Klaus Moje
Puget Sound, 2012

Kiln-formed glass

Bellevue Arts Museum celebrates German-born, Australian artist Klaus Moje, the 2013 winner of the prestigious Libensky/Brychtová Award.

Few artists have had such a broad impact on the development of a medium as Klaus Moje has had on kiln formed glass. BAM pays homage to Moje's bravura and vision by featuring Puget Sound, in conjunction with the exhibition Links: Australian Glass and the Pacific Northwest at Museum of Glass, Tacoma, on view from May 17, 2013 to January 19, 2014.

Puget Sound was inspired by the great Northwest waterways throughout the region. Created while Moje was at the Pilchuck Glass School, this special new piece continues the strong Australian tradition of the artist's personal connection to their surrounding geography.

BAM members receive $2 off admission at Museum of Glass for the duration of the Links exhibit.

Yuri Kinoshita
Uzume, 2012

Kozo (mulberry) paper, steel

Born In Kyoto, Japan, Yuri graduated from Osaka Mode Gakuen (Fashion Institute), Department of Interior Design, winning the school's grand prize for her graduate project. She traveled to Europe as part of the prize, and went on to visit East coast of U.S. and Asia. In 1993, Yuri joined the family run kimono business Kinoshita Co. and founded "Umbo," a division of the company that specializes in art for home design.

Uzume, abbreviated from Amenouzume No Mikoto, is the celestial goddess in Japanese mythology who performed a spontaneous dance enticing the sun goddess Amaterasu out of the cave in which she had secluded herself and had thus deprived the world of light.

 

Deborah Horrell
Joan's Cloak, 2011 - 12

Glass and plexiglass
74 x 78 x 2.5 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery

Deborah Horrell is a Portland-based glass artist with a focus on pâte de verre and cast glass methods. She received her MFA from the University of Washington in 1979, and after working as a ceramist for many years, participated in the Pilchuck Glass School's visiting artist program in 1994 followed by a residency at the Bullseye Factory in 1996, which permanently changed her trajectory as an artist. Horrell has shown her work, in both ceramic and glass, at museums and galleries throughout the country.

Joan's Cloak is one of the most recent and monumental examples of Horrell's wall installations, made in tribute to her friend and fellow Portland Institute for Contemporary Art trustee, Joan Shipley, who died on September 2, 2012. Upon learning of Shipley's terminal illness, Horrell began making a pair of pâte de verre wings, a means of having an elegiac conversation with Shipley, of processing her sadness at losing her friend, and of preserving her memory. The wings are constructed of hundreds of imbricated, slightly convex cast teardrops in gradated values of red and yellow. The pâte de verre medium creates a thin, fragile, ragged edge to each component, like the deckled edges of handmade paper, and evocative of a bird's feather.

Cameron Anne Mason
Soft Coral, 2012

Hand-dyed and printed silks, cottons, rayon, silk/rayon velvet, linen, non-woven polyester innerfacing, and polyester, rayon and cotton threads hand- and machine-stitched
Courtesy of Foster/White Gallery

Largely self-taught, Cameron Anne Mason combines her love of textiles and surface design technique with her background in graphic design and performance. Her work has been seen nationally and internationally and locally she is represented by Foster/White Gallery. She teaches surface design and sculpture in workshops at Pratt Fine Art Center and recently for the Surface Design Association and Studio Art Quilts Associates.

Cameron says of her work, "Fabric is fundamental to my process. It is an intimate part of our lives. It protects us from the elements, gives us comfort and a means to express ourselves. It is sensual and essential. I am drawn to fabric because of its changeability and its constancy. Fabric is the skin that clothes my work."

Christian Burchard
Fragments #9, 2005

Pacific madrone, bleached, sandblasted
Courtesy of the artist

"Fragments #9 exploits the multiples concept with intriguing results. Assembling thin slices of warped madrone timber into a grid like composition, Burchard creates works of variety and visual character. The language of the wood, including knots, color grain, texture, warped surface and contour, along with the relationship of individual pieces to each other and to the whole, offer a provocative visual experience." -- Mark Richard Leach

Etsuko Ichikawa
Traces of the Molten State, 2008

Glass pyrograph
25.6 x 51 feet each
Courtesy of the artist

The Seattle-based artist is known for her "glass pyrographs," ethereal drawings made by literally painting with the fire and smoke emitted from hot molten glass. Her pyrographs are just one way in which Ichikawa captures fleeting moments – both in the physical and emotional world. The light and airy Museum Forum features three large-scale pyrography scrolls made specifically for BAM as part of her first museum solo exhibition.

Photo: Richard Nicol

Peter Pierobon
Chair Stack

Bronze

Peter Pierobon is a sculptor inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest and the art of the Inuit, African, Northwest Coast Indians and the Aboriginal Australian cultures. His goal is to create objects that are delightfully functional and at the same time sculptural in focus. The chair literally mimics the human form as it offers support to the human body. The chair also departs from this function through exaggeration (four legs) as it engages it metaphorically.

Julie Speidel
Miach, 2004

Sandstone and bronze
84 x 16 x 16 inches

Miach was inspired by Speidel's visit to the Avebury Stone Circle in Wiltshire, England. The Avebury Circle is the largest stone circle in Britain, dating back to 2,500 BC and cloaked with mysteries that archaeologists have only begun to unravel.

The length of time for the main continuity of use of the Avebury complex throughout the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age was, according to present dating studies, around 2,300 years. This lengthy span of time and the vast size of the whole complex give testimony to the fact that the Avebury temple was perhaps the most significant sacred site in all of Britain, if not the entire continent of Europe. Miach, made of sandstone and bronze, represents the power and life inherent in the stones of Avebury.