Opening tonight at the IMA: Anna Skibska

Opeing at 5pm tonight!

Emily Reed reports an exciting new show at the IMA, across from The Market Chef:

The exhibition, “Anna, Anna Skibska”, March 31-June 1, opens at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art with an evening reception March 31. Skibska, who describes herself as a visual storyteller, is creating site specific work for the Museum on “A” Street in Friday Harbor.

She is separated from traditional glass blowers and flameworkers by her unorthodox method of heating, stretching and fusing glass to create forms which are largely comprised of space. The luminous qualities of glass threads, twisted and bent, define rhythmic, organic and architectural forms which appear to move with shifting light and shadow.

She states, “I like to wrap space, embrace time and trap light . . .” Collages in the exhibit continue Skibska’s storytelling.

Skibska  is a recognized artist in the United States, Japan and Europe where she has created public installations in Paris and Athens. She studied architecture and fine arts, earning her diploma in 1984 at the Academy of Art  in Wroclaw, Poland, where she became an instructor. The publication of her unique work in the 1988 New Glass Review of international artists brought her recognition in the United States and enabled her to leave communist Poland to be an instructor for a summer at the Pilchuck School of Glass in Stanwood.

In 1996 she returned to Seattle where her exhibits include the Seattle and Bellevue Art Museums and the William Traver Gallery. Among her awards and honors are the 2010 PONCHO Artist of the Year Award in Seattle, the Espy Foundation Grant and naming of the Anna Skibska Flameworking Studio at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle. Skibska has public installations in Seattle as well as in Arizona, Illinois, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Dan Kany states: Skibska’s matrix fascinates. She produces her pieces by using a torch to stretch and bend slender glass canes into delicate sculptures. The style immediately draws natural forms to mind—spider webs, crystals, honeycombs, and so on—but with Skibska’s spiritedly romantic mind and academic education, the matrices grow into forms that mingle poetically and thoughtfully with the world.”

Museum: 232 “A” Street above the ferry lanes. 370-0035. www.sjima.org

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