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The Prichard Art Gallery is preparing to push studio tradition into the art world thanks to money raised from their auction on Feb. 9.
The gross profit was $26,742.05, a 94 percent profit from the 2006 auction, which grossed $13,759.
Roger Rowley, Prichard Art Gallery director, said that the people who came made the difference.
“Twice as many people attended,” Rowley said. “There was standing room only.”
Nara Woodland, assistant director of the gallery, said that the atmosphere was lively and people enjoyed themselves.
“The live music made a difference,” Woodland said. “It was jazzy and entertaining, just classier than last time.”
After expenses, the gallery raised approximately $15,000.
Rowley also said that without some of the patrons who came, some larger and more expensive art pieces would not have sold.
Artist income also saw an increase in this year’s auction.
“That we could give them so much is fantastic,” Rowley said.
Some artists donated anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of their profits while others donated 100 percent.
“That’s an important amount back into the creative community,” Rowley said.
There was a 262 percent increase from 2006, from artists receiving $2,338 previously to $6,127 this year.
The money raised is going toward an exhibit that Rowley has been working on for about four years.
The exhibit, titled “SLAG, the Anti-Art Glass,” will be an international exhibit of artists who use glass as part of a mixed media approach to their work and is set to show fall of 2009.
Woodland said that this exhibit will be exciting.
“It is something that is unusual for this area,” Woodland said.
Rowley said that up until recently, studio glass was more aligned with the high end of craft art, not fine art, even though Europe has been creating glass as fine art for centuries.
“(This exhibit) will take glass some place completely different,” Rowley said.
The exhibit will start with some traditional ideas and then throw in mixed media.
Cast bronze objects and houses made of glass with text built in, a sort of house of words, will be part of the mixed media.
“Glass is often thought of as glowing colorful objects of all shapes,” Rowley said. “This exhibit builds on that, what other ways glass can be presented, in a more integrated approach using glass in concert together.”
There will also be work with glass having medical connotations, like a hospital tray and flesh.
“The medical organic look is interesting on one level, drawing you in, but also on a creepy and repulsive (level),” Rowley said.
Rowley said that there is an interplay of light and material that glass breaks with.
Glass can make it seem like flesh or that the object is alive, Rowley said.
“It can take on other physical qualities that one doesn’t associate with a glass vase,” Rowley said.
A big part of the evolution of glass art is getting away from the conventional glass vase or corning ware.
“(Glass art) makes an expressive comment on emotions or ideas that go beyond the notion of a beautiful object,” Rowley said.
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