Artist’s Work Takes Autobiographical Turn

Shirley Glass doesn’t see much separation between her art and her life. Speaking at the Rancho Santiago College Art Forum on Monday, she recalled that when she was younger, “the pencil was an extension of my hand.” She carried one everywhere she went--the theater, restaurants--every day for two years, not just to learn how to draw but also to learn the subjects, and to move beyond them. To grow.

“I started with apples, pears and flowers.”

Later at UCLA extension, where she studied for seven years starting in 1973, she was painting landscapes, still life and designs.

“I repeated them over and over, until I was comfortable with the subjects,” she said.

The mastery of drawing was a key that unlocked a deeper world, she continued, one of relationships, identities, fear, pleasure and pain. Portraiture marked the beginning of this exploration. Later came assemblage.

Glass’ early portraits are rich tapestries of lavish texture and color that focus on her main inspiration at the time, the human figure. She painted anyone who would sit for her; in one series she portrayed her mother in a “whole history in images of her ill-health and depression.”

“At that time, my mom needed personal care,” she said. “I would bring her to my house and use her as my model because she primarily sat in such a depressed state. I painted portrait after portrait of her in oil and in pencil, in the den, the living room and the garden. It was a great union. She began liking what I did of her. It became a real healing for both my mom and myself.”

In 1980, Glass’ work took a turn into an even more personal realm.

“When I started making assemblages, I didn’t know I was working through my dreams and childhood by using objects to paint, describe and tell my story,” she said.

The assemblage pieces began as collections of found objects--”streets and trash bins, became my treasure chests,” she said. One piece, “Always a Bride Never a Bridesmaid,” combined twigs, rings, dolls that were a wedding gift, and a headless bridesmaid into Glass’ comment on her own life as a young bride.

Her “Massacre 1” is also autobiographical. A plaster-of-Paris figure set inside a black coffin-like container and surrounded by packing foam and tiny lights, it “tells of my oppression as a child, and it comes from a very deep place inside of me. It is strictly for myself, but my art is like all art: It communicates a universality as well.”

Glass describes herself as a “storyteller. My art is about encountering and overcoming things inside myself. For me, the art deals with the process of life. I’m not pushing under the rug the pain I’ve experienced growing up, or the pain I feel now. For me, the art is working through it.”