WHERE ART INSPIRES CONNECTION
Environment as Material
featuring works by
Tegan Brozyna Roberts
Nina Casson McGarva
November 2 - December 22, 2024
TINT is pleased to announce “Environment as Material,” featuring works by Tegan Brozyna Roberts and Nina Casson McGarva. Both artists come from families of craftsmen and find inspiration in the environments in which they live. Brozyna Roberts explores her urban surroundings in New York, finding source material in the smallest of details: crack in a sidewalk, paint on a fence, discarded paper fragments. Coming from a lineage of seamstresses, Brozyna Roberts borrows from the structure and language of weaving, creating artwork that is full of movement and memory. Similarly, Casson McGarva’s glassworks seem to move in their stillness. Her glass-making process mirrors nature’s cycles: the material is at its most alive when it’s hot and being transformed. Then it becomes solid and still. Surrounded by nature in her upbringing in rural France and current surroundings in Gloucestershire, England, Casson McGarva brings nature to life in her art.
Brozyna Roberts creates dimensional paper collages that explore her relationship to her environment. Her work is not a replica of a physical place, but an expression of it. Referencing ideas of healing and repair, she deconstructs the world around her and then translates fragments into a new woven landscape that captures a sense of harmony.
Brozyna Roberts’ studio practice begins outside as she explores her environment in an intimate way; she finds beauty in what is often overlooked. She’s particularly drawn to source material that imbues a sense of history, time, and place. The unique contours of a sidewalk crack, the multicolored strata of paint on an iron fence, and the uninhibited scribbles on a discarded piece of paper become the genesis for her work.
The starting point in Casson McGarva’s work is nature. Her inspiration comes from plants, insects, nests, and animals. She takes a detail of an element she finds in nature and uses it as an inspirational base to create her own abstraction that then builds into a complex sculpture with structures that reflect elements such as dry leaves, feathers, or seashells.
Casson McGarva associates cycles of nature with the glass-making process because the material is at its most alive when it’s hot and being transformed. Then it becomes solid and doesn’t move any longer; it is at the fragile time before disintegration yet maintains a dynamic form.
Brozyna Roberts’ materials inform her art; their strengths and limitations act as boundaries for fruitful exploration. Coming from a lineage of seamstresses, Brozyna Roberts’ is particularly inspired by textiles. With her collages, she borrows from the structure and language of weaving. Colorful clusters of cut paper are layered and suspended by the tension of the threads. The overlapping colors create a sense of movement as they harmonize and vibrate against each other. This visual rhythm touches on the need to cultivate beauty in a world that often feels burdened by noise and discord.
Casson McGarva uses several different glass techniques in her works: glass blowing, kiln and sand casting, and fusing, which create a unique aesthetic when combined. Her process starts with a single shape, which she then repeats in a wax mold, creating a textured pattern. The next step is to pour a handmade mixture of plaster/silica on top of the wax. This is put in the kiln to harden the mold and steam the wax out. Then she casts glass in the mold. The mold turns into powder in the kiln, making it easier to separate if from the fused glass. Then she has just some moments to shape the hot glass, creating movement and an organic aesthetic before it cools. When the glass transforms to a solid, the piece is finished. Contrast in translucency and texture enrich the natural glass qualities.