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Artist of the Month, February 2010
Alison Kinnaird MBE
Apartment Blocks, 2008.
8" x 8" x 4" (assembled), four copper-wheel engraved crystal blocks
Click on the small images below for larger image and details.
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Alison Kinnaird has been engraving glass for more than thirty years, following training at the Edinburgh College of Art. Her career in glass has run parallel to a career in music; she is equally accomplished as a player of the Scottish Harp. Alison was awarded an MBE in 1997 for her services to art and music, and is also the recipient of accolades including the Creative Scotland Award, and not one, but two Glass-Sellers Awards, the first being awarded to her twenty-five years ago, and the second in 2004. Her work has been acquired by many eminent collections including the Royal Museum of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the Scottish Parliament, Corning Museum of Glass, Ulster Museum, Belfast, the Alexander Tutsek Foundation, Munich, and Dundee Art Gallery, Scotland.
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Alison’s recent work represents a major turning point in her artistic development. There is a groundbreaking progression from engraving as a small-scale, intimate endeavour to a technique for large-scale installations using dichroic colour and lighting to introduce a new dimension to her art.
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Despite this profound change of direction, Alison’s work retains all the detail and intricacy of the smaller work, using sand blasting and copper wheel engraving. The human figure remains the main subject of the pieces, for which glass is an ideal medium with its transparency and mirror surfaces giving different insights on the human condition. “Often I use the glass in its character of a window or a doorway, sometimes to suggest isolation or entrapment, sometimes with the figures poised between two worlds. Sometimes they confront an opposite or a mirror image. Glass is a surreal material - it is there and yet not there.”
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For Alison, the exacting technique is by no means a burden, but rather an inspiration. Working becomes a meditative pursuit of perfection. Working on such an intimate scale gives a perspective on one’s relationship with the rest of humanity. |
Alison Kinaird MBE
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We are grateful to Zest Gallery (London) for providing the materials for the Artist of the Month.
The Artist of the Month for March will be Jiyong Lee. Materials will be provided by the Duane Reed Gallery (St. Louis).
Click here to return to Artists Of The Month index.
last updated on 10 january 2010.
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