Lance Friedman

Artist's Statement
The line between craft and art has been one that I have mostly ignored since I opened my glass studio in 1987. My sculpture is in service of a larger idea; subordinating the "glassi-ness" of the glass it contains. Having served a stint in packaging design and as an art director, these occupations consciously or subconsciously inform my art. My work is often about the containment and presentation of sculptural imagery in glass. I am influenced by antique "wunderkammer" (or cabinets of curiosities) from Europe, which endeavored to bring unusual objects before the viewer to garner their reaction and wonder. It is the after effect of this "contact", when the visual link between the viewer and the art object no longer exists that fascinates me. There remains a relationship beyond both. It is the quality of this non-visual relationship, dependent on the emotive expressiveness of the artist that determines the value of the work itself.

Review by James Yood, Art Critic
The works of Lance Friedman have titles which read like chapters In a novel Like a rebus these titles become puzzles composed of words or sy1lables that later appear In the form of objects The objects that comprise these works are much like Isolated thoughts arranged In such a way as to trigger multiple associations The nuance or atmosphere created by the overlapping or layering of these associations is somewhat similar to a story that is told several times and each time perceived in a different way depending on who is listening With Friedman's work a person needs to listen carefully and view with all of one's senses; only then does the puzzle begin to reveal its inner mechanism However, consider the sum of any one work's parts again, and another story reveals itself and new associations are formed Friedman's strong point is in the orchestration of objects and the Interplay of their meaning as they are arranged into a totality that Intrigues and seduces. In this way Friedman's work can be thought of as a form of visual haiku where objects, like words, resonate with clarity and meaning, the space between the words in a haiku serves to create an intensification of sympathetic tension between the interrelated objects a spatial sensibility is at work which maintains a rhythmic separation of the objects but at the same time unifies the piece as a whole.

The comparison ends here - there are places to which language can never go - and this is precisely where this artist's work takes us Here IS an instinctive or visceral language of the senses This work in not read or known by employing rational processes, it is perceived through intuition where not a hair's breadth separates the self from the subject What captivates is the transformation that takes place through his confrontation with chosen subject matter Fearful events which always loom large in the mind are reduced to a manageable hand held scale, an object of contemplation Wings, nests, twigs, and pop beads are intimate objects but gain In stature either through a shift in scale and or by virtue of the care with which these often overlooked objects are presented within a personal narrative, Lance Friedman isn't just sharing feelings, he is sharing the events that made him aware of his feelings, varying in range from the catastrophic events that haunt our memories to the Intimate dramas of common everyday occurrence that pervade our thoughts Drawing on personal experience, Friedman creates universal symbols that lure and entice us into a situation where his narrative becomes our own Michael Rogers Associate Professor, Glass Art Aichi University of Education, Japan 1999.

Among the many admirable qualities in the work of Lance Friedman is its uncanny ability to make its viewers slow down, to examine these pieces carefully, to sense that this is truly an art of nuance and subtlety, all done by an artist who understands that the act of patient and intense looking can often provide an aperture to deeper understanding. Friedman is the kind of artist who wjll sometimes tell little while always offering a path that will tell more, drawn more to essences than to exaggerations, and always preferring the mysterious possibilities of poetry over the blatant surety of prose. He is also an artist whose work seems more organized by the generosjty of his attitude than by the application of a rigid pictorial style, by his state ofmind more than by a fixed approach to his subject matter. After all, that subject matter usually seems ordinary enough--reeds, nests, beads. vessels, ect.--but it is in his approach to their composition and realization that Friedman casts his curious magic. Odd and intriguingly complex armatures and bases, unexpected spatial shifts, curious scale alterations, sequential patterns that are subsequently interrupted, and more are how he makes things like beads and nests and bowls seem somehow crucial, somehow fundamental to considering our place in the cosmos.

Friedman can make you care a great deal for a nest or a bit of twig or a slender reed, exposing for you its fragility, poignancy, and potential for life, while also presenting is as somehow altered and at risk, its fundamental 'naturalness' changed by its intersection with humankind. In a way, the context is the content here, and, for example, Friedman's wonderful array of bird .nests in a work such as "Nested" is both evocative and bittersweet. These njne nests, set snugly into their gridded arbor of black lacquered wood, are clearly now vacated remnants of life, taken from their 'natural' context and re-presented here, no longer home for birds and their young, but now metaphors suggesting the complexities of our relationship with nature. Freidman spins a fine web ofhot worked glass upon his blown nests, sweet and treacly, coating these orbs with a kind of brittle netting that suggests sticks and twigs. These nests might now be considered dysfunctjonal, or better yet, turns toward a new function; now in their journey toward pattern they become symbols of the human desire for order and symmetry, an order perhaps reflected in the individual architecture of each nest. linking us to the birds themselves. That's very much the tempo of Lance Freidman's art--the objects he treats are fundamental, perhaps even common, but in their presentation. in his innate understanding of interval and space, of when to do more and when to do less, he invites a deeper consideration of their essences, as if the intense fires of glassmaking have purified them enough for us to see them for the first time.

