsong series a little segmented away from the other pieces and the Portal at the entrance of the exhibition there to both greet and challenge the audience to enter the space as it is the façade that guards my inner thoughts, which every piece in the exhibition is.

After 3 full days of install (where Jenna, Jo, my dad and I worked tirelessly), everything was up and I wondered the room alone in almost a trance. It was strange thinking that this was 5 years of work and hard to believe that these were all my creations that I have sweated, bled and cried over haha. There was an indescribable joy in my heart and I think it was a sense of belonging. A moment of ‘oh’. I don’t know how to describe it, I think if I did it would be gone.

The exhibition itself was an amazing experience but not for the reasons I expected. At the opening I saw curators, artists and art enthusiasts but I also saw people I had not seen in a decade, my friends from all the different social circles that I had engaged in at one point of my life came and for me it was like a colliding of worlds. I imagine it was what a wedding would feel like, a gathering of all the people you know who want to support you. I didn’t even know I had so many friends! I felt privileged to have created a space for people who may never have otherwise met talk and connect. Because what is an exhibition good for if not to spark conversation? What is a conversation good for if not to make friends out of strangers?

Glass Armours

NC QIN SOLO EXHIBITION

3 - 27 February 2021, Gallery Lane Cove

This exhibition focuses on the complexity of identity, separating our ego from our self into a physical manifestation of the heavy glass armour that we carry in our lives. Despite the project being composed of glass sculptural objects, my work is always about the humanity and the story of the piece, the object never quite the central subject matter but letting itself be shaped around an absent human subject. The cast glass armour is constructed with the cultural acknowledgement of the symbology and iconography of armours to Asian culture; as a mark of status and an object of familial and patriotic pride and expectation. By using glass to create the armour I render it ineffective in its mechanism for defence, with the aim of subverting its meaning and to explore themes of guilt, shame and repression that are often sourced from frustrated efforts to attain an ideal that is fostered by expectation, particularly within Asian social structures.

Love Letter to Art Collectors

I know I haven’t been diligent with the upkeep of my online artist journal but this was just too big a news for me to pass up unannounced.

Some of you know this, but for those of you who don’t, I’ve been struggling with something in my art career for a long time: selling my work. Many of my mentors, friends and colleagues in the art industry have assured me time and time again that it wasn’t my art. Maybe it was where I was showing my work, my marketing, or the time just hadn’t come, Australia didn’t have much of an art market, etc, etc. And indeed, several times I have had interested folks from the States inquire about my work but I think to a certain degree I did feel like it had to do with my work. Something about it was just not coming together. It wasn’t the form exactly, it just wasn’t coming to life like I hoped it would in my mind.

When I finally got my hands on some crystal glass, I knew I had found the final piece of the puzzle. The glass itself had a presence. It sung in the light in a way that resonated with the excited buzzing in my heart. James Thompson (of Blackwood Crystal Glass) had promised me beautiful crystals and he had delivered me magic to work with.

I was crying tears of happiness for days! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beautiful glass in my life and kept asking myself why hadn’t I switched to crystal sooner!

Blackwood Crystal Glass is a local Australia made glass with James Thompson, an absolute master, the brilliant mind behind the creation of over 30 colours with rare earth minerals. An epic achievement!

How do I describe the feeling of when I first opened the buckets of crystals and felt them glow in my hands? How do I describe the first time I cast an artwork and the feeling when the investment mould just fell off the glass so clean and perfect? Does it feel like an exaggeration to say that in that moment I felt my life change? Because it does not feel like an exaggeration to me.

Because every work that came after has been a dream. The visions in my mind manifesting before my eyes. (Mind you, I still have a long way to go but-) I was finally, FINALLY creating artwork I was proud of. And that made me confident about my work. I loved what I was making. So I kept going, savouring this new power.

I haven’t had the chance yet to exhibit many of my new crystal creations, only twice so far. The first glimpse of the crystal ballet slipper Persistence VII showed for a brief period at Summer Sojourn (an Art Atrium event) at the the end of last year. And the second and latest time was in Melbourne at the Vitreous Exhibition (as a part of the Herring Island Summer Arts Festival with the Contemporary Arts Society of Victoria). It was there that came the second life changing moment I am going to mention in this entry.

It was where I sold my first serious artwork. Someone fell in love with my vision enough to buy it. Someone saw enough value in my craft to fork over their own hard earn money for it. 194 (wo)man hours. 3 years of imagining went into that artwork. It was worth every dollar I had set as the price. Some would even say more would be fair but I figured I was just starting out.

