After many years in fashion and Haute Couture, Marianne Spottswood
chose to devote her talents to sculpture, working
that most diabolical and duous
material, glass, which in her hands turns into frothy silk, icicles, frozen
pools, satin alike.
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Marianne
Spottswood (at right) with assistant Angela Grubb. In the background, the
Sahara screen.
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Twenty years of hard work and strenuous experimentation later, Marianne
has opened Luniverre, her gallery in
Paris. Just across from the Picasso Museum
gardens, the ideal environment to show her own work which she will
ship regularly from her studio in Newport Rhode Island, as well as presenting sculpture by contemporary
artists. A bijou gallery in shades of gray with careful lighting expressly designed to enhance the difficult presentation
of delicate glass works.
Marianne's own work is highly original within the Parisian context, unaccustomed
to experiencing surreal screens, low tables carved into layers of glass, sculpture and one-of-a-kind necklaces
formed out of molten glass, revealing the most provocative use of a seemingly
precarious material.
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Deborah wearing
"Eurydice" necklace.
Sahara screen in background
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Says Marianne,
"llusion
is what I'm fascinated by. The intermingling of transparency and
opaqueness, like the simultaneous
melting and freezing that takes place in the
last days of winter, when the ice begins to crack on the pond in Newport and the molten snow freezes up again
at night."
At once brittle and supple, yielding and powerful, the yin glass plays
to the copper and steel yang,
a sometimes outrageous combination of metals fused into
the pieces.
To launch the gallery, Marianne Spottswood presented her recent work, as well as sculptures in glass
and bronze by Mexican artist Elvira Hickert,
and the enigmatic soft sculpture in silver and pewter by Scottish sculptor Ann Murchison.
Luniverre will be showing a selection
of small sculpture and jewelery, designed by young artists working in
glass and ceramics whom Marianne will be showing on a regular
basis in the gallery.
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