by Lyndal Jefferies

When people ask me what my work is about, I always reply complex systems, chaos theory and self-organisation. Little do they know I am talking about ALL the aspects of my life, not just my artwork. Dividing my time between artmaking, writing, curating and parenting involves a great deal of organisation and a little chaos. by Lyndal Jefferies

When people ask me what my work is about, I always reply complex systems, chaos theory and self-organisation. Little do they know I am talking about ALL the aspects of my life, not just my artwork. Dividing my time between artmaking, writing, curating and parenting involves a great deal of organisation and a little chaos.Image: Silk Roadseries by Jenny Smith in Crystalline World at Waiheke Art Gallery

In the last three weeks I have installed my Cymatic Symphony at NZSculpture Onshore, rebuilt the sculpture, sold two more, curated and hung Crystalline World at The Waiheke Art Gallery, polished 12 glass waterlilies and next I need to install them on 3.5m stainless steel stems in a pond at Brick Bay Sculpture Park. Meanwhile, we are building a house and I have an 18-month-old to care for. Like art and life and nature, it's all one big complex organism, growing and changing all the time.

SAG magazine wanted to know about my journey - how did I end up doing what I do? What is my work about and how do my sound sculptures relate to my glass practice and, what's more, why have I curated a third major glass exhibition at the WCAG and what is it about? A New Zealand-born, I smelt the freedom of art school in Sydney and left when I was 16 in 1989 for Sydney College of the Arts where I studied, painting, sculpture, photography and glass at an undergraduate and Post Graduate Level. I then went on to exhibit installation art around Australia and worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art In Sydney. In 1996 I received a Samstag Award, which paid for me to study for a Master of Arts degree at Goldsmiths College in London. It was there that I began experimenting with sound and water and creating Cymatic Pools. Cymatics is the science of wave vibration in matter, and was founded by a Swiss doctor - Dr Hans Jennings - in Switzerland in the 1960s. I have developed my Sound Pool Project over the past ten years, creating everything from a 15 sq metre sound pool for Sculpture in the Gulf in 2002 to a 12 pool installation with different pigments on the surface for the Physics Room Gallery in Christchurch in 2003.

It is my firm belief that no artist should ever be restrained by a singular art medium and that every art idea has its most suitable media. Therefore my ideas around complexity and nature led me to working with glass. First to make the crystalline structure of a snowflake and next to make a single cast crystal waterdroplet under vibration as part of my exhibition titled Spellbound at the Dowse Art Museum in 2004.

I did a glass refresher course at ARTSTATION in Auckland whilst working as assistant curator at the Waiheke Art Gallery. During my time at the WCAG I curated Translucence in 2002, an exhibition focusing on glass casting, and Lava in 2004, focusing on New Zealand glass blowers. After two years away on maternity leave I was invited to curate a new glass invitational exhibition for the Waiheke Art Gallery by the new director Linda Chalmers.

Combining my knowledge of contemporary New Zealand glass practice with scientific knowledge about glassmaking and global warming I came up with a curatorial brief for Crystalline World which invited artists to make new work that considered issues relating to the environment and glass. The impetus for this was the discovery by Antarctic explorers of the relationship between glass annealing and exploding Antarctic icebergs. Even more apt is the relationship between the Antarctic Iceforms in the Crystalline World exhibition created by local artist Penny Browne floating next to a glass New Zealand created from tiny glass black robin bird bones by Wellington artist Sharon Hall. All this at the same moment as Antarctic icebergs are floating up the Otago coastline!

Life and art meet at a poignant moment in time, when it is stunningly clear that glass is like ice and we can learn about nature through glass and about glass through nature. We live in a Crystalline World and the artists in the exhibition of the same title are acutely aware of this. From the transparent landscapes with stormy skies by Nicola Edwards to the delicate glass wings by Christine Cathie, the exhibition shows how glass in the hands of skilled experts can become something acutely natural and perfect. The installation titled Protection by Pate de Verre artist Diane Greenwood towers over the main gallery like a big red stop sign, the hand of Fatima begging us to stop and protect what is ours. The grenades and revolvers cast from relics found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the installation titled Caution: Live Shells by Lee Brogan remind us how fragile our world is and the tiny bone stoppered chemistry set by Phillipa Crane hints at experimentation by science and medicine throughout history.

How can one show say so much to me? In a way, the role of curator is one of making a group of works your own, through getting to know the artists and the work and giving it a framework to exist in. Writing about the work and the work of other artists gives it another life again, a life of words and descriptions; call it textual(I always wondered what that meant?). Anyway, it's the end of an article or an art column of whatever it was I set out to write on this Sunday evening as my complex life unwinds.

For more abstract ramblings about Crystalline World and insights by local artist Penny Browne and Auckland artist Jenny Smith, join us at the Waiheke Community Art Gallery this Saturday November 25 at 11am for a free curatorial introduction and artists talk.

Opening next weekend at the Red Shed Arts Collective is a group exhibition titled Xmas Gifts, the best place to buy an island made Xmas present this year. Join the artists at the opening on Saturday November 25 at 3pm at the Red Shed next to the Palm Beach Hall on Palm Road Palm Beach. Ph 09 372 9367.

If you have news or information for this column please email info@lyndaljefferies.net