—JamesYood
Northwestern University

Education

1973 - 1975 California College of Arts and Crafts
1975 BFA Honors & High Distinction
Maior: Glass
Instructor Marvin Lipofsky
1973 Kansas City Art Institute
Major: Glass
Instructor: Robert Naess
1971 - 1973 Kansas City Art Institute
Major: Ceramics
Instructors: Ken Ferguson and Victor Babu

Experience

Currently Instructor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2001 Visting Artist and Instructor, Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio
1998 Instructor, Glass Art Society Conference, Seto Japan
October 1997 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Center for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan
September 1996 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Aichi University of Education Glass Department, Aichi, Japan
August 1996 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Utatsuyama Crafts Workshop, Kanazawa, Japan
Canada 1996 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Red Deer College, Series '96, 97 Alberta
1995 Glass Designer, Design Ideas Inc. (Personally hold both U.S. and Taiwan, R.O.C. patents)
1993 Assistant to Lino Tagliapietra, Shatter Glass Group Demonstration, Chicago, IL
May 1993 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Aichi University of Education Glass Department, Aichi, Japan
1992 Visiting Artist and Instructor, Espace Verre, Montreal, Canada
1992 - 1993 Consulting Glass Designer, Crate & Barrel, Chicago, IL
1991 - 1993 Guest Lecturer at School of the Art Institute Sculpture Department
1989 Guest Lecturer at University of Illinois "Image as Metaphor"
1986 Established Shatter Glass Group

Publications
New Art Examiner, Glass Magazine, New Glass, Glass, Glass & Art, Reader Arts Review, New York Times Arts Section, Chicago Tribune Arts in the City, Chicago SunTimes Art Section.

Galleries, Exhibitions, Commitees, Grants and Collections
2004 Lance Friedman "Inside/Outside", Habatat Galleries Chicago
2001 Lance Friedman Sculpture, Habatat Galleries Chicago, Chicago, IL
2000 International Glass Invitational, Habatat Galleries Pontiac, Michigan
March 2000 New Talent for the Millennium, GLASS Magazine
2000 Collection Lasalle Systems Leasing Corporaton, Chicago, IL
2000 Collection Lancaster Colony Corporation, Columbus, OH
1999 "Lance Friedman Sculpture Habatat Galleries Chicago, Chicago, IL
1997 "Lance Friedman, Sculpture in Glass", Morlen Sinoway Gallery, Chicago, IL
1997 Grant Selection Committee Chicago Artists' International Grant. Chicago IL
1996 Permanent Collection of the Utatsuyama Crafts Workshop Museum Collection, Kanazawa, Japan
1996 Recipient, Chicago Artists' International Grant to teach / exhibit in Japan
1995 Finalist "The International Exhibition of Glass" Kanazawa, Japan
1994 Morlen Sinoway Gallery, Chicago, IL
1994 Gallerie L, Hamburg, Germany
1994 "New Glass Review 15" The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
1994 "A Glass for Champagne", Christies Auctioneers, New York, NY
1994 Universal Myths, Narrative Goblets (One man show) Marx Gallery, Chicago, IL
1993 Yamaha '93, Tokyo, Japan
1993 - 1994 "A Glass for Wine", Christie's Auctioneers, New York, NY
1992 "What's New", Helander Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
1990 - 1991 Marx Gallery, Chicago, IL
1992 Yamaha '92, Tokyo, Japan
1992 "New Glass Review 13" The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
1991 - 1992 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
1992 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
1992 "Form and Object: Contemporary Interpretations of Craft Traditions University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY
1992 Corporate collection Amoco Oil Co.
1991 Glass Weekend '91, Wheaton Village, Millville, NJ
1990 "The International Exhibition of Glass", Kanazawa, Japan
1990 "Expressions in Glass", AES Gallery, Chicago, IL
1990 Permanent collection Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark
1990 Collection of Commission on Indian Affairs, Portland, OR
1989 Limn Gallery, San Francisco, CA