To write these blog posts I’ve needed to comb through the archives looking for files that have images or articles which I can scan into the post. Quite a few folders are tragically slim, sometimes they hold no more than a few yellowing pricing sheets for work that have no images, an out of date curriculum vitae or perhaps just a sheet of increasingly antiquated photographic slides.
This lack of paper record almost always translates to a scarce internet presence which makes researching those artists challenging at best. One artist on the opposite end of this spectrum is acclaimed glass artist Warren Carther, whose thick file is filled with information.
Image from a Winnipeg Free Press article,” Abrasive art” by Bonnie Bridge. Sunday May 30, 1993
Winnipeg born Warren Cather is perhaps one of the most well known artists in the archives and his presence on the internet is also impressively dense. He still resides in Winnipeg and continues to work out of his large studio in the Exchange.
He began his education, like most of the artist in the archives, at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art. He had worked in clay until he spotted an “ugly” glass sculpture and was inspired to try to create something better. He started by studying hot glass for a summer at the Naples Mill School of Arts and Crafts before his last year of his undergraduate.
After graduation he left for a number of years to pursue his burgeoning interest in glass making. He journeyed to Oakland, California and received a Bachelor in Fine Art: Area Glass from California College of Arts and Crafts. He then returned to Winnipeg after his studies and continues to work out of his large studio in the Exchange.
Carther’s main visual inspiration is architecture from around the world, shapes abstracted from looking at Assyrian ziggurats, Mayan Temples and Japanese buildings find their way into his glass. With his sculptural installation in the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, he also began to connect with the landscape that had surrounded him his entire life. Aerial images of a rural Manitoba farmland were so similar in pattern to Japanese tilled tone gardens he spied while flying home to Winnipeg that it helped to connect Canada to Japan for him.
He utilizes all the different states of glass – the fluid, the rigid, the opaque and the transparent – to add dimension to his complex sculptures. His deep understanding of his medium allows him to translate his concepts into works that are displayed around the world.
Check out Warren Carther’s website at http://www.cartherstudio.com/
