Telluride Art Walk 2011: Lustre features Durango-based glass artists, 1/6

04 Jan Telluride Art Walk 2011: Lustre features Durango-based glass artists, 1/6

[click “Play” to listen to Susan’s conversation with Trefny and Bengt]

January 6, 2011. The date marks the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities’ first First Thursday Art Walk of the New Year. The popular day-long event is a chance for Telluride to flaunt its robust fine art scene. It is also a meet-and-greet for locals and guests. Galleries, stores and studios stay open late until 8 p.m.

Lustre Gallery, 171 South Pine, celebrates the season opener with a show of the work of two Durango-based glass artists, the husband and wife team of Trefny Dix and Bengt Hokanson. The artists’ reception is 5 – 8 p.m.

Since its origins in Western Asia about 5,000 years ago, glass has served two purposes: utilitarian and decorative. But not until the turn of the 20th century, when Daum, Tiffany and Lalique opened their studios, creating bravura works, did decorative glass come into its own. Still, glass objects were largely confined to the table and desk. It was not until the early 1960s that glass for art’s sake emerged with the introduction of the Studio Glass movement and glass objects, like photography, finally found their way into museums. Today, no one would blink to hear Dix and Hokanson cite painters Rothko, Gorky and (early) Matisse as influences – along with world textiles, tropical aquatic life forms and urban graffiti. No one would question the fact the couple view their blown glass vessels as sculptural forms onto which they “paint” abstract images.

“The color washes and textural patterns we make, flow across the surface creating lively, visual movement. Our color patterning is applied in such a way that each pattern is unique, like color forms in nature, no two are the same.”

Trefny Dix received a B.F.A. in sculpture at Indiana University and learned glass casting at Studio Inferno in New Orleans, LA. She has been working in glass for 16 years.

Bengt Hokanson studied anthropology and glass blowing at Tulane University. He has been working in glass for more than 20 years, with stops at Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio at Corning, Studio Inferno in New Orleans, and Urban Glass in Brooklyn, New York.

To learn more about this talented duo, click the “play” button and listen to their interview.