Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Richard Jolley

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What:
Richard Jolley: Sculptor of Glass

Where:
Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Drive (call 525-6101 for information)

When:
Extended through Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day).

There will be a lecture by the Washington, D.C. Hillwood Museum's Glass Historian Karen Kettering, Sunday, March 2, at 2 p.m.

Artist Richard Jolley's work from more than two decades

by Heather Joyner

Through May, visitors to the Knoxville Museum of Art can see the exhibition "Richard Jolley: Sculptor of Glass." Despite the show's title, works on view are made from all sorts of materials—including blueprint paper, bronze, sheet metal, wood, paint, graphite, and metallic leaf. But innovations in glass are what the 50-year-old Jolley is known for. The retrospective, with a range of pieces dating back to 1979, includes his "Vessels Series," "Monoliths," "Torsos Series," "totems," and other efforts in both two- and three-dimensional forms.

In her review of the 1987 touring exhibition "American Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical" (organized by New York's American Craft Museum, a collector of Jolley), Los Angeles critic Suzanne Muchnic wrote, "Are you perplexed by the confusion of what passes for fine art these days? Disturbed that you can't tell a drawing from a painting, a painting from a piece of sculpture, a print from a photograph? Don't look to the crafts for relief." Yet Jolley's work is definitely considered art, and it possesses a unity of vision. It's a vision he works hard to explain.

Numerous placards, a brochure, and a seven-minute video played repeatedly on a large-screen TV in the museum's lobby push the message that Jolley is forever evolving and changing. One Jolley quote reads, "Recently, I [was] asked if I did not feel a responsibility to create a consistent style of work for my collectors. I said no, absolutely not...I feel that I have an obligation to myself to explore new directions."

In the end, Jolley's work does the talking, and what I tend to hear are different versions of the same story.

Jolley's artistic motifs have remained constant throughout the last 20 years or so. His "narrative themes" almost always include images of men, women, dogs, and birds, and their rendering—in glass or bronze or prints—has not changed much. Despite the show's stab at comparisons via reproductions of works by Matisse, Brancusi, and Arp, one can argue that Jolley's people and creatures are most identifiably (and consistently) his.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, so why all the fuss? Dealing primarily with glass has possibly put Jolley on the defensive. As Corning Museum curator Susanne Frantz stated in 1985, "It is no secret that a great deal of contemporary, nonutilitarian work in glass has been saddled with the burden of proving itself as art." Add to that Jolley's presumed projection: If one is indeed an artist, he or she must prove to be flexible as well as talented and prolific. A super artist, in other words.

Another aspect of the super artist is the artist-as-local-hero. Educated entirely within 180 miles of Knoxville B.F.A. from George Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, an eight-week Penland School session near Asheville, N.C., studied at Tusculum College), Jolley appears obligated to celebrate regional life and represent East Tennesseans. His early vessels are credited as possessing a "playful sense of Americana," and a 1994 bust titled "Traveler" represents "a rural American character." At the same time, Jolley's cobalt blue-on-whitish-glass pieces are declared a homage to Matisse, and we are left wondering if croissants can double as cornbread. Furthermore, 'the new art hero must be a promoter who [knows] how to make art pay," writes Nicolaus Mills, author of Culture in an Age of Money.Whether or not Jolley's ambition is fueled by conflicting desires, he has achieved the financial success of a new art hero.

At its best, Jolley's art makes the most of an acid-etched glassmaking technique that produces what he calls "a skin-like texture." When combined with bright color, the unusual texture harnesses a certain glow.

Sometimes, however, the glass itself seems beside the point. In 1980s works like "Uncle Bud Watches His Dogs Work" and "Neo Classical Temple to the Bird Dog," glass substrates do little more than suspend drawings out from the wall. Various glass shapes—"Seated Female," for instance—would be nondescript lumps without illustrative line. I, myself, prefer a lump to the aforementioned figure. With legs drawn back and pelvis thrust forward (think gynecological exam), "Seated Female" sports cartoon boobs and a dumb blonde expression. Other examples of goofy faces atop disproportionately large breasts also lack humor. They might, for some people, be offensive. Male penises in the "Totems Series"—and even birds in Jolley's exquisite monotype grid titled "Crow Suite"—enjoy far more dignified treatment.

Jolley's recent mixed-media constructions feature cage-like steel spheres and "anonymous male silhouettes." The artist says the resulting tone of the series is one of detachment, and I agree. It's the same detachment I feel when regarding Jolley's perplexed-looking faces with gaping mouths and empty eyes. Is this a feeling prolonged exposure to the work might remedy? If so, I have time.

The show—occupying both entrance level galleries of the KMA for over two months now—will remain in place another 95 days—as long as the full run of "A Century of Progress: Twentieth Century Painting in Tennessee" (an exhibit including 50 artists—also currently at the KMA). By the time it closes, the Jolley retrospective will have hosted four lectures and five receptions, as opposed to one of each for "A Century of Progress."

Why such a lengthy showing? Is the KMA struggling to attract, assemble, or maintain exhibits? Is the Jolley retrospective more relevant to our area than "A Century of Progress" or an upcoming show featuring Knoxville's Beauford Delaney? Are Jolley's 48 displayed pieces so utterly amazing that they merit almost half a year of the museum's schedule? As a critic, I am pressed to answer the latter question. But utter amazement is hard to come by.