AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

It was such a treat to catch an exhibition of new blown glass forms by Clare Belfrage at Sabbia Gallery early October. Vieing objects online in virtual shows is a very poor cousin to the experience of being with the work in person, sensing its scale, the relationship to the self and the relationship of one work to another, particularly when grouped together.

The subtle depth achieved within the surface decoration of the vessel is captivating. Clare's forms carry such gravitas, they are a joy to behold. Being with the work seems to engender a state of meditation.

This piece was actually my favourite in the exhibition. Many of the works take the form of large pebbles. This is even more obvious when viewed from above:

The video accompanying the exhibition was most informative and gave a good insight into Clare's creative processes. The influence of the Australian bush is quite evident when viewing the works. All in all a delightful exhibition. Congratulations to both Belfrage and Sabbia.

On Monday 3rd February me and my team headed out of Sydney toward Boorowa, a medium-sized country town about 130km west of Goulburn. We were booked to excavate two stained glass windows from St John's Anglican Church. I'd looked at these windows about 12months prior, to make recommendations as they were clearly in need of remedial work. It took some time for the Parish to gain the necessary funding for the work but its very good that they did; when I saw the windows again the other week, they had deteriorated significantly in the intervening time. In the Good Shepherd window the buckling of the lower portion had reached a stage where glass was about to break.

St Johannes Window

The Good Shepherd Window

Like all such events this was a real mixed bag. There was some terrible art on display, I mean really bad, but also there were many brilliant pieces on display and some truly outstanding new artists. As would be expected, it is a very eclectic mix in terms of genre and technique, with probably something like 50% very attractive and affordable abstrsact and realist paintings.

The Australian-Russian artist Yulia Pushtoskina was there with her beautifully rendered works of fantasy; there was a special display of contemporary ceramics, an intereactive light wall and see-saw by ENESS, and a plastics recycling factory shredding, melting and moulding rings and other objects.

When I spotted Shaelene Murray's name amongst the art news that comes across my desk had to make an effort to see this show. I knew Shaelene many years ago, through Ausglass Conferences in the '90's. And then saw a delightful and surprising work bearing her name at the Art Gallery of NSW Wynne Prize, which includes both landscape and sculpture, in 2013. The trustees generally select just one outstanding sculpture to represent the genre and there was Shaelene's "Blossom", a woven or knitted or knotted wire (actually sewn I have since discovered) skirt suspended in the middle of a large room, just above the floor. It had a powerful impact.

Scallywag is, exactly as the name suggests, tearing away from the family group below.

All the works carry many layers of meaning, with stories woven around them. Mamma's right leg is stubbornly restraining Toddle from wandering off. And with Bubbie's outstretched arms we can almost hear her screaming.

On the side wall opposite the main family group there is a series of small studies, bonnets mostly, each with a particularly idiosynchratic title. Small contemplations of detail and patience.

While somewhat media-shy, Shaelene does have a website where some of her earlier work in glass can be seen. Stanley Street Gallery is a treasure trove of fresh new artists and established names, showing a diverse array of media, with a strong representation of jewellery and sculpture. Murray's show continues through until 2nd November.

Still- like water

New South Wales lost an enthusiastic and talented practitioner this month. Alison was much loved within the community, always bright and cheerful, full of energy and passion for all things glass.

An avid collector and intrepid traveller with her partner Michael, who she referred to as the "world's best roadie", Alison attended several Ausglass Conferences and continued to broaden her skills with many workshops, including glass painting in Italy

She worked from a home studio in Jilliby, an idyllic bushland community on the NSW Central Coast. Probably Alison's best work is a beautiful commission for St Cecelia's Church, restrained and elegant. An image can be found in the Gallery section of her website Creative Moods Stained Glass

Australian artist Rhett Brewer showed a new collection of landscape and seascape paintings in oils and acrylics at Project Gallery 90, Oxford Street Paddington for a three week stint in July 2019. I enjoyed the show very much; it was refreshing with many vigorous works full of energy, firmly rooted in the geometry teased out of rock formations and fault lines, juxtaposing mass and horizon.

Rhett and I go back a long way: we grew up together in Sydney's Georges
Hall and subsequently attended Condell Park High School. He then
vanished into the Public Service until we crossed paths once again while
Rhett was teaching Fine Art at the University of Western Sydney

These paintings hover between opacity and transparency and in addition to the spatial geometry I think that's what's so intriguing about them. Rhett's masterful handling of water is clearly evident in Bays entrance. The transparency he achieves in Floating Wall is arresting. And it is literal as well as metaphoric: in the midst of the standing wave, about to break, we are actually looking through a kind of glaze to the under-painting beneath.

