Brit Micho, Curator of Exhibitions
The wave of the new year brings new work into the galleries. Mimesis: The Natural World in Glass, sits on display inviting viewers to explore contemporary glass artists who emulate the elegant beauty and fragility of nature.
Across the globe, humans have imitated the natural world through different artistic mediums, pictorial languages, and creative genres. While this practice precedes language, the earliest writing on the imitation of nature was Aristotle’s Mimesis in the 4th century BC, stating that it is fundamental to the human experience to imitate nature through art.
There is a constant dialogue in art history between objective imitation and subjective interpretation. This means that artists create both sober depictions of the observed world as well as emotional perceptions of a moment or object in nature, emphasizing its essence through creative interpretations. Glass sculptors explore both realms with a medium whose malleability, luminescence, and fragility capture the heart of the natural world.
Andrea Spencer, featured in her first U.S. museum exhibition, creates work that explores the gossamer-thin line between human nature and the natural world, personifying ancient Greek myths, poetry, shipwrecks, and folktales drawn from the sea to create delicate, life-like depictions of aquatic flora. Using her skills in flameworking, Spencer takes advantage of the transparency, fragility, and malleability inherent in glass to reflect the transient nature of her subject matter.
I was lucky enough to visit Andrea’s studio in May of last year—truly a cabinet of curiosities on Northern Ireland’s rugged Antrim Coast. Surrounding her home, she and her husband, glassblower Scott Benefield, have adapted a series of work sheds into a hot shop, a workshop for teaching, and Andrea’s flameworking studio. Her studio, not only filled with current projects of thinly curled glass tendrils, but also filled with natural specimens collected from her walks along the coast; dried seaweed, skulls of seabirds, seed pods, and egg cases foraged from rock pools and gardens serve as her muses for her work.
Both A Trace of Remorse and Silent Tangle made for this FWMoA exhibition, were in the throes of progression when I visited and touch on the same Scottish myth as inspiration: The Fair Maid’s Tresses.
Andrea shares, “At a certain time of year down at Whitepark Bay beach, I’ve found a trail of roses tangled in seaweed, washed up and deposited at intervals along the strandline [as well as] sea bird carcasses which have become tangled in wreaths of seaweed–often just a hollowed out body cavity and wings. Something about both of these things I find so poignant.”
The Fair Maid’s Tresses is a story about two sisters who have fallen in love with the same sailor. The sailor is infatuated with the older, blonde sister, not the younger, raven-haired sister. The younger sister eventually walks with her older sister on the rough rocks of the beach while the tide is low and sings her to sleep with a spell before braiding her golden hair into the seaweed. As the tide rose and she became engulfed in the sea, she transformed into a seal. Andrea continues, “The murderous sister filled with remorse throws herself off the cliff and is transformed into a black cormorant. All of these things were in my mind when I created A Trace of Remorse. I see it as a washed up wreath, echoes of a cormorant, and a life lost. The two flowers tangled within the seaweed are hellebores, my newest obsession. Hellebores, known as the winter rose, hold a significant place in mythology and [have a range of meanings from serenity and peace to scandal and madness].”
Silent Tangle and A Trace of Remorse are a continuation of Andrea’s Lost and Found series, which are mainly represented by The Shallows I, II, and III. The three pieces depict old laboratory wares with organic growth that have inhabited them, illuminating our mutuality with the earth. Each of these pieces are assembled for their showing and include multiple pieces. For instance, The Shallows I has four separate pieces: a silver base, the initial seaweed cluster, the scientific glassware, and the final touch of a floral ‘finial’. The final installation of the piece gives a “ship in a bottle” appearance, leaving the viewer to contemplate how the work was created.
Andrea Spencer, British, b. 1979. The Shallows III, flame and cold worked borosilicate glass, separator flask with silver foil technique, 2024. Loan from the artist. Images courtesy of FWMoA.
Flotsam and Jetsam was the first piece of Andrea’s work acquired by the museum. “I feel like this piece sits somewhere between specimen, ornament, and sculpture,” Andrea states, “it embodies the idea of fragments that have been found washed up on the shore line, preserving a sense of emotional residue.”
She invites viewers to reflect on debris found adrift in the sea through her clever title Flotsam and Jetsam. “Flotsam” refers to property floating on the sea (typically wreckage from a ship), and “jetsam” refers to cargo purposefully cast overboard in an emergency to avoid sinking. Andrea inverts the intended definition of these words, applying them to naturally produced debris of aquatic plant life. Posing the delicate debris like specimens in a scientific display, she renders the plant life as if they were just plucked from the sea.
If you would like to see Andrea’s work in Mimesis, the exhibition will be up until March 1st, 2026. Andrea will additionally be attending our 2nd Thursday event on February 12th for an Artist talk if you wish to speak with the artist about her work.