Monday 7:27 p.m. ‘red thread’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”
Monday 10:46 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Tuesday 5:02 p.m ‘ode to MZ’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 11x16x1.5” SOLD
Tuesday 6:57 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD
Wednesday 3:02 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
Wednesday 6:03 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Thursday 1:45 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”
Thursday 7:46 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
Thursday 9:30 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD
Thursday 10:16 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
Thursday 11:42 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Friday 5:01 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Friday 8:12 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Friday 10:33 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”
Friday 11:11 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
Saturday 2:01 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD
Saturday 3:02 a.m. fused glass, copper wire,wood, gesso 11x12x1.5”
Saturday 2:49 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Saturday 7:42 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
Saturday 11:00 p.m. ‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”
Sunday 12:31 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD
Sunday 1:57 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD
Sunday 7:27 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”
‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ Artist Statement
‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ - a series of portraits rendered in copper wire held fast between sheets of fused glass - portrays life among “the regulars” playing out in the local bars of Athens Georgia.
The images presented in ‘Ode' are both a true innovation in my art and in the canon of wire sculpting. As noted by my friend and glass worker Christie Moody copper and glass have the same expansion rate, This means that one can melt glass around copper without the glass cracking. After a few experiments, Christie and I realized that I could use hair thin copper wires to create ephemeral wire drawings preserved between sheets of fused glass.
This innovation brought with it an explosive burst of creativity. Working with barely there wire allowed me to work swiftly and intuitively. As I did, a distinct theme quickly emerged - the life we find in Athens’ local watering holes! I found myself putting into my art what I have always found fascinating - the ways in which the mood of a bar shifts from hour to hour. So I started creating a series of what I called ‘portraits of a moment,’ naming each work by the day of the week and the hour of the day. So Friday 5:30 is all about happy hour with large groups of people all winding down from a long week. Whereas Friday 10:45 is about dates and intimate conversations over ‘one more round’
As I delved deeper, I remembered the lovingly contentious debates about composition with my fellow German Expressionists inspired artist Art Rosenbaum. Both of us loved Max Beckmann’s work and Athens’ watering holes. So, I decided to build the show around my late friend’s idea of sculpting the scene in the bar we were having a pint in.
As the series developed, I made some unexpected discoveries. The fused glass raises the copper lines ‘off the page’ just enough to give them a dynamism found in relief work. These reverberate the same way cave art does when viewed in flickering fire light. This discovery guided me and Joe Willey, who built the frames,to mount the works onto textured gessoed panels giving them a truly dynamic quality, resulting in what might be called contemporary urban Cave Art.
https://flagpole.com/arts-culture/art-notes/2025/01/15/noah-james-saunders-ode-to-a-watering-hole/
