Clear Sea Urchin 

Expand on the influence your parents have had on your glass career?

With both parents being artists, I guess they laid the seed, I was always heading towards a creative career it took a while before moving into glass and fully appreciating it as a medium. I worked with my parents, part time for a year or 2 before I set up business working in architectural glass for 4 years before I moved to Victoria to set up a cold working shop alongside my sister glass blowing studio which is when I started to produce exhibition/gallery work.   I was in Melbourne for 3 years before returning to Perth.  In my family we have all help and influenced each other in our work and we are all quite individual in our style and use of glass.  In the early years in Perth glass as an art form was almost non-existent, when I returned to Perth a glass blower David Hay also arrived in Perth, we became the nucleus to establishing the glass blowing studio there and my parent studio became the very important in the cold working side. 

Shape can be found in both the form and surface of your work discuss. 

In my work I enjoy natural lines in the forms that have balance.

In the design process of my work I look for how nature evolves, I look for the underlying logic and formulas that create natures designs, not so much to imitate but to look how it is formed. I use this by breaking down the design to the basic elements or fractals which repeat in a form of mathematical formula which build up to make the whole design.

Clear Sea Urchin, detail. 

Your glass is housed around the world.  Take a piece and discuss where they are now and what it has meant to you and your career.

To my mind the most important piece is the large colourless Sea urchin that is housed in the NGA, this piece was purchased from the sea form exhibition i had Form Gallery “Systema Naturae” this piece was the largest work I had completed and was the centre piece for the exhibition, it was also the first of the sea urchins that I had used only using the qualities of the glass without colour.

What made also special for me was when it was first exhibited in the NGA it was displayed very well, it was displayed in a big glass case in a small black room by itself with lighting only on the work, my niece on school excursion to the NGA after told me she was so excited to see it and to hear it was like the Jewel in the pink panther movie the way it was displayed.

Clear Sea Urchin

Has your series ‘Sea Form’ come from the Australian Coast?

The sea form exhibition arose from an exhibition I had at form gallery in Perth, it was a progression of work I did in the study of the use of fractals in my work which sea form designs are made of… the research was mainly from the time I got access to the natural museum in Perth where I got to explore and study their collection of marine life.

Discuss Rainy Daze 

Rainy Daze this was one of the first works where I used lens as a feature in the piece which has become prevalent in many of my works, this work is held in The USA at Mobile museum of art.

Rainy Daze

Colour and glass go hand in hand – explain your use of colour. 

Colour has always played an important element in my work, I did a year course on colour theory when I was studying painting in my early years which in much of my work I use this knowledge when I use multiple layers of colour then to cut back through the layers. the understanding of the colour wheel is important to make colours, for example if you put blue over orange it will become a gray because of them being opposite on the colour wheel they cancel each other out. 

Expand on your work Deep Forest

Deep Forest, this work was a piece which I used three layers of colour on the internal and three on the external surface which I worked all surfaces so the outside colours shaded to the inside and the inside to the outside colours. after I had finished carving I pre-polished by hand and then we fire polished it which was at the time experimental process where we reheat the carved piece back above annealing temperature and the reattached to the pipe and then into the glory hole to melt the surface to a high polish.

Deep Forest, 420 x 280 mm

Graal – can you expand on this term?  

Graal technique is a process I occasional use… it is a two stage process where we blow egg shape form with an overlay of colours which we call the embryo, at this point we take it off the pipe and anneal it… once cooled I carve design through the colours, then reheat the piece up slowly over night and once above annealing temperature we reattach to the blow pipe and gather more glass over it and then blow it into its form leaving the design suspended within the glass. 

Explain the use of colour in Southern Lights.

Southern Lights this was a set of three works in what I would call my colour fractal vein of work, these works are about colour, also have work colour on inside and outside surfaces and then fire polish with the use of lens to give depth to the work… this set was exhibited in Sweden at the Steninge World Exhibition of Art Glass, Steninge Palace.

Southern Lights

Discuss the complexities of Humanity.

Humanity

Humanity, this work with engraved faces covering the surface, this is a small piece but quite solid with an internal bubble to reflect the faces when looking through the lens. the faces are engraved into triple overlay of colour and then hand polished.

Humanity

How do you like to have your work displayed?

Lighting is important with glass and each piece needs to be considered individually to how best to light… some enjoy natural light while others look best in a darken space with a spot light above or reflecting from wall behind. it is nice to see a work given space sitting on a plinth.

Contact details:

Kevin Gordon

mail@kevingordon.com.au

http://www.kevingordon.com.au/

Kevin Gordon, Red Hill, Victoria

Interview by Deborah Blakeley, May, 2018