Nancy Legge has long been a favorite in the gallery for her figurative clay sculpture. Several years ago, she began experimenting in glass and the medium captured and excited her. This summer she had a residency at Pilchuk and has found her voice in a new medium. With her characteristic sensitivity, Legge has been able to achieve the same expressive power in glass as she did in clay. Her aesthetic has not changed with the medium. There is still that primordial sense of prehistory and an feeling that the piece "rings true" with respect to nature and how it behaves.
Nancy Legge Artist Statement, 2008
As a figurative clay sculptor for the past twenty years, my work has focused on the power of abstraction and its expressive possibilities. My new explorations in cast glass, inspired by Swedish glass artist Bertil Vallien, continue to be fueled by the same ancient stone circles, (like Stonehenge and Avebury) that influenced my clay work.
My cast glass pieces also draw on my interest in smaller prehistoric artifacts – tools, weapons, medical instruments – ordinary things that were an integral part of daily life. These primitive objects, like the stone circles, convey something extraordinary, in the sheer simplicity of their forms. My glass work was enhanced this summer by the opportunity to study at Pilchuck, Dale Chihuly’s Glass School, in Stanwood, Washington. I worked with Kirstie Rea, an Australian glass artist, whose abstract work and precise use of color, expanded my own thinking about glass. Also, the transparency of glass allows a deeper exploration of my interest in the inclusion of contrasting materials -- copper, silver and glass.
The pieces in this in this series begin in clay. Plaster-silica moulds are taken of each piece -- then filled with glass billets, fired, and cold worked. I cold work at The Crucible in Oakland. I am currently working on a “stone circle” series in cast and fused glass.
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