Control and surrender

Sculptor Joan Hall on crafting "The Weather is Here," a glass installation on view in "PIVOT" at Jamestown Arts Center

Joan Hall, “The Weather is Here,” 2024. In collaboration with Benjamin Giguere, Gather Glass. Cast glass, copper and brass wire, handmade paper ashes. Variable size, 36 pieces. Courtesy Childs Gallery. All photos courtesy Joan Hall.

“What is something you have not shown or wish to create that stands apart from your main body of work?”. Curators Karen Conway and Jeff Foye put this query out to the artists in their show “PIVOT,” an exhibition full of stellar art at Rhode Island’s Jamestown Arts Center.

Bob Dilworth, who paints, draws, and works in textiles, went all in with the last to create “Tie,” made of deconstructed men’s ties, an opulent backing for a series of figures sparingly stitched on plain cotton. Sculptor Peter Diepenbrock experimented with two dimensions; printmaker Peter Marcus exploded into three. Full of ambitious art, “PIVOT” hangs together on the giddy feeling risk-taking, and you will sense that thrill if you know the artists. They explain their challenges in an exhibition booklet, but for a viewer, that’s doesn’t have the same “Wow!” factor as having seen previous work and happening on something distinctly new here.

I know papermaker and printmaker Joan Hall. She makes giant, delicate, color-rich installations contending with the impact humanity has on the oceans. Here, she pivots to glassmaking. Joan, the curators write, was one of the inspirations for “PIVOT.” They quote her: “I don’t work with materials as convention dictates. I move freely from one material to another in the moment. Don’t tell me what to do.”

Also, she never really finishes a piece. Once it returns to her studio after an exhibition, she goes back to work on it.

Joan’s glass installation, “The Weather is Here,” is a delightful shock to see; at the same time, it’s utterly Joan: tangled, luminous, aqueous.

She’s worked in glass before, but this wall installation is the most ambitious project in that medium. This piece is made of sand cast forms that look like jellyfish. As with her paper pieces, she pushes the limits of the medium – adding copper and brass wire, and in one case, her late husband’s ashes. “The Weather is Here” draws you with translucence, shine, and the mystery it holds; at the same time, it stirs the icky feeling of wading into water thick with jellyfish and red tide, a climate-driven algae bloom.

Joan writes:

The first time I sailed out of sight of land I was struck by the emotional reaction I had to feeling incredibly small looking out over the vastness of the ocean. Installations are a way that I try to duplicate that reaction and to be immersed in my work.