Awarded biennially in alternate years to the FUSE Glass Prize, the FUSE Glass Artist Residency aims to create significant opportunities for established, mid-career artists working in glass. Valued at more than $20,000 the residency provides studio access in JamFactory’s Glass studio and a solo exhibition at Historic House Museum and Garden, Carrick Hill.
Marcel Hoogstad Hay is the recipient of the 2023 FUSE Glass Artist Residency.
For this exhibition Sublime Scales, Hoogstad Hay has created a body of work that addresses how we situate ourselves in the world as we move through it. Working with traditional Venetian glass cane techniques he creates complex, gestural patterns. These lines of cane allude to paths traversed and how physical forces disrupt and distort these paths. They reference the nature of things when viewed at a quantum scale, but also topography and how we might picture ourselves moving across the Earth’s surface.
It is in the nature of these often unseen scales, the unfathomability of the astronomical and the complexity of the quantum, that Hoogstad Hay finds a sense of awe. Through these works he explores perceptual elements, breaking down our established understanding of the physical world. The reflective surfaces and absorbing interiors of these objects invite the viewer to engage with the work, and to contemplate the self and our place in the universe.