As the title of the exhibition implies, all of the paintings are of or around Cape Banks, a very easterly promintory at Sydney's Little Bay. Covering bright sunshine and cold and gloomy days, Sydney's sandstone coastline lives through these paintings.

Fast Life is a collaboration between graphic designer Jacob Pramuk and product designer Leonard Velich. The project started about two years ago when they combined a graphic drawing, a functional product and the old craft of neon sign making to create a unique combination of art, light and function. The goal was to create handcrafted art objects that are not only visual pieces but also functional lighting products.

I managed to catch a superb exhibition of drawings by Australia's Brett Whiteley on its last day at the Art Gallery of NSW. Whiteley was not only a superb draftsman but a virtuosic artist with brush&ink, charcoal and pen. He used ink washes sparingly but to great effect. And drawing for Whiteley was no means to an end: it WAS the artwork.

Whiteley's line is so vigorous and full of life, and he has a knack of contrasting strong, simple forms with intense detail.

His line is so sinuous that at times it becomes sensuous. The famous "Road to Berry", inspired by a drawing of the same name and location in southern NSW by Whiteley's hero Lloyd Rees, is an early example where his landscape surreptitiously describes the female form.

A master of composition and invention, Whiteley also plays with perspective and the picture plane, attacking a canvas boldly.

These shots were taken rather hurriedly at the last minute, just before closing when I discovered there was no catalogue to the exhibition. And reflection is always a problem with works under glass.

The exhibition did include a set of Whiteley's timber sculptures-and rightly so as they are virtually drawings in space using timber as the medium. A sheet of concept drawings for the sculptures was displayed opposite.

Drawing is an integral part of my practice also. It is not only essential in creating a stained glass window but an enjoyable and therapeutic activity and though it does require discipline its a very satisfying way to make art; this exhibition inspires me to go out and draw more!

Its been a big year. The continuing project for new stained glass windows in the clerestory of St Peter's Anglican Church at East Maitland, NSW for which I installed two windows in 2016 and two in 2017, required three windows this year.

I did manage to squeeze in a solo exhibition at m2 Gallery in Surry Hills mid-September, just prior to the late October installation at East Maitland. I was rather desperate to exhibit as this was my first solo show in over a decade. I am pleased it was so well received, despite falling on the same weekend as Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks.

The beginning of the year saw the team rebuild and install 12x decorative leadlight windows from the Oxford Room of St Mathias' Anglican Church in Paddington, having excavated the original windows the previous December. These leadlights were in the worst condition I have ever come across, and everyone in the Parish community was thrilled with the result.

With the St Matthias project underway I was concentrating on completing a new window for Wesley Uniting Church in Forrest, ACT with a very specific (and consequently rather difficult) brief. Featuring an angel bearing a lit candle, it was installed end of January after a long gestation.

Also in Jan/Feb I made a residential fanlight for a couple in Newtown which featured a lyrebird. They own a bush block up on the Central Coast of NSW frequented by lyrebirds and wanted to make special note of that in the Newtown property.

As soon as St Matthias was completed mid-February, the studio got underway with restoration of two lancets from a 5x lancet set of ornamental stained glass in what is now the Chinese Christian Church in Milson's Point. Completed in 1888, this handsome Victorian Gothic building was formerly a Congregational Church and the windows, on the point of collapse until we got them out, are quite pretty.

While all that was going on, I got away for two weeks in April/May with my boyfriend to Vietnam, travelling to Saigon, Da Nang and Nha Trang; it was my first trip to an Asian country and I had a great time.

So yeah, 2018 was a big year, finishing on a busy session of installations for a residential client in Balmain, restoration of a John Ashwin window from St James Catholic Church in Glebe and removal of the Main Hall windows at St Matthias Paddington, to be rebuilt early in 2019. There were various other smaller jobs throughout the year as well, and in amongst it all, slowly but surely Jon Doe and I made progress on a collaborative work which will be constructed in January for the exhibition titled INTERCHANGE at M16 Gallery in Griffith, ACT in February 2019. This exhibition will be a satellite show concurrent with the Ausglass/NZGAS CoLab Conference in Whanganui, NZ