Margo Sawyer Lecture

The Field and its Knower: Lessons for an installation Artist from the… Margo Sawyer Lecture

The Field and its Knower: Lessons for an installation Artist from the Far East

Feb. 19. 7 p.m.

Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts

111 Ninth Street, Downtown

(412) 338-6100

Walking into a dark room at the Mattress Factory, viewers become quiet, calm and reflective. They stare into space at the blown-glass objects that transport the mind to a new and colorful galaxy.

They are viewing Margo Sawyer’s exhibit, titled “Lux Lucis Lumen.”

Sawyer, a blown-glass sculptor, creates works in large-scale installations like the Mattress Factory that are inspired by places she has lived and traveled, such as Japan, Burma and India. “I have always been fascinated with sacred spaces and what manifests a sacred space,” Sawyer said.

While living in Japan for a year and a half, she said, she was able to experience the way in which Zen, meditation and practice are incorporated into the Eastern lifestyle.

She has witnessed the Ellora Cave Temples and Jantar Mantra observatories in India. Others include the Temples of Tofuku-ji and Saio-ji of Japan.

With the ancient East in mind, Sawyer focuses on putting viewers in a meditative and reflective space where they leave their worlds behind. “It is a space of stilling and quieting the mind. Conversations stop, and [viewers] step away from their worlds,” Sawyer said.

Interested in the relationship between space and transcendence, Sawyer focuses on elements of Buddhism and Hinduism to capture this. She states that her work is part architecture, part landscape.

Working with the Mattress Factory and the space they offer as a canvas for Sawyer’s work has been amazing. According to Sawyer, “It is an amazing institution. It is about whatever an artist wants with full-breadth support. I teach and give advice to others — rarely does it happen the other way.”

While viewing this exhibit that Sawyer describes as a “galaxy,” viewers should, Sawyer advises, take their time, leave, and come back to a work of art to discover, over time, what the true meaning or message is. “Look closely at the objects. Each object has its own galaxy. [There is a] macro/micro way of experiencing the work.”

Her work looks like mini-universes. Glass shapes — many of which look like vases of different size and texture — are placed on a black backdrop, or rather, in a dark space. The glass figurines glow with color and glisten with detail. One image in particular looks like a vase with a bright yellow base and shades of yellow swirling to the tip of the vase-like figure.

This particular exhibit at the Mattress Factory, according to Sawyer, magically holds light. There is an optic pleasure incorporated in the exhibit.

So, how does she do it? Well, she doesn’t do it alone. She has had amazing assistance and guidance from trained professionals. And while in Pittsburgh, she was able to work with Pittsburgh Glass and the Mattress Factory.

Sawyer placed color-blown glass into the floor of the darkened room at the Mattress Factory. Slowly changing LED lights were placed underneath each work, which made the glass fade in and out of focus.

Sawyer is currently working on a solo exhibition at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Gallery and on a collaborative work for the San Antonio Airport that incorporates glass, light and fog. She is also working with marbles, which she described as “enigmatic, luscious, alluring — the colors are exquisite.”

She is the head of sculpture at the University of Texas, Austin. She earned her B.A. from the Chelsea School of Art in London and her M.F.A. in sculpture from Yale University.

Sawyer will also have a talk and discussion on Thursday, Feb. 19 at the Pittsburgh Glass Center at 6 p.m.