Focus on the Figure

From his totem to his tabula rasa series, sculptor Richard Jolley turns molten glass into variations on the human form.

By: Megan Sullivan
   Don’t you love the way the light plays with his sculpture?" an onlooker asks nobody in particular as he stares in awe at Richard Jolley’s colorful glass "totems."
   Indeed, the sunlight finds plenty of things to play upon inside the museum building at Grounds For Sculpture, filled with more than 50 glass objects Mr. Jolley has made during his accomplished career.
   The exhibit, Richard Jolley: Sculptor of Glass from 1985-Present, is on view through Sept. 23. Curated by Richard Gruber, director of Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Stephen Wicks, curator of Knoxville Museum of Art, the showing in Hamilton is part of a nine-city national tour.
   The 54-year-old artist grew up in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and discovered studio glass in 1970 when he enrolled at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tenn. Mr. Jolley completed his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College in Nashville and continued his studies at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.
   Mr. Jolley’s exploration of glass began with the creation of vessels (1979-1985). The transparent bowl-like pieces, which he describes as having a more lyrical quality, are enlivened with brightly colored narrative images. As with "Geo Dogs Attacking Floating Triangles," the blue, yellow and red forms on the vessels appear to be painted on. These shapes, however, were created using pre-pulled, spaghetti-like canes of glass.
   "While you’re making the piece, it’s a direct drawing technique," Mr. Jolley says. "When I was working by myself, I had a sort of fulcrum arm and a torch and I would draw." As he got more involved, Mr. Jolley employed the help of studio assistants, who would control another hand torch and a brazing rod. "These look very spontaneous," he says, "but they’re extremely labored over, as far as achieving the specific image of it."
   Aside from the long and tedious process of making each vessel, there also was the risk of it falling on the floor and breaking. Once Mr. Jolley developed and mastered his technique, he wanted to conquer the next challenge. He continually moves from series to series in order to keep that sense of discovery and achievement of new techniques alive. "My earlier vessels are sort of a format," he says. "For myself, they were not challenging enough after a period of making them for a long time, but at the same time, they were like building blocks, a foundation."
   His next series still incorporated the polychromatic colors in transparent glass, but the images instead appear trapped within solid ice-like masses. The monoliths (1985-1987) on view include "Kiss," in which a man and a woman’s lip-lock is frozen in time. At the same time, Mr. Jolley began working on his blue line drawings (1985-1990). In this series he worked more specifically with the human form, making both male and female nudes in various positions. Squiggly blue lines outline the otherwise simplified translucent figures, adding facial features and emphasizing the body parts.
   "I think if you look at my work, you’ll see I have a tendency to start series, complete them and move on to something else," Mr. Jolley says, "but you’ll see there’s a certain amount of reoccurring themes in them."
   Next, Mr. Jolley explored the possibilities of classical forms in his busts (1990-1994) like "Dandy." The piece has an elongated, bright blue face and stand-up hair, the tube-like follicles looking like an underwater sea plant growing on his head. "Extravagant," another blue bust with a similarly expressive face, wears a crown of flowers with green leaves. Aside from glass, Mr. Jolley also made bronze busts like "Confabulator." The dark black head with hair upswept in a bun is accented with emerald colored orbs, like a necklace around her neck. From busts he moved to torsos (1994-1996), in both opaque and solid colored glass, which suggest movement and imply moods through the arms and facial features.
   Perhaps Mr. Jolley is best known for his totems (1996-2001), which allowed him to combine these torsos and busts in stacked groupings. The forms are fabricated with epoxy, or $1,100 per gallon glue. "Really the totems were just a way to achieve a format that would enhance… the narrative element in my work," he says. Some have literal narratives, referencing casual time, relaxation or thought and progression, but there’s still some ambiguity in them.
   "Four Seasons" features nude male figures hugging the totemic form in contorted positions, topped by an orange orb with birds perched upon it. Aside from birds, dogs are another common motif in Mr. Jolley’s work, as seen in "Real Time," which situates the animal with cap-wearing figures.
   All of Mr. Jolley’s glass works are made free form without molds, and most use an additive sculptural technique. When he first started out, Mr. Jolley says he had the tendency to sketch things out and make maquettes, but he tries to avoid doing too many preparatory steps. "I really try to short-cut a lot of that, being that time is precious," he says. "At this point, I can think fairly well three-dimensionally."
   In his Knoxville, Tenn., studio, Mr. Jolley and a team of assistants use a crucible-style furnace and mix and melt their own glass and colors. He uses soda-lime potash glass that has milled sandstone in it and a lower iron content. This makes it easier to style and tool and allows for a longer working time. "Basically they are sophisticated blobs of hot materials," he says, attempting to oversimplify his glass-making technique. "When they’re heated, they are contoured by hand torches and shaped — without heating them too much to turn them back into a pound of butter."
   While working on the totems, Mr. Jolley also experimented with mixed media works. He considers "In Between Time" to be one of his quintessential pieces. Made of glass, copper, gold leaf and aluminum, the piece features a silhouette of a human torso, a lunar form and the profile of a crow stacked behind smoky glass. This too achieves a similar totemic form.
   "I think at times you see the universe a certain way and these are the solutions of how you work and sort of evolve into something else," he says. "But it’s interesting how you’re sort of cross-referencing when you’re working on paper, or with glass or mixing material. There’s a clarity of vision that occurs."
   When Mr. Jolley’s national reputation was increasingly identified with his totems, he again decided to explore other themes and materials. This included painting on paper with the human figure as subject matter and the initiation of his tabula rasa series.
   "Once you become known for something, you want to change," he says, "so tabula rasa is a new start, so you’re trying to redefine yourself."
   While his tabula rasa series (2001-2003) still employs the additive sculptural technique, Mr. Jolley says it’s more akin to editing. In these pieces the surface of the glass is heated up with an oxypropane torch and carved using a metal spatula. They reference early modernism, placing the objects on pedestals.
   "You start looking at them from other angles and you have this atmospheric color blending," he says. "When I was working on mixed media material in between time, there was this veiled quality of the figure, and this is one of the things that I wanted to achieve in these pieces, as well as being double sided.
   "If you look on the one side, you see this defined figure and if you look from the other side, you see this ghost figure," he continues. "I think that’s one way I try to have one body of work inform another."
   The featured works in the exhibit, which also include newer projects, all come from Mr. Jolley’s private collection. He readily admits that he finds it hard to part with his pieces.
   "I’m a hoarder," he confesses. "I get attached."
Richard Jolley: Sculptor of Glass from 1985-Present is on view in the museum building at Grounds For Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road, Hamilton, through Sept. 23. Hours: Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission: $10 adults, $8 seniors/students, $6 children 6-12, free members/children under 6; (609) 586-0616; www.groundsforsculpture.org