This was just enough that I wouldn’t feel insulted for my blood, sweat and tears. Because how many nights have I lain wide awake anxious about what was going on in the kiln, how many times have I had to restart over, how many issues have I had at each step of the process be it clay, silicone, wax, moulds, casting or polishing? Countless trials and errors. How many nights have I questioned how long I could keep on this path as an artist putting in all this work with no return other than words of assurance?

But I could only look forward, not because I couldn’t take any other pathway in life but I felt like this was the one I was supposed to be on. That it was mine.

But what was abstract feeling in the face of cold logic? What was stubborn hard work and insistence that this was what I was meant to do in the face of a thousand criticisms from friends, family, strangers on the street even, in the concern and doubt they showed for my future. This is the pressure every artist goes through. The world seemed to have presented us with this passion and then turned its back on us by having everyone ask in one way or another what exactly were we doing?

Can you imagine the frustration?

Can you imagine the helplessness in the face of all this concern?

Because it was true. It felt true. Why was I working so hard? How could an artist continue being an artist under all this pressure?

But I was fortunate.

I was lucky because I was in a studio full of supportive artists who knew what I was going through, who had been where I was at and I will never forget what Kate Banazi told me.

“The Artists who make it are the Artists who last.”

The artists who kept going.

I never forgot that. I will never forget that.

So when I got that call asking me about my artwork Head Case I, just when I arrived in Melbourne to collect my work personally for de-install on Sunday, 17th of March 2019, something settled in me.

This was something solid I could grasp onto.

And maybe you won’t know how much it means to me and to all artists, but art collectors are so special. Because when they buy an artwork it’s not only money they give for our craft but they gift something far more precious. Confidence. Belief in our work.

Herring Island Gallery
17/03/2019

Humans were never meant to be alone.

And us, artists, are always making work for an audience.

So thank you to the collectors for responding back to us and especially thank you to Mike and Sandi Faulkner for being the first ones to take a chance on this young artist. For giving her the much needed confidence boost that she had been anticipating for ages. And who knows where this life changing event may lead. ;)

Growing Part 1 - Facing Potential

It’s been a while since I updated my artist journal on here, I’ve had a few false starts that never made it to publication but I’m determined this entry will not be one of them. My last entry was a year and a half ago and as you would expect, a lot has happened since then! I had entered my first glass prize and cast my first crystal piece. I had reflected on my journey as an artist who had started off so lost and gradually crystallized into someone made of much tougher stuff. So sit back and enjoy, this is gonna be a long ride!

Where should I start? I’ll start where I left off, with sketching. I had undertaken a challenge to sketch a handful of portraits each week, most of them reproductions of old masters so I could glean insights off them - I had started the series for various reasons, I missed sketching and painting, I wanted to warm myself up for the Archibald (a prestigious portraiture prize in Australia) but there was also another motivation that I didn’t want to admit. I was getting scared of glass, of how much effort it took to make each piece, of how long it took for each piece to come out, of how little success I felt like I was getting in that area. And I was scared of all the ideas I had built in my head and all the work, all the work, all the work, they would take and no idea where to start it all. So I fell back on something that was easier and more familiar to me. (Not that sketching is easy, I had just been doing it a lot longer than I have glass and they were much quicker to resolve.)

In the end what made me go back to glass was a brief trip with my Mentor, Kate Baker, to Wagga Wagga, where I was helping her install her solo show at the National Glass Art Gallery. It was an intense five days of installation work with brief breaks to see the National Glass Collection upstairs. It was exhausting and exhilarating seeing how many different forms glass can take and the more we talked about it and all the work the other glass artists put in the more touched I felt but also the more confused I became. I began to question myself, whether I was really content with sketching and painting when I had access to a glass studio. Was it really the most I could make of my prime when I was still young and strong enough to take on the laborious work of glass. Whether I would have any regrets when I didn’t. And on the quiet 5 hrs drive back to Sydney, I had a vision of what I wanted to make - the first seed of Potential.

Potential 2018
Cast Spectrum Glass

Potential was to be my glass baby (in more sense than one, I actually carried the idea and nurtured it into being with the same term of time it would have taken someone to give birth to a real baby - a full 9 months).

Like most of my ideas, this one was also a personal test I gave myself - after my last fiasco with my grad piece Icarus (a story I have yet to tell, I’m still recovering from the trauma), and an aborted attempt at casting a large piece for a subset of the Persistence series, which both ended in kiln emergencies and serious anxiety - I hadn’t dared to cast with a quantity over 1kg of glass. But as time, experience and knowledge made me a little braver I felt it was time I tried again. Afterall, how do we grow if we don’t face our fears? And if Potential was about anything, it was most definitely about facing my fears.

