Glass Artist Leads Free Talk on May 11

MIDDLEFIELD—Terry L. H. Slade, Hartwick College professor of art emeritus and a glass artist renowned for his dramatic, large-scale installations in glass and other materials, will present a free Artist’s Talk on Thursday, May 11 at 5 p.m. at the Art Garage, 689 Beaver Meadow Road. Slade’s work featured in the current two-person exhibition, titled “Color. Immersion. Explosion,” offers an intimate look at mesmerizing glass sculptures that include a grove of life-size glass figurative panels and dramatic small drawings.

The main gallery will also be open to view the brightly painted suspended sculptures by visionary self-taught artist Louis Sherry. Light refreshments will be served. The exhibition will run through Saturday, May 20. The Art Garage is open Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and daily by appointment with a text or call to (315) 941-9607.

Slade’s colorful works at the Art Garage explore the relationship between humans and the natural world.

He noted, “Bodies nestled in the landscape once signified humans living together [in harmony] with nature, but now the body is pierced by inexplicable shards revealing how little we as people have respected and lived in a symbiotic relationship with the Earth.”

Some figures are ghost-like, “as though shattered by the much larger things that human beings now have to worry about.” The work also addresses Slade’s concerns about the pandemic and the microscopic dangers in today’s world. 

Slade lives in Schenevus with his wife, the art historian and scholar Fiona DeJardin. He is a retired Hartwick College professor of art and sculptor in residence. He grew up in Nebraska: its vastness and the vulnerability of the land have influenced his thinking about Earth. For more than 20 years, he has also researched ancient monuments, stone circles, and burial chambers in the British Isles and Brittany, and has produced many drawings, cast bronze sculptures, and installations in wood and mixed media. 

Slade shows his work frequently, including at the Albany Airport (2019), where he exhibited “Orbit,” an installation of glass and drawings. In 2016, he created a commissioned piece, “Dreams and Apparitions,” for Munson (Utica), subtitled, “A Mantra for the Survival of the Earth.” He has also exhibited at Community Arts Network of Oneonta, Stone Quarry Art Park in Cazenovia and The Smithy, where he will be showcasing a large body of work this summer in an evolving solo exhibition in the Third Floor Gallery. His work is in many public and private collections in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

For more information, contact the Art Garage at leartgarage@gmail.com or (607) 547-5327.