On September 5, 2019, the Montgomery Museum of Art and History opened the exhibit of works by Paula Golden and Larry Mitchell. While the artists will be featured together, their work is very different.
In this exhibit entitled “Glass and Fiber—Edges”. Golden creates intricate quilts using a variety of quilting techniques, weaving fabric and thread to produce a beautiful effect. Mitchell creates fused glass art, mixing glass with other materials to create gorgeous colors and patterns in an extensive scientific process.
Each artist feels a strong connection to his and her own style of art.
“Quilt-making brought me into the creative world,” said Paula Golden. “Its structure and established set of rules provided a framework in which to develop my sense of color and design.”
Golden feels that quilting connects artists in a profound way, bringing together quilters of the past and present. She states that, as a result of these qualities, quilting “improves the quality of life [for] all those touched by it.”
Larry Mitchell is drawn to fused glass art because of the challenges that the medium offers and the potential to meet and move past those challenges “to generate new and wonderful effects in the glass,” he says.
Mitchell has mastered the complex heating and cooling techniques necessary to create these pieces, and he’s now pushing beyond established limits of the fused glass art medium to create even more complex pieces with one-of-a-kind patterns.
The exhibit will feature many works from both artists that tell a story. Golden’s work is influenced greatly by her life experiences. She uses different quilting techniques to reflect different times and aspects of her life. The stories she tells “are more specific and meaningful due to the extension of materials I consider viable for my expressions,” she says.
Mitchell’s work will offer a step-by-step look at how he creates his art. “I plan to tell a fused glass story,” he explains. The installation will begin with simple fused glass pendants and become increasingly more complex, incorporating new shapes, materials, and mediums. Mitchell’s exhibit “walks the observer through the progress of a fused glass artist through use of progressively more difficult techniques that finally become the tool kit of the fused glass artist to create visual art in this solid, unforgiving medium.”
To see Paula Golden’s quilts and Larry Mitchell’s fused glass art, stop by the Montgomery Museum of Art and History. The exhibit will be in place through October.
— Submitted by Alana Hassett