I have a lot of ideas for my art (as I’m sure most artists do), as I’m making one piece inspiration comes for another - it can take shape in the different avenues of exploration for a concept or it could come in the shape of a mistake or problem I need to tackle. Most of my ideas greatly vary in form and sometimes even the techniques required to make them, but they all have one thing in common... they’re out of my current skill level. Haha.

The beauty of it is that it stops me from ever getting complacent and to always set my sights higher.

A hint of lips in the belly of the baby with her glass arms covering the eyes of the hidden face.

There’s a little secret in the baby, it’s a secret because most people aren’t aware of it until it’s pointed out and even then it’s hard to see in its murky depths. There’s a matured face in its belly - it’s a cast of my face. The baby in a sense is all of us when we’re faced with a challenge we’re not sure if we’re up to; young, uncertain, vulnerable and afraid - yet unknown to the potential swelling up inside us, of what we can grow to come. But the possibility is already there.

The plaster positive cast of my face within the belly of the baby pre-investment mould.

A juxtaposition of the positive and the negative figures in wax and plaster right before the investment mould for glass casting.

Opening night of the National Emerging Art Glass Prize exhibition in Wagga Wagga, the ‘birthplace‘ of Potential.

It truly felt like a turn of fate when after 9 months of loving labour, I was to see my baby in the public eye; right in the place of where I was originally inspired to create her.

It’s a been a long journey and I’ve learnt a lot from her, challenging myself further in terms of figurative sculpting, mould making and glass casting but I’ve also been taught that I still have a long way to go - I had yet to work with crystal and if I wanted that face/potential in the belly to be fully realised one day I was going to have to once again face another set of my fears in my artist life, which leads to the second part of my entry… :)

Persistence - The Strength behind the Beautiful

On the Opening night of Love Letter: Be With You , my Mum raised an interesting critique on my ballet slippers in the exhibition. (You can always rely on parents for that. Haha.) 

She asked: Why do the shoes appear to be so strong and borderline bulky? Why aren’t they more like the soft satin slippers that ballerinas use, elegant and exquisite – characteristics they’re known for portraying?
 

I wondered if anyone else had similar questions, so I decided to write up a more comprehensive context to the makings and concept behind the glass slippers.

For me, this is a work on the persistent strength of character. I’ve always seen ballet dancers as warriors, which I guess could be strange to think about at first but it’s more to do with their stoic attitude to physical pain and transformation of the mental limits into seemingly effortless grace. It’s also about the unseen struggle of the dancer who keeps silent about her pain to the audience. Ballet for me is an intensely feminine but strong type of art, it shows the mettle of feminine endurance.

I had made them out of glass, because glass has an indomitable and wild nature, especially during its casting stages. But there’s also an element of sensitivity and transparency and this is the effortless elegance that holds its spectators captive. When we see the finished product, we don’t see the weeks of effort that goes into each piece but only of the intrigue it presents itself in. That’s art. Beauty with Depth. But it’s a depth we can only feel.

Photo by Tyler Shields

I have included ribbons but excluded the feet. Even though it’s the physical body that keeps the shoes aloft and full of life, why is it missing? Is it just because it is more beautiful that way? Perhaps. But you would only be half right if you answered so. It’s because you never see the feet of the ballerinas on stage; you only see the soft satin that wraps like a medal around them. The slippers represent the prestige of being on stage, in the spotlight, in front of the audience. The slippers also represent what shields the audience from seeing what it took to get there. In a way, my shoes are trying to represent what is missing rather than what is there.                                                                                     

It’s a piece that depicts the struggle of the artist. Of any artist in any field. Because it is a battle for every artist to get there: on stage, in front of an audience. It is a battle to believe what you’re trying to do matters, to get up again every time you take a fall and it’s a process of saying, “This is not the end!”

The quiet before the opening. Dancers watching each other. Tension and energy in the air.

Photo taken on the Exhibition Opening Night by Mark Jones

I would like to thank everyone who came to the exhibition on the opening night and afterwards. It was truly a pleasure to meet all the new faces and get reacquainted with familiar ones. :)

I would also like to thank my Mum for inspiring further attention to the context of this series.

Each piece was developed to have its own character in the ribbons and colour scheme, allowing it to bring a different energy when it interacts with the rest of the “dancers”. Did you have a favourite?

Edit: Udee Online Magazine has done a feature on the Persistence series! It has been a pleasure getting to know Laura La Rosa (editor of Udee.) and talking more about the future of my artistic trajectory.