Sacred/ Unsacred- The art of Judith Schaechter
Judith Schaechter has been one of my all time favorite artists ever since I saw her show at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC. It's hard to show pictures of her work, because the images appear like brightly colored drawings. What Schaechter actually makes are stain glass works, which are multilayered, intricately etched and incredibly piece-worked. If I could own any piece of artwork in the world, it would be one of hers.
"Judith Schaechter, for one, knows exactly what she does-she makes stained glass. That's all she makes. She has made stained glass since college. She has not dabbled in painting or used ceramics techniques in her stained glass work or worked partly in gouache. In a time when artists and makers alike are changing their mediums as fast as they change their Facebook page, she is the constant, unchanging glass star. Why? "It bothers me that people change media all the time," she says. "It's like getting divorced before you've even met the person. Having a really intimate relationship with a material, you don't just leave it." She is hopelessly devoted to glass, in other words, chained to it and liberated by it. "Stained glass made itself known to me like no other medium and stained glass requires not a learning curve but fluency that I haven't gotten to yet. And, in a way, I'm stuck with this. For better or worse. And it is very much like a marriage."" -craftcouncil.org
As someone who just started working in stain glass, I can't think about her too often, or I will never be able to look at my own work with satisfaction. She's so amazing!
What I'm listening to today-
Barbara Krishenblatt- Gimblett