Kari holds a degree in studio art from the University of California at Davis and has been an exhibiting artist and educator for over twenty-five years. Collected internationally, Kari’s works are in private, corporate and embassy collections. Kari is the artist/owner of Kari Minnick Art Glass Studio, LLC, located in the heart of the Arts & Entertainment district in Silver Spring, MD. A dynamic educator, Kari teaches her signature courses throughout the United States and in her Maryland studio.
My life and my work are a study of contrasts: order and chaos, thick and thin, questioning and acceptance. Using rich surfaces and layers of glass, I contrast fleshy realism with abstraction. One series builds on another. Immediacy and restraint, delicacy and directness, confusion and clarity- I balance these contrasts personally and artistically.
Still life elements nod to traditional drawing and painting; often insinuating social groupings, relationships and their consequences. Apples are a potent symbol. They are parts of paradise, apples of knowledge containing mysteries, answers and code. They may represent temptation and perhaps poisonous implications. Many works contain drawings of eggs. Eggs turn up in my work during times of personal challenge and growth. Compelling and complicated, eggs are full of potential yet extremely vulnerable. A deceptively simple form, eggs are challenging to draw. I see these elements as objects of incredible beauty, figurative and voluptuous.
These painterly works are glass “collages” combining bold composition, sensitive drawings, and unbridled edges. I use flame-worked linear elements and images drawn directly into glass powders. The resulting images are reminiscent of gesture drawings-the essence of my artwork regardless of media or technique. Light is an important consideration. I use transparency and opacity within a piece, choosing where light is allowed to come and go. This unique form of painterly expression in glass breaks new ground artistically yet retains my core aesthetic concerns of expressive use of line, and the transmission of light.
The Circular Logic series continues with groups of circular forms that investigate a karmic dilemma. Titled, “What Goes Around Comes Around…”, this ever evolving series includes the repetition of forms and text, references to connections made, broken, or contiguous. There is a personal catharsis in the repetition of hand written text and quick drawings, as if repeating a mantra to arrive at an answer or understanding.
Deconstructing Fairy Tales: This series confronts the reality of life situations versus the myths we grow up with and the outcomes we expect. In facing and overcoming personal challenges, we may have to redefine our notions of “happily ever after” and choose an alternate route of getting there. These pieces are composed with text and contrast traditional calligraphy with graffiti-like scrawl.
Website
http://www.kariminnick.com
