Posted by Natalie Feulner April 24, 2012 10:00 AM
Jill Barry and Mike Glowacki were recently selected to create a 4-foot-tall fiberglass rabbit for the Dedham Art Project, a program of Dedham Shines. The group will install the sculptures around town this summer and hopes to auction them off in fall to raise money for Dedham Shines and the new Mother Brook Arts and Community Center.
Who are you as an artists and how would you describe your art?
Barry, Glowacki: Making things should be like playing on the beach. Some people go to the beach to do whatever they do, and that’s fine. They do the typical lounge around beach stuff that we all love. But when you get to the beach bringing colored sand and find someone who else has brought the colored sand too chances are you’ll hang out and play. That’s what we do with our art and especially this project. It’s just playing. Playing with results. The results are a giant rabbit covered in “X” amount of pieces. We know how many pieces are going to eventually be on it because we are keeping track of them. Then, we are going to have a raffle and the person who guesses the closest amount will win a prize. The raffle money will go to a charity for kids with autism.
What technique will you use to create your rabbit?
Barry, Glowacki: We make glass mosaics whenever we can. We mostly make pets and animals. Glass mosaic work is a lot like painting but imagine the paint being colored glass. It’s cut to the brush stroke you need then added to the picture you’re making, like a puzzle. The pieces of any picture can be as big as a half dollar or as small as a pin head. Usually the smaller the pieces, the more detail you get. The more detail you get, the better it looks in the end.
Why were you interested in participating in the Dedham Art Project?
Barry, Glowacki: We wanted to do the Dedham art project for a bigger venue type show. A lot of people have never seen anything made out of glass. We think glass work has the potential to become the next big medium in art.
What do you think public art brings to the community?
Barry, Glowacki: As far as public art goes…it’s a lot like poetry…a lot of it is just terrible. I mean Dedham has a museum dedicated to bad art. A lot of people think sticking a bird on something is art. The bottom line is that this rabbit is for the people of Dedham, especially the kids. Dedham has been built up way too much over the last decade and it’s becoming foreign to a lot of us who grew up here.
We want to make this rabbit in glass because glass never fades. The way you see it on day one is the way you will see it at year one hundred. Some 10-year-old kid will see it in May and hopefully see it again in Dedham when he’s 90 and it will not have changed one bit. Last time I checked, you had to go to the Great Wall of China for that experience. I want forever in Dedham. Why? Well, like one of my friends said once…”You can take yourself out of Dedham, but Dedham can never be taken out of you.”
Natalie Feulner can be reached at natalie.feulner@gmail.com.
Direct Link: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/dedham/2012/04/q_a_with_2_artists_tasked_with.html