The challenge put before Elaina Adams and other members of the Saskatoon Glassworkers' Guild was to make a new piece for a new glass artwork exhibit using a specific theme for inspiration."Random Acts of Light" is a varied and eclectic collection of artwork currently on exhibit at the Saskatchewan Craft Council's (SCC) Affinity Gallery in Saskatoon. Each of the artists in the guild has submitted a piece or pieces for the show.From her tidy studio in Humboldt, where a myriad of pieces of coloured glass are stacked neatly according to their colour, size and type, Adams explains how she came up with the piece she entered in the exhibit, entitled "Aqueous.""I wanted to explore what that would mean to me," she said, speaking of the title and theme of the exhibit. "It was challenging, because I don't typically do work like this."For several years, Adams has been working on a commissioned project of designing, making and replacing all the old stained glass windows in Muenster Cathedral."My work is normally like the traditional panels that I'm doing at the church, and which is a very realistic approach to my design work," she explained. "But this is very abstract, so it was really exciting for me to create this piece because I was really challenging myself in a different direction." Glass, says Adams, is a very random material already, having properties of both a solid and, on a molecular level, a liquid when in a room temperature state."Aqueous" is a collection of coloured discs of varying sizes and colours which hang suspended from a curved, metal bar. These disks give off a cascade of shadows projected onto the wall by the reflection of the glass under light. Adams says the design part of it was what took the longest in the whole process. She began working on this piece over a year ago. "I had ideas of what I wanted to do," she recalled. "But it took a long time to have this whole idea gel together as to what the finished art was going to look like."Adams wanted her piece to have a watery effect, as its name suggests, which was how she chose the three colours, hues of blues and aquas in tones of light, medium and dark shades. "The result is that these disks are projecting different coloured shadows on the white wall behind it," said Adams, "which in turn is creating more random colours and more random colour overlaps."Then, as only an artist whose passion for her medium and for the creative processes that often bring surprise results can appreciate, Adams tells of her triumphant discovery once the piece is assembled and hung."Due to the lighting, what started out as 13 disks, using three tones, has created a project that shows 52 disks of unlimited tones of that colour."And what," she says with finality, "would happen if the lighting changes? A completely random set of new shadows and colours!""Random Acts of Light" runs until November 28 at the gallery on the main floor of the SCC building, 813 Broadway.
