Constellation

When Lynne Harlow received a 2020 Pollock-Krasner Grant to research the use of glass, she began to look for a glassmaker to collaborate with. After a comprehensive search, she discovered that her glass soulmate, Steven Easton Cast Glass, had a space in her Rhode Island studio building. The dazzling products of Harlow’s research, experimentation, and collaboration can be seen in Constellation, an exhibition of glass objects, silk organza on panels, and works on paper.

As she a weds the organic and the engineered, Harlow asks us to view the natural world through the lens of her radiant, color-saturated glass rocks. Transcending the beach stones on which they are modeled, Lodestars transform those geological objects into glowing talismans. Although each piece changes with the light in which it is viewed, they also seem to exude an inner light that suggests unearthly origins…think kryptonite?

Harlow is a minimalist always pursuing a reductive process that asks the question: how little is enough? Her silk organza silhouettes and acrylic drawings, based on the Lodestars, depict simple shapes floating or resting in a neutral background. Again they go beyond the minimal. Lodestar (Town Neck, Ultramarine), an orb painted seamlessly in what can be described as fathomless blue, seems to leave the paper as it sucks the eye into its depth. Alchemist, engineer, colorist, Lynne Harlow takes the definition of minimalism to a new place where the viewer’s eye and imagination are allowed to run a bit wild.