On Tour... Q&A with Clare Belfrage

A Measure of Time, collection of works, 2018 — *A Measure of Time,* collection of works, 2018

JamFactory’s Senior Curator, Margaret Hancock Davis,
caught up with Belfrage at her home studio set to a backdrop of stunning red and blue gums: a constant reminder for the artist about the fluid beauty of nature.

MHD: Over the years you have become internationally known for challenging and pushing the conventions of drawing on glass with stringers (that is fine rods or hollow tubes of glass colour).
How does your use of stringers differ from other approaches?

CB: I’ve been working with this drawing technique of fusing thin lines of glass onto a form during the hot glass process for many years now. It’s not a widely used technique and I initially used it to draw little pictures or scenes. As my work has evolved, I’ve moved away from a narrative style and instead focussed on pattern, using repetition and details from the natural world to create a sense of rhythm across a form. I’ve got pretty obsessed with varying line qualities – opacity, transparency, flatness, depth, colour, tonal variation – all different sensibilities useful for different ideas.

MHD: I’m always fascinated by the processes in the hot shop and the change of rhythms whist making. Can you describe how it feels to work on the molten surface and the attention drawing on glass with stringers requires?

CB: I don’t think of the atmosphere in the hot shop as being frantic but it definitely is intense. When I’m drawing with glass stringers it’s a particular phase in the making and the rhythm really changes at this stage. Building up the pattern, line by line, like stitch by stitch, you fall into the process – the surface, the pattern – feeling the relationship between each mark made. I always have a plan but part of that plan is to let go of tightness, to soften, to breathe. It is a completely different physical and mental process compared with when we’re actually blowing and shaping the form. It takes a long time, is highly repetitive and I like the way I kind of lose time. Then, when we’re creating the form, it all speeds up again!

Photos by Pippy Mount.

Quiet Shifting, 2018 — *Quiet Shifting*, 2018

Impressions, Russet on Grey/Purple, 2018 — *Impressions, Russet on Grey/Purple,* 2018

MHD: The intricate working of the surface with fine details seems to refer in many ways to what you describe as your close observation to nature, a skill developed as a child on family camping trips. What observations from nature excite you?

CB: I’m not sure if it is a skill, possibly more a natural way of seeing. It is the rhythms in the natural world particularly of fine detail that I’m drawn to. This can be seen in a leaf, a rock, a grass tree or a particular view, a stretch of sand or water. It is the potent combination of intimacy and power, drama and delicacy. It is wonder and it is the myriad expressions of time; fast and slow, fleeting and frozen. I describe it as the big feeling that ‘small’ can give.

MHD: Time can be measured in nature through accumulative processes such as laying down of sediment or growth in plants and inversely it can be measured through subtraction and removal, such as weathering and erosion. In your artwork we see both of these processes at play, the gathering and layering of glass in the hot shop, to the slow removal of the surface through pumice abrasion in the cold shop, creating a smoothed unfamiliar finish to glass. Are these parallels to the natural world something you are consciously considering while making?

CB: When creating my artworks I am definitely thinking of the building up of pattern, line by line, one small element applied at a time, slowly creating a tempo. It is clearly different to the accumulative process in nature yet somehow reminiscent and I think the flow of making is captured within the final object.

Taking the shine off the glass is a reductive process and I do this with most of my work. I sandblast the forms – erosion sped up – with an abrasive compound and then polish by hand or using a glass lathe with pumice paste to bring a subtle sheen to the surface. I think this certainly creates a more tactile surface and draws the audience into the layers more than if the shiny reflective surface of glass was left. It is a softer surface and holds a greater sense of age and wear.

MHD: You describe a shift in your perception about the Australian landscape from a literal view to a more illusionary experience. How did this shift affect your work?

CB: I think there have been a few significant shifts in my work. In the late nineties and early noughties, I really made a change from working with simple forms that I decorated, to an idea driven approach. I focussed on the aspects of the natural world that I was drawn to and developed patterns and forms that were inspired by particular plants, a scene, or the experience in a place. The pattern often came first. The forms became more sculptural and asymmetric. I was keen to move the blown form out of its natural desire to be round and create artwork where the form and pattern were completely integral to each other.

Another shift was working more consciously in layers. Sometimes this was laying down a particular pattern behind the line drawings on the surface, especially in the last ten years. This has worked to express my interest in different experiences of time within a landscape and to create a sense of place that’s sometimes real, sometimes imagined.

There has probably been a broad shift in the perception of the Australian landscape and I think there are a number of reasons for this shift; not least the artwork of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists fundamental to the cultural landscape. I have been deeply moved by a number of artists’ practices, particularly the work of Dorothy Napangardi and Kathleen Petyarre. They have made a difference to my experience in the landscape.

MHD: Coming from a large family, one of 8 siblings, there was always activity nearby. You mention your mother’s hands constantly moving, knitting, cooking or mending clothes. Was your love of making in some way instilled by your mother’s unrelenting creative activity?

CB: Rhythm has been a strong theme of mine for many years now. The rhythms I’ve observed in the natural world and more recently, I’ve been reflecting on the rhythms that surrounded me growing up. My mother was a very good knitter along with many other craft practices and I agree her hands were always on the go. She tried to teach me sewing and knitting but I was pretty hopeless at craft when I was little. I wasn’t patient at all. I did learn music though, probably my first passion. There was always lots of music going on in my house too.

JamFactory Icon Clare Belfrage is showing at Tweed Regional Gallery in NSW
from 21 February - 3 May 2020