Artist Jennifer Glass Infuses Brevard Nature Into Visual Magic
Jennifer Glass can often be spotted along Brevard County shorelines, bucket in hand, as she scoops water that the Indialantic artist combines with a vintage photo process to create visual magic on the vast canvases she favors.
Pinning Glass to a favorite medium is impossible, for the artist is adept with many. Her latest interest has veered her to magnum-scale cyanotypes, a process that may evoke memories of Edwardian-era matrons in elaborate hats because, as one of the oldest photographic printing processes, it was popular in photography of that period.
Before the advent of photocopiers and computers, architectural blueprints were also achieved through cyanotype. Jennifer’s creative efforts enlist the aid of Mother Nature in a collaborative process for her blueprints from nature. Mixing scary sounding chemicals with names like ferric ammonium citrate with water from the Indian River or the beaches — and exposing the combination to sunlight — results in prints of a brilliant Prussian Blue hue that reveal a reverse of the flowers, palm fronds or the Victorian gown fiber that Glass arranges on the photosensitive canvases she typically “develops” on her driveway. Flower petals transform into birds eager to fly away from the restraints of the canvas. Palm fronds become road maps of the artist’s life path.
She insists water from different parts of the county has its own character.
“It depends on the location,” she said. “The salts react with the chemicals and crystallize to create patterns.”
Water participates actively as Jennifer gives it carte blanche to travel over the canvas. The wind that may sweep across the blue-stained driveway may shift the droplets hither and yon, or Glass may hang up the work and let the water drip down the work. It’s all part of the plan.
“Something magical happens when I let go of control and let nature intervene,” she said.
STORYBOOK CHILDHOOD
Being the daughter of a FLORIDA TODAY editor Kent Freeland during the newspaper’s heydays in the 1970s afforded Glass a storied childhood that sparked her interest in both photography and nature.
The family home, situated under the canopy of trees that is the hallmark of Merritt Island’s South Tropical Trail neighborhoods, gave Jennifer easy access to Brevard’s natural wonders.
“I grew up surrounded by a lush landscape with golden tropical light illuminating orange groves and mangroves,” the artist noted.
“When I was a child, my father would often bring me to the paper to spend the afternoon with him. He brought me to the photo department darkroom and introduced me to the photojournalists. I was instantly fascinated. I spent long afternoons with them, absorbing their processes in film developing and printing. I’d even occasionally accompany them on jobs. I’m convinced the years spent with those guys was the gate to my love of capturing the people and places of my surroundings.”
By the time she entered Merritt Island High School, Glass was living and breathing photography.
“I lived in the photo studio and even then I was breaking all the rules, mixing the chemistry in different ways to obtain different results,” she said.
Her grandfather, Kansas’ Secretary of Agriculture for three decades, also helped shape her aesthetics.
“He taught me firsthand about our symbiotic relationship with our environment, how our landscape shapes us,” she said.
After college, Glass worked as an environmental lobbyist, working on Everglades restoration legislation that pitted her against Big Sugar.
“This work provided the impetus for turning my camera on my surrounding environment,” she said.
The arrival of her first child helped to further crystallize the artist’s goals.
“I began focusing my time on my family and creating art,” she said. “Before long, I’d created a huge body of work and was asked to do a 90-image retrospective at a museum. This was the catalyst for art becoming my full-time work.”
In addition to the cyanotypes, Glass excels in portrait photography, even though she only accepts a few commissions each year.
Although the camera she favors is an antique Deardorff large format camera from the turn of the century, her portraiture is cutting-edge and intense. In her series of large-scale monochromatic images, trees and palms from around the world are the sentinels of brooding landscapes that recall French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The multi-faceted artist also works in oils and acrylics, often favoring an abstract style that is breezy and very unlike her photographic imagery.
WORLD-RENOWNED COLLECTORS
After three decades documenting life and landscapes, Glass has amassed an impressive and diverse number of collectors, including Sir Elton John, Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank and American neo-futuristic architect and real estate developer John Portman, as well as upscale commercial collectors such as Ritz Carlton Hotels Worldwide, Canyon Ranch, Atlantis Bahamas, Four Seasons Hotels and St. Regis Hotels, among many others.
She has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in Atlanta and New York City. Locally, her works have been on display at the Foosaner Art Museum and in the Port’s Exploration Tower.
When not intent on permanently dyeing her driveway blue with her cyanotypes, Jennifer is at home in her downtown Melbourne studio, which is open by appointment.
Andrew Roman, who along with Steven Braