THE SOUL OF KRAKATAU

INTRODUCTION

With this paper we would like to introduce our work and try to get you fascinated too with glass as a material and its fifth dimension, Light.
Our work is realised for commissions, realised for our own collection, or the work is done for other artists and the glass industry and our education assignments. The title of our lecture invites you to get into the soul of glass.
Colours are a paradox: they are the light itself, and colours are not visible to the human eye. Colours do not exist ín soap bubbles, neither do they exist in rainbows, nor ín the glass and the glass paints. We don't live in the cacophonic world of colour we think we see around us. The world only consists of surfaces reflecting some parts of the light. Surfaces which we as glass painters and glass designers will create shapes on and in the glass. The sky is not blue, but we see it as blue. The soul of Krakatau is the phenomenon of red skies that we see as sunsets: in 1883 people over the whole world saw a beautiful series of sunsets caused by the dust and its reflection of the light, started by the eruption of the volcano Krakatau in Indonesia.
And this is the paradox we are working with.
The dust is the glass paint, the sky is our glass. We are making the commonplace, the ordinary, corny things of life visible by manipulating the light. We want to make this paradox perceptible.

WHAT IS GLASS?

The fascination with light, the fear of the dark, the cheerful greediness for glow and glitter is the motive for our work.
The amazement of "however is thát possible" gives the observer the time to see the changes. To be aware of the act of seeing.
The formal aspects in our triptych, colour, light and seeing, are always connected with the emotional aspects and the contents.

THE LIGHT

In the series Light for instance, not only the formal aspects of light, transparency, reflection, shine and interference play their parts, but also the symbolic colour values determine the particular content.
Amor, in pink, is not allowed to look at Psyche; he is standing in the dark and the wings of lead foil are literally blocking the light. The yellow colour in Suna is the imperial colour of the Japanese sun-goddess who lets her sunbeams fall into the cave and by doing so she awakes the spring and summer from their winter sleep. Wodan, Master of the night with his horse Slijpnir, is totally covered with lead foil; the bluish colour only comes to life when the light falls through the glass.
Inti, this South-American goddess, is the personification of the sun itself. Here the dazzlement is literally when the spectator is looking into the unworked glass scharf and into the light. The lead foil is the threatening solar eclipse: the absence of colour makes it possible to see the blacks and the whites and different transparencies.

The glass painter paints with light. He determines where the colour will come to life, where the light will fall through, where it will be reflected or absorbed. He desides whether there will be light or no light at all. These possibilities are visible in the two panels Sol & Juno; the consequence that there will be no light is taken by covering the glass totally. As a damping blanket the lead foil is laid over the stained glass. The sun and the moon, light and darkness, life and death.
Light is the protosymbol and primal power, and makes the world visible and endurable. The power of light forces respect as lightning, fire, burning sun, a beacon, a clock, violence and necessity. The natural sunlight, the never-ending movement, the kinetic motor of everlasting alternation. Light and dark; to see or not to see, to be or not to be.
The glass works with the glass artist painting on glass with light, so that the light evokes the material and image into life and recalls the illusion of something not of this world. Glass, the solidification of amorphous material, is visible in the non-matter light as a fixed wish of our fascination for glare, gloss and glitter, glow and the power of precious stones. Glass is so strong and so brittle, so eternal and so perishable, keeping up its form by tension. The tension of the material itself absorbs the aggression of shaping, processing and working. The physical tension of danger. Glass is the danger itself. Soap-bubble and diamond, eye and marble, microscope and telescope.
This light, this sun, this transparency has to be mastered, manipulated and transformed. The light has to be forced to disperse itself, to break, to be pushed back and to be absorbed. The light has to go through the glass, and as a result it will take something with it, and by doing so it will become visible. The light is the pre-condition for form and colour.
Where does the form begin and where does the light end?

GLASS AS A BORDER MATERIAL

Glass is a border material that seals off and protects, it isolates and insulates but also makes the space behind visible; with the sensation and the recollection of feeling the cold border with-your-flat-nose-against-the-window. To experience your breath and to leave your mark behind. To choose your focal point, zooming in slowly, growing conscious of time and space, of the inner and the outer space.

FENESTRA ATELIERS

Since 1974 we, Jan-Willem van Zijst and Angela van der Burght have worked in partnership with the stained-glass artist André van der Burght. In our studios, FENESTRA ATELIERS in Achel, Belgium, we design and execute stained glass windows, glass panels, and other objects. After 1984 we continued Fenestra Ateliers where Angela succeeded her father André in making concepts and designs in close harmony with me. My task is to execute the windows and glass sculptures.

CRAFTSMANSHIP=MASTERSHIP

In designing stained glass we want to go back to the medieval tradition of European stained glass windows made for the cathedrals and chapels. We prefer an expansive monumental plane representation: strong graphic lines and clear colours. The layers of glass will give these planes depth.
Craftsmanship = mastership; the trade of the medieval masters is a source of inspiration. Practising the trade of the Vitrearii or fenestrators; tradition and nostalgia demand coherence and consistent principles to govern form. We want to refute the strict division between the fine arts and the applied arts, between glass art and art, between being a glass painter, a designer or an artist. We try to mix the old with the new, we want to explore the limits, we want to formulate new meanings, contents, purposes; we want to design with old and new materials, techniques and constructions. We work with glass as a visual medium. If glass as a material restricts us, then at the same time this restriction means that the glass cannot be replaced by other materials.

FUNERAL ART

A recent development in our programme of Funeral Art is the manufacture of sepulchral art objects and the designing of memorial sites and monuments. In commission we have made portraits, memorials, tombstones and headstones and for our own collection we have made products for cremations as ornamental cinerary urns, reliquairies, grave and urn coverings and accessories. So we have restored a good ritual by an appropriate design.

TECHNIQUES

Glass can be created, made, shaped, worked and processed. It can also be moulded, fused, slumped, kiln-formed, blown or casted. Glass can be used in the shape of canes, sticks or powders; as flat sheets or in a hot mass. The glass surface can be processed and, then it will be a carrier of signs, symbols and figures. As glass painters we can paint, fuse, enamel, etch, engrave, sandblast, print and glue. Together with the glassworking and glass processing industry we can make any montage in insulation or safety glass.
The paints consist of metal oxides, silver nitrates and salt solutions. When burning at high temperatures, these paints will melt into the surface of the glass. The more modern metallics and interference-paints, enamels and the colours of the ceramic industry allow the glass painter an almost unlimited palette. Together with reflection and transparency, by mixing the colours, by the application of different layers of glass, the works gain depth and thousands of changes and constellations are possible. Next to the experience of the expressive qualities, we would like to reunite form and content; using the workshop as a laboratory; and bringing the process from an idea, a concept to a product is typified with discussions, doubts and uncertainties. Being amazed at each new discovery and possible solution.
The art, the myth, the magic rite are art as the highest form of personal and emotional expression. Not because of the freedom, but by using freedom.
Together with the glassblowing, glassworking and glass processing industry we, as designers, are the middlemen between the artists, the architects and the industry. We are attempting to exceed the accepted limits, and we want to disturb the fully automatic processes to let the industry see that new ideas and concepts are possible. And together we are developing new possibilities and products.

Since 1994 our daughter, Sunny van Zijst, has become the third member of our firm Fenestra CV. Her education in Tilburg, Prague and Utrecht in the departments of theatre design were no hindrance to dealing with glass. She is exploring the dramatic effects and singularity of glass, which has great potential as a dramatic material in the theatre as well as in daily life.

We use age-old motifs that go back in time to antiquity, ancient myths and archaic stories. The strong bond with tradition, together with the architectural enviroment, the space available, the location, the conditions of the light, the structures and aim of the building as well as the individual wishes, budget and personality of the client are the other ingredients of the puzzle which has to be solved every time, all over again.
We find the main point in our quest by asking: "what is a window?". By answering these questions: how should we fill a gap in the wall , how can we fill a gap in space, how do we catch the light, what trace will we leave behind? we always find the starting points for the designing process.
The window is the carrier of stories (myths), the attributes are objects of performing actions (rites). At all times we want to express our own version of mythological thinking; we want to dream through the myth, our myth. The words, our titles, are an opening to better understanding, and are a clue to the meanings: one will find the sense or one's own meaning through observation and memory. Only by going through this and only much later by association, interpretation and reasoning out the statement does our stained glass become clear.
Realisation is to realise and to execute your plans.

MADE IN BELGIUM

The next programme to come from our ateliers is Made in Belgium. The work we do in commission for artists. From the initial concept to the production of the final object, we handle all aspects of the supervision, realisation and installation of the work. We travel and work in factories in Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Belgium and Holland.
Because the Dutch academies educate and train their students in good artistic skills, for the more technical solutions they have to find workshops to realise their designs. Not encumbered by any knowledge of glass, glass techniques or constructions, building regulations and comsumer protection laws, they visit us with their drawings, concepts and ideas.
Fenestra will develop tests and samples, build scale models and test settings, plan the logistics and presentation to the client, architect or commissioner.

MASTER CLASSES

Finally, we have our Master classes, workshops and lectures. All over the world, we spread the word and images. We try to fascinate students with glass as a medium. So, all our knowledge will not die with us but is handed down to the new generation. In Maastricht, at the academy of fine arts, in Alden Biesen, Belgium and in Switzerland we have organised Master Classes together with the material sponsors, with 5 or 6 international Masters and sometimes more than 70 participants. In 1997 we worked as visiting-teachers at The Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and for 5 weeks we worked on the programme Glass in Architecture. For them it was a shocking experience to work on a process of thinking and reflecting on 3-D glass painting. New Master classes are coming up in combining blown glass with the flat glass in architecture.

Angela's work now consists of editing two magazines: the GLASBULLETIN for the Dutch Society of Friends of Modern Glass (with more than 1.100 glass collectors), giving Belgian and Dutch artists the chance to publish their work and the world wide magazine This Side Up!.

Paper for our lecture at the architect day at the Glass Processing Days in Tampere, Finnland in 1998