Bio and images
"I always like to work on several pieces because it keeps it
fresh. I'm trying to do a lot of different things while I'm
here: a mass load of stuff." About half-way through her
Summer, 2003 residency at the Creative Glass Center of
America, Jennifer Blazina, was concentrating on making and
stockpiling cast glass to be used in at least four
installations.
The past is an important source for Blazina, who notes the
following themes which thread through her work: rites of
passage, immigration, and moments of memory. Incorporating
oral narratives passed from her Italian grandmother through
her mother to her, Blazina constructs installations which
relate to her on her Italian-American family history and to
women's roles. "In general, stories are passed through a
maternal figure." Trained as a printmaker (MFA, Cranbrook
Academy of Art, 1996), she often uses appropriated family
snapshots to tell her stories.
Her installations typically are wall-related and depend on
repetition for their effect. Often many small works
incorporating silk-screened photographs appropriated or taken
by the Blazina herself, contextualize one or more large glass
panels printed with larger images. Pieces hung away from the
wall cast shadows and allow viewers to move around them. The
image seen form on one side of the glass may be crisper than
that seen from the other. The constituent parts of each
installation and its general structure are pre-determined,
but each presentation becomes specific to a particular venue.
Blazina resists "the idea of categorizing myself by medium."
She likes to combine materials with contrasting textures and
temperatures. Wedding pictures, for example, are presented
with satin and steel, as well as cast-resin frames. "I never
would think of calling myself a glass artist or a painter but
I call myself an artist." Nevertheless, she says, "I love
that frosty translucence of glass. I like the way glass comes
out of the kiln; it's very similar to bronze. I don't have
any interest in hot glass."
Mending is the tentative title of one project Blazina
worked on at CGCA. She sees mending as emblematic of women's
domestic activities: repetitive tasks like washing and
ironing and repairing. In the metaphorical sense, to Blazina,
these behaviors are connected with larger issues of loss and
repair, areas of psychological nurturing or "mending" which
often fall to women.
For Mending, Blazina hoped to cast one hundred glass
frames which will be used to display photographs she has
taken of her own hands in proximity to work implements that
relate to sewing and ironing and caring for clothes "They are
really close-up so they are photographs of the tools not of
me. I often use hands as subjects. I'm always thinking about
communication through gesture, but I also think of them as a
tool of my work."
Resting, an installation of 95 wall panels in the
forms of miniature frames and bird nests incorporating
screened images, was also planned before Blazina applied to
CGCA. silk-screen wall panels reproducing both text based on
diaries and letters and photographs will commemorate the life
of her grandmother and reveal "family secrets and family
thoughts," but sometimes the information will be deliberately
obscured.
Turning to her own collection of birds' nests, Blazina
modeled nests in clay. She added bark and twine before making
moulds from these models. Casting the nests in pale grey or
blue glass, she experimented with printing images inside of
the nests, and printing images in lockets which will be
placed in the nests, almost like eggs.
Blazina says, "The room of English miniatures at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of my favorite rooms in the
entire world." The notion of embedding or encasing images is
very resonant for Blazina. "Portraits often were remembrances
in life that people would hold after [the subject] had passed
away." In Italian cemeteries where she has visited the graves
of relatives, Blazina was fascinated by gravestones decorated
with porcelain mounts enclosing photographs of the deceased.
When we envision the continuing existence of a photograph,
the record of a single moment in time preserved and projected
into the future, it becomes a memento mori, a reminder
of a the brevity of life.
Blazina plans to place the nests for Resting on small
wooden shelves. "I don't want it to look too nostalgic. I
think that when they are on shelves, they are like offerings
almost." This notion of offering resurfaces in her series of
Little Altars. The idea grows out of her study of
Christian religious art in many times and places. "First, I
was thinking it would be nice to 'canonize' people in my
family. I got over that, but began thinking about how people
build shrines to moments." These altars, which are intended
to appear informal or home-made, rather than official
religious statements, would commemorate moments Blazina or
members of her family have experienced.
The last project under development, is tentatively called
Nocturne. "When I'm working on things, I start with an
idea but it usually morphs into something else." Blazina was
initially intrigued by metal stars, architectural decorations
which mark the "post in" on the sides of brick federalist
buildings. These are attached to the wall with bolts but do
not connect directly with the beams they mark. As she
envisions the installation at this early stage, these stars
would be mounted on gallery walls. Frosted glass panels,
perhaps as large as 4' x 6', silk-screened with pictures of
the night sky will be hung away from wall, from the ceiling
with wires. The central image will be a photograph on a glass
panel of her grandmother at the age of 25, flying among the
clouds in a bi-plane.
This installation is destined for a gently lit darkened
space. "I think it will be a beautiful, calm piece. But there
are so many parts and stages to what I do. I never get to see
it until its hanging in the finished place."
