An overview of a personal approach to glass as a vehicle for artistic exression and experimentation – for the purpose of furthering the medium by sharing imagery with like-minded persons.
Images include glass castings, constructed and assembled sculpture, two-dimensional planar works, rayonist light-beam compositions, use of optics, large site-specific architectural installations and aesthetic explorations.
Astri Reusch has worked in glass, sculpture and large architectural installations for several decades. The works in glass, such as those seen in the Major Corning overview catalogue of 1979, have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Seibu Museum in Tokyo and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
The artist has also designed and constructed large site-specific thematic works such as the 100-foot monument “la debacle” – featured in a National Film Board documentary – in the central hall of the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City, designed by architect Moishe Safdie, and “eclipse”, at the Intelsat headquarters in Washington DC.
Reusch currently works North of Seattle, occasionally as professional artist-in-residence at the Pilchuck Glass School, founded by Dale Chihuly; studied there with the Czech masters Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova, whose immense glass works grace public buildings in Prague.
In 1666 Isaac Newton discovered that full-spectrum white light can be diffracted into its constitutent colour bands.
These colour bands cans be used as an artistic medium; here they are variously refracted, reflected and intersected through the use of optical elements and then projected onto a “target” element to consitute the artwork.
These images were created in 1983, using only natural sunlight as a light source, and documented in cover articles in the magazines “l'Atelier” (france) and “Glass Studio” (USA).
The artist refers to these works as “True Rayonism”, to differentiate them from the russian avant-garde Rayonist movement of 1919, which relied on painted depictions of rays emanating from painted objects, instead of using pure light beams as the principal medium.
Monumental environmental sculpture constituting the centerpiece of the main entrance hall of the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City and measuring 100 feet (30m) long, 40 feet (13m) wide and 26 feet (8m) high. Located in a specially-constructed two-storey basin within the museum, framed by the original stone quay of the Quebec City shoreline which was unearthed during construction of the museum and integrated into the sculptural and architectural ensemble. Constructed of specially formulated white concrete incorporating crystalline calcite aggregate with glass bead surface treatment.
The work evokes in sculptural terms the natural spectacle of the annual spring break-up of the ice floes on the St. Lawrence river in front of museum on the Quebec City waterfront.