NEW CANAAN, CONN.- Heather Gaudio Fine Art is presenting “Ann Gardner: Expanding the Perception of Light,” her first solo exhibition at the gallery. The show opened November 20th and will run through January 8th, 2022.
Gardner’s artistic practice stems from a life-long exploration of light, color, pattern, and volume. Using one of the most ancient man-made materials, glass, her sculptures are presented in a range of formats, shapes, and scales. Gardner hand-cuts colored glass into tiny mosaic pieces and reassembles them onto steel armature structures. These come in a variety of forms, such as curved geometric shapes, tubular ovals, waved panels, star bursts or round compositions created in a series. Their volumes protrude into space and recede into themselves, thereby allowing for additional flickering of light, color, and reflection to take place. Some of the sculptures are mounted onto walls while others are free-standing or suspended from the ceiling.
Gardner is also known for creating large-scale, site-specific installations that not only bring attention to the works themselves but also to the environments they occupy. These can be presented in the form of sculptures or mosaic murals. The artist is very cognizant of the physical space and light that surround these works and she mindfully and carefully selects the materials and palette that would be best suited for each setting. Activating the space with reflections, transparency, light, the spectrum of Gardner’s palette is broad. Her colors range from subdued golds, silvers and blues, or venture into dynamic reds, bright greens, and yellows.
The exhibition will feature new mosaic wall-mounted sculptural works that emphasize pattern, reflection, shifting light and color. Also showcased is a new series of hand-blown glass orbs that gracefully hang from the ceiling. These innately beautiful bubbles in soft blues, greys and gold direct the viewer’s attention to transparency and the light beyond their physical edges. Arranged in clusters, their clarity becomes more nuanced when they overlap each other. This series was showcased at the Boise Art Museum in Idaho last year to great critical acclaim.
Also featured in the exhibition is a new work on paper Gardner created in 2020 when working with glass in the studio was not available to her. Gardner took to walking around Lake Washington during those months and she became interested in the translucency and glow of light on the watery surface. She translated this experience into a two-dimensional expression by applying watercolor on silver-leaf paper. The metallic surface rendered the depth and luminous effect she was seeking, and then creased the paper to evoke the texture of water. This multi-sheet work is arranged in a grid and can be extended to a larger scale if so desired.
Gardner has been the recipient of numerous awards and her work has been featured in many solo and group shows around the country. In addition to her large-scale public and corporate commissions, her work is included in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Corning Museum of Glass, to name a few.
