Beth Lipman’s glass still lifes combine the glittering beauty of a
scene from a fairy tale with the brittle edge of a dream that’s taken
a discomfiting turn. She drains color and substance from the sump-
tuous laid tables of the 17th-century still life tradition, freezing
them in icy tableaux as if casting a spell. Seductive and unsettling,
they are impossibly precarious, and challenge the eye with lashings
of reflected light. Like King Midas’s golden feast, her glass ban-
quets are rich and bountiful yet lack the capacity to nourish.
For the still life masters of the 17th century, precision and clarity
were paramount. Nailing the viscous gleam of an oyster, the fuzz
on a perfectly ripe peach, or the fine crumb of a crusty loaf, their
canvases evoke a visceral hunger. Even at their most baroque, still
life paintings’ primary function was to illustrate rich men’s access
to specific, recognizable luxuries: silver, lemons, lobster; wine,
pepper, silk. But in translating these images into clear glass, Lipman
obscures their specificity. Translucence, paradoxically, hinders
their clarity, and multiple reflections frustrate the effort to pin
down individual forms. The details become elusive, the boundaries
between each object indistinct. What remains is the gestalt of their
accumulation and, by implication, the conflicting passions behind
it: hunger, desire, self-presentation, social obligation, envy, love.
“Our love affair with material culture, with possessing things,
is our religion,” says Lipman, “and we are consistently surprised
at the lack of fulfillment it offers.” Yet, as true believers, we con-
tinue to pile on the goods. Lipman sees strong parallels between
today’s global economy and the expansive mercantile empires of
17th-century Europe: the intense concentrations of wealth, the
ruthlessness of international trade, and the social role of luxury
goods. Her critique is girded by sympathy—she understands the
seductive draw of good food, drink and beautiful things, and the
accumulations of objects in her installations are unapologetically
lovely, despite their chilly mien. “I’m a sucker for good-looking
food,” she said wryly, when I visited her home and studio in
Sheboygan, w i, passing a plate of fat strawberries.
Equally plain is her love for traditional European glass: the
bones of her work are classically proportioned covered beakers,
flagons, roemers, bottles, goblets and bowls, fleshed out with food
and flowers and fabric. It’s funny that these historical vessel forms
have become so central to Lipman’s work. As a student at Tyler
School of Art in Philadelphia, she had a love/hate relationship with
glassblowing; as she describes it, “The vessel was a tyranny: it
was not fun.” She focused on solid forms in glass and, until 1996,
worked in fiber as well, making soft sculpture. Lipman reached
a crucial turning point in a class at the Pilchuck Glass School,
when she cut tlirough a glass bubble to create a new form. “Cutting
through that vessel was big. I found a way to own the craft for
myself, that I could do something that wasn’t dependent on my skill
in the hot shop.” Even now, Lipman prefers not to have her own
hot shop. With the help of her husband, Ken Sager, she does lamp-
working and kiln-casting in a small studio adjacent to her home,
and blows glass in the hot shop maintained by Jeremy Popelka and
Stephanie Trenchard in nearby Sturgeon Bay.>
Left and opposite:
Details of
R a n c k e tje ,
2003, hand-sculpted,
blown, kiln-formed
and lampworked glass
with gold paint, oak,
oil and mixed media,
67 x 50 x 240 in., based
on 17th-century Dutch
still life paintings.
038 american craft junc/july io
www.WorldMags.net & www.Journal-Plaza.net
Collection of Ren wick Gallery, Smithsonian American A rt Museum.
