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Intriguing pate de verre glass jewellery in the Australian tropics!
Judith Bohm-Parr made an indelible impression on me with her ethereal pate de verre glass forms. Judith’s artistic journey through glass, hardly surprisingly, mirrors her physical experiences and literal journeys through life in Australia.
I first met Judith in 1993 when she was exhibiting at our fine art gallery, Mowbray Gallery, tucked away in the rainforest near Port Douglas.Her glass journey had started when she was living in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia and making stained glass pieces, an occupation which she enjoyed but which made her want to learn more about the tantalising qualities of glass.
So, off to Canberra School of Art she went, emerging with a degree in visual arts, with a glass art major…what else?
The fragile, sugary looking, pate de verre glass, literally a “paste of glass”, became her major interest and art form.
Judith’s engagement with the Australian tropics, begun in Darwin, continued in Cairns in Far North Queensland, a cosmopolitan yet frontier-type town, where, as they say, “reef and rainforest meet”.
Here she set up a studio, quite an undertaking with its requirements for specialised equipment and industrial type space, and continued her artistic journey.
Her breathtakingly beautiful pate de verre glass pieces, which our gallery exhibited, seemed to have a life of their own and gave me, and of course, visitors, great enjoyment.
Deep from within the bases of her bowl or vase forms glowed a rosy or cool light, depending on the colour of the pate de verre glass material used. This created the effect of the forms appearing to float above the pedestals on which they were placed.
Concurrently with her art practice, Judith began to experiment with a production line of functional and decorative fused and slumped work, which became the very successful Studio 8 Glass, reflecting her surroundings of Great Barrier Reef and tropical rainforest.
Here you see one of Judy's platters on the left and a fountain, on the right, which she installed in one of the Port Douglas resorts. Below is a wedding commission, with a large platter and small dishes in the process of being fired. The loose cut-outs will be fused to the base under high heat for a long period of time and then cooled just as slowly. Sometimes the flat fused shapes are placed into fibre glass moulds and re-fired at a lower temperature, to "slump" the glass into bowl forms. This process is known as "fusing and slumping" and only the best quality glass is used (as is the case for all of Judy's work).
A change in personal circumstances in 2005 led to Judith moving from Cairns to a tiny hamlet south of that centre. From here she was introduced by new friends to the hinterland, to the savannah and dry, mining country beyond the ranges.
In these new surroundings the subtleties of washed-out colour in an ancient landscape, the orange reds, soft greens and rusty or yellow ochres evoked a response, which coincided with thoughts of personal adornment and referenced the often harsh history of the landscape through which she moved.
The resultant body of new work became an exhibition at Cairns Regional Gallery in May 2007. Its title, “Parred Down” was a play on her name but also a commentary on the historical use of small artefacts, tiny details, which told a story of precious glimpses rendered in non-precious materials - glass, beads, leather and wire.
As one travels through the inland Australian landscape there are so often deserted relics of previous occupation – whether it be of the Australian aborigines or of more recent European and Asian settlement.
The small shards of rusted metal, decayed leather, semi precious stones, broken glass, turned bright blue by the sun, or tenacious tiny flowers, tell a story and invite conjecture.
Judith Bohm-Parr has chosen to tell her most recent story through the scaled down use of her comfortable yet exciting old friend – pate de verre. So, for this artist, her journey has come full circle!
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