ROMANTIC METTLE
Robin Cass' glass and metal scultptures mix pleasure and pain at galleryblue this week
by marli guzzetta independent arts editor
Alternating between sweetness and violence, Robin Cass's glass sculpture might surprise you.

You can meet artist Robin Cass at a reception on Friday, August 31, from 5 to 8 p.m. at galleryblue, 20 & 21 Old South Wharf. On Saturday, September 1, Cass will provide a morning gallery talk from 11 a.m. to noon.

Opening at galleryblue this week, her body of work is preoccupied with vehicles of movement, either hindered or allowed.

In her Common Afflictions series, the bird is postured in scenes of sylvan simplicity or as a thing bored by metals.

Cass depicts the birds through blown glass - their bodies are dovelike and regal. The fragility of the opaque glass creates a softness in the absence of feathers. The variable in each sculpture is the metal. In "Archetype II," metal acts like arms, lifting the bird selflessly to the sky. In pieces like "Choleric," however, the metal pierces the skin of the bird, like arrows from some tragic fable.

The shape for the bird originates from the shape of an old Roman perfume ampule, whose tail had to be snapped to access the perfume.

"That's how I got interested in the concept of damage and repair as a vehicle for art," Cass said.

The show at gallery blue will feature large birds perched on botanical branches, and elegant pairs of birds bound with rope, which represent the nuances and relationships.

"I'm trying to be some combination of romantic, but not overly sentimental. I'm trying to put an edge on the poetic," said Cass, who added a corrosive patina to the birds to generate a sense of age.

"A lot of my older works were assembled with textile techniques, highrelief embroidery loops made with all metal and glass and screen mesh, and that's what I'm rushing now to finish," Cass said.

These works are inspired by botanical samples, recombined in ways that couldn't exist.

A faculty member in the Glass Program in the Rochester Institute of Technology since 1998, Cass has also taught at Pilchuck Glass School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Haystack, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Aichi University and Kookmin University. Her work has been exhibited at galleries around the world, including the Museum of American Glass, Tittot Museum in Taiwan and the Appalachian Center for Crafts. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Alfred University.

Artist Zerbe Zodervick, who showed at galleryblue this summer, is a colleague of Cass's and suggested that Brust look into hosting the sculptor, who was originally set to exhibit with Karen Sardisco. The latter artist had to cancel her trip for personal reasons.

Brust said she was immediately enamored of Cass' work, because she is naturally drawn to birds: to her, they operate as figures of guidance.

"Her work is extremely elegant and beautiful - she's making a very contemporary statement," Brust said. "She works with opposites, the positive and

negative, pain and pleasure." I