Mindful Waters: Life in the Salish Sea
Glass Blown, Caste and Engraved
When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy,
then from all the stones, and all growing things,
and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you,
and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.
Hasidic saying
Museum of Northwest Art Curator of Exhibitions Kathleen Moles
Theodora Jonsson gives visual form to sounds, patterns, and native stories relating to undersea life with her series of blown glass whalebones, slumped glass forms, and scroll paintings. In this exhibition, Jonsson creates an environment suffused with oceanic imagery that tells a story steeped in history, science, and the mystic with objects that could best be called contemporary artifacts.
By painting, drawing, and etching upon these translucent forms, Jonsson references whales’ migratory patterns, ancient origins, and songs. The sounds made by whales and dolphins (charted in the high frequencies of C and E) have been proven to determine their growth patterns, visible primarily in vertebrae that hold the nerve channels. The study of this phenomenon of visible sound and vibration, called cymatics, also inspires Jonsson’s work in this show.
The glass works were made in collaboration with glass artists Richard Marquis, Brian Pike, Katrina Hude, and Jean Brennan.
Baleen and Beach castes: tidal currents
Hydrocal casting of Baleen whale vertebrae and beach tidal patterns captured objects in water currents. Hydrocal, painted and slumped glass. 2011
