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

Travels to South Australia

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In the second week of January I flew to Adelaide, with a stop-over in Melbourne to visit friends and view the Warhol/Ai Weiwei Exhibition at the NGV. Brilliant! In Melbourne I met up with Dr Bronwyn Hughes and Donna Kennedy of GLAAS Inc for lunch and much conversation. Also met with Sharon Harrison and Helen Kelly, both current members of the Ausglass Board, at Federation Square. Really enjoyed seeing the exhibition Virtuoso at Kirra Galleries, as well, which was fortunately still showing at Fed Square. UPDATE: Sadly Kirra Galleries has permanently closed.

But my main objective in flying to South Australia was to visit pioneering contemporary stained glass artist Cedar Prest, OAM. Cedar, now 76, is preparing for retirement and consequently is divesting her impressive collection of primarily mouthblown ('antique') glass.

I selected about 100x sheets in all and The Glass Emporium of Adelaide will pack and ship them to Sydney. Much of the mouthblown glass is destined for use in six double lancet windows to the clerestory of the historic St Peter's Anglican Church in East Maitland. Having visited her old studio in the church at Kensington, SA in 2005 (during the Ausglass/GAS Conference) I knew Cedar had a big range of beautiful greys, olives, browns and many unusual colours that the regular suppliers just don't stock.

Now in her 76th year, Cedar is preparing herself for retirement. Her interest has moved away from the business of glass and even the making of labarynths, a consuming passion of more recent years, has now become physically too difficult. I stayed two days with Cedar, who was the perfect host. We swam at Maslin's Beach and walked the labarynth that she built at nearby McLaren Vale with partner Robyn Hunter (who died two years ago) and 30x members of the local community.

During earlier correspondence Cedar had agreed to be interviewed to record her life story as an oral history, so most of our time was spent talking! For me it was a fascinating insight into a strong and energetic woman who has single-mindedly dedicated her life to creative endeavours both here in Australia and Internationally. Having come to know Patrick Reyntiens on a personal level, Cedar Prest was in the right place at the right time to bring about the dessemination of post-war German design sensibility in stained glass first to England, then the United States and Australia.

Arguably Cedar Prest's most important contribution to Australian stained glass has been working with groups of volunteers to bring into being many significant community based projects in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Her fiesty response to this blog, via text from the hospital bed post-op: "Not quite retired! Artists don't".

Adelaide Fringe

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As Treasurer of Ausglass, the Australian Association of Glass Artists, I was obliged to travel to Adelaide several weeks back to attend the AGM and annual Face-to-Face Board Meeting. Ausglass is a Not-for-Profit organisation and as such must be publicly accountable and follow all the rules set out by ASIC. Finance is not really my forte but I've managed to have been of some use over the past 18 months, helping to keep the organisation on track (with much assistance from Fiona Holmes our bookkeeper).

So Feb 15/16 was a heavy weekend of meetings but we did have the Saturday evening off and it was FRINGE! I made my way down to the Garden of Unearthly Delights just to see what sort of mischief I might get up to.. and managed to score tickets to 2x shows, Cabaret Coathanger and The Hot Dub Time Machine, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was my first Fringe Festival and I found the event truly delightful.

I never did discover what the roving troupe of psuedo-Scouts were actually doing, but like everyone else they seemed to be having fun. At The Imaginarium I took in 2x different stand-up comics, just $5 for 15 minutes and very hilarious. John Bennett was late in the evening and quite baudy but very funny in that self-deprecating, deadpan kind of way.

My Ausglass meetings were successful but I certainly enjoyed the comic relief of Fringe.

Garth Knight at .M Contemporary

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Thursday 14th November saw the opening of a new exhibition of work by Garth Knight, the first Australian artist to show at M Contemporary Gallery in Ocean St Woollahra.

The Director of Head On photo festival, Moshe Rosenzveig, delivered an excellent opening address, describing Garth as an engineer, which I found very interesting. Moshe went on to discuss the dichotomy between 'real' and created or manipulated imagery and, ultimately, the validity of both. Garth's manipulated images depend completely on the real: to create 100 Breaths (illustrated above and below) he wrote a program, took 100 photographs of smoke from burning insence and applied that program to all 100 images. The variation in the results is stunning; the beauty of the geometry breathtaking.

The exhibition was curated by independent curator Angeline Collings