By Kai Gray
Glass, explained sculptor M. R. Hernandez, is fragile like relationships. Once broken, it is almost impossible to repair.
Hernandez’s provocative “Taken to Heart” is an exhibit of glass art blown, baked and sculpted into lovely abstract works that delight and challenge viewers.
Good 3-D art is much like a performance, Hernandez said. An artist in the act of creation is akin to a performer artist on stage. Heat, tension and movement fuel the performance as the artist works. A goal of Hernandez is to examine the relationship between the artist, the art and the viewer.
“As you go about viewing something that you really have to examine (you must decide) where your eyes first go and then how you move through the piece,” he said. “And as you do that you slowly start to become part of the piece.”
“Clock of the Heart,” the large and ambitious centerpiece of the exhibition, evoked images of life that started chaotic and tangled like a flickering red neon light or tangled mass of rope. Like the page of a book, it draws your gaze from left to right before the eyes settle on a large suspended glass teardrop. It conjured the creation of life as well as the tragedies life forms experience. Only in the end bright verdigris neon lights suggest love and tranquility.
“Blue Genes” lures viewers into a quiet dark place in the room which accentuates glowing rings of azure and milky Argonne and neon gasses. Shading these rings are inverted wicker baskets which create a shining bubble of contentment.
“Washed Away” features a unique technique produced by melting the glass in a kiln rather than blowing it. This creates a shimmering ripple effect on the glass that resonated across this piece. A dark figure in resin seemed slowly washed away by a Plexiglas rainbow in the corner of this haunting puddle of glass.
“Honey BB’s” conjures warm feelings of home with its crochet flower pattern littered with inverted neon hearts of sunny yellow. It is Midwestern in origin, but universal in emotion.
“Nice Gestures” is meant to imitate the token social actions polite people seem compelled to act out in certain situations. Courteous people feel the need to applaud a performance no matter how atrocious or console someone grieving even if you are not actually close with them. These blown glass bulbous flowers are collected in a pile of 4-5 on a small blue pedestal, politely arranged without the inconvenience of emotional attachment.
Signature piece “So Happy for You” is a circular metal frame face that has refuse and glass creating its nose and smile, with baskets again to represent eyes. A Denver mesh gives the appearance of both a haircut and a single tear. It is the face of a faker, the kind we put on to congratulate someone whose life really has no impact on our own. Its emoji-like construction and wan glass smile suggest the push button emotional blasts on our keypads that look the same whether sincere or not.
“Taken to the Heart” has plenty of heart and a peppering of soul to do what good art does – get us out of our self-contained glass bubbles into a broader world.
