Joyful Destination: An Exhibition featuring Glass Students from Anoka-Ramsey Community College
Joyful Destination
An Exhibition Featuring Glass Students from Anoka-Ramsey Community College
Exhibition Dates April 8-June 30, 2022
Reception Friday May 20, 2022 5:30-8:30pm
Exhibition Statement
Life throws vastly different experiences for each of us and we all walk different paths. It’s easy to lose sight of the light at times and return with an image of a world that is broken and unjust. When this feeling of helplessness overtakes, we all have a place that invokes a personal sense of inner peace that we go to physically or mentally for an escape. Through the shared medium of glass, the artists of Joyful Destination create and express their personal joys to remember the good that the world has to offer. The paths of these artists crossed as students at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. Despite being at different points in life, they all have arrived at a joyful destination to take with them as they branch off on independent journeys.
Participating Artists
Claire Coffee
Marilyn Indahl
Sydney Kaster-Oftedal
Skyler Larson
Brooke Moresette aka Frit Queen
Jane Sprangers Bolan
James Tracy
Artist Bios
Claire Coffee is from Tucson, Arizona and has lived in the Twin Cities for the last nine years. She started blowing glass her freshman year of high school at Foci Minnesota Center for Glass Arts and where she now works as an Instructor while she pursues a degree in Glass Art. Claire’s work is strongly influenced by the natural world and its relation to personal memory. Utilizing glass, Claire uses muted palettes and dark imagery to revisit and explore her own experiences growing up as a means to better understand herself.
Marilyn Indahl spent her entire life in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. A multimedia artist, she creates in glass, ceramics, and photography. Her inspiration comes from what her camera captures in nature, especially the environment found in her home garden where she spends most of her summer days.
Sydney Kaster-Oftedal is a multimedia artist who discovered the world of glass in 2018. Coming from a family surrounded by mechanics and craftsmen, she enjoys working with a variety of different materials and learning new techniques. Most of her work is inspired by personal experiences while expressing her connection to a rural lifestyle.
Skyler Larson is an artist from Fridley, Minnesota, just down the road from Anoka-Ramsey Community College. Knowing glass can be any shape, Skyler sees it as an excellent opportunity to explore space, explore shape, and bring ideas from unlikely disciplines into a creative light.
Brooke Moresette is a Minnesota based glass artist. She works mainly with soft glass and sheet glass. Brooke started blowing glass in 2014 and holds an associates degree in Fine Art from Anoka-Ramsey Community College. Common things to see throughout her different works is the use of frit to color her pieces as she is interested in the different color reactions that can be created, in addition to making them extremely thick and solid.
Jane Sprangers Bolan is fascinated by the dynamic interplay of light and color, of reflection and refraction, that is inherent in glass. Born and raised in Wisconsin, surrounded by lakes and forests, her younger years were spent discovering the “secrets” of the birds and animals that surrounded her.
After completing degrees in zoology, ornithology, and veterinary medicine, she embarked on an exciting new journey and embraced the world of glass. In 2015, she began exploring stained glass, captivated by its many textures and colors, and its mesmerizing patterns of reflection. It did not take long for her to move onward to discover the wonders of fused glass and glass blowing. She takes delight in combining aspects of the varied glass arts into her sculptures and panels.
She is still captivated by the natural world, which affords endless inspiration for her work. Most recently, she has been struck by the tranquility, peacefulness and abundance of extraordinary life that is found undersea. So far, her scuba diving travels have taken her to multiple sites in the Caribbean and the Pacific where her encounters will shape her work for many years to come.
James Tracy started glass blowing and ceramics in 1974 at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. He continued working and showing his glass into the early 1980’s at various schools and studios exhibitions and art fairs. He changed course to working industry with occasional showing of his work till 1990 when he started showing turned wood in juried exhibitions and sales outlets. He has recently returned to glass and ceramics showing his new work influenced by his life experiences. James works in glass, ceramics, wood, and mixed media which in many cases there are small details or images to be discovered that bring the viewer into a different perspective than first impression.