This group exhibition brings together some of the most accomplished glass artists in the country with several innovative North Carolina-based artists who focus on painting and the use of diverse mediums in their work. Transparency highlights how artists use materials, forms and ideas about transparency to explore how we see and experience the world, while questioning whether art helps us to see things differently. Featuring: David Patchen, Alex Bernstein, Brent Skidmore, Mark Leputa, Linda Luise Brown, Elizabeth Ross and Chris Watts.

New work by David Patchen will feature his own intricate and vibrant murrine glass; Patchen will also exhibit innovative collaborative work with Alabama-based Mark Leputa, and in a first-ever experiment, Patchen and Toland Sand have directed each other’s processes to create works that combine the other’s style and technique.

Asheville-based Alex Bernstein will exhibit new cast and carved glass sculptures. Also Asheville-based, artist Brent Skidmore will exhibit wood and glass sculpture that combines function, form and art.

Transparency also features two-dimensional works by NC-based Linda Luise Brown and Elizabeth Ross, and NYC-based Chris Watts. Brown’s work is abstract as she blends contrasting fields of bold color and texture into her feathery translucent brush strokes, while Ross creates kaleidoscopic mandalas of natural forms covered in the vitreous droplets of morning dew. Watts, a current resident at the McColl Center for Art, experiments with transparencies between layers of silk and textiles in screened veneers of acrylic, providing the viewer with the opportunity to see herself or himself in and through the work.