Hot Chaos IV

Toots Zynsky, Hot Chaos IV, 1996, glass threads, 7 ³⁄₄ x 13 ³⁄₄ x 9 ¹⁄₄ in. (19.7 x 34.9 x 23.5 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James Renwick Alliance on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the Renwick Gallery, 1997.94, © 1996, Toots Zynsky

Artwork Details

Title: Hot Chaos IV
Artist: Toots Zynsky
Date: 1996
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
/
Luce Foundation Center
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4th Floor
/
56A
Dimensions: 7 ³⁄₄ x 13 ³⁄₄ x 9 ¹⁄₄ in. (19.7 x 34.9 x 23.5 cm.)
Copyright: © 1996, Toots Zynsky
Credit Line: Gift of the James Renwick Alliance on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the Renwick Gallery
Mediums: glass
Mediums Description: glass threads
Classifications: Decorative Arts
Glass
Object Number: 1997.94
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1997.94

Artwork Description

Toots Zynsky slumps layers of fused glass threads into hollow forms that seem almost pliable, as if made from fabric. She participated in a music-recording project in Ghana, and the powerful music, vibrant colors, and diverse people she encountered there have greatly influenced her work. This is especially evident in the Chaos series, with its celebration of brilliant primary colors and energetic texture.

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Toots Zynsky was born Mary Ann, but was called Toots almost from birth. She earned her BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design then went to Seattle to study with Dale Chihuly at the Pilchuck Glass School. Since then, she has returned to Pilchuck as a teacher. In the mid-1980s, she spent six months in Ghana, on a special research project, recording Ghanaian music. In 1995, her work was shown at special exhibitions in Tokyo, Zurich, Italy, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

TOOTS ZYNSKY: I'm Toots Zynsky. I live now in Providence, Rhode Island. I grew up north of Boston but prior to moving to Providence, I lived in Europe for 16 years.

I began working in glass in 1970 at Rhode Island School of Design. When I visited all the departments, everything looked a bit too quiet and static to me. I had a lot of energy and needed to be moving all the time, and I came upon the glass department, which wasn't even a department yet. They actually were just finishing building the studio. It hadn't even been listed in the school catalog as something that was available, and I saw the hot glass being swirled through the air. They were actually making a film that day, and there were about 10 people in there swirling hot glass around. There was music thumping and in this constant motion that looks really like spontaneous choreography. The idea that you had to always be moving while you were working with it was great appeal to me, but obviously the material itself was so alive that it was captivating.

One of the pieces, “Hot Chaos IV,” is on display right now in the Luce Center, and it’s a piece from 1994. I was working in Paris at that time. I had a wonderful studio there. The piece was really a part of a series of work that I did in response to seeing a remarkable exhibition in Paris of the Blaue Reiter group, the German abstract expressionist movement, and it was a remarkable exhibition on many levels. Just the strength of the imagery was very powerful. The color and the harshness of the lines had a big effect on me, and I started exploring that in my own work, and it's actually very easy to translate my work to painting and back and forth or drawing, which I do, because my work is all made out of thousands and thousands of lines and those lines are glass threads. I refer to them as splashes, like you refer to a splash or stroke of paint.

So the work comes from my work with “filet de verre,” which is a technique which I developed incorporating thousands and thousands of colored glass thread, which I then lay out, fuse together, and subsequently form while it's still hot. So there are aspects of almost every other traditional method of glass forming that I've incorporated into my work because I've had experience with all those methods of forming glass over the years, and when I started evolving this technique, I was able to call upon something from all of those different methods, which enabled me to develop and continue working with this new technique.

So if you see the evolution of my work, it goes from years and years of no color, nothing to do with color, and nothing to do with two-dimensionality because I think the work I do now is a combination of two-dimensionality that you would find in a painting but also the three-dimensionality of the object itself. In fact, I rediscovered my love of color probably mostly when I moved to Europe and was surrounded by great museums on every block practically and so much of the great masters of history available to me to stand in front of as well as wonderful contemporary works in exhibitions and in galleries and museums.

It's always a great honor to have one's work included in a preeminent museum like the Renwick, and I particularly love the Renwick because of its focus, and I'm standing here in a room surrounded by some of the great icons of the 20th century. It's part of the movement that I grew up with, and I think it's been a very powerful movement in America and it’s extended around the world. There are some great, great people here who have extraordinary talent, and it merits at least a gallery if not a whole museum focus to it.

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Hot Chaos IV

Artwork Details

Artwork Description

Works by this artist (3 items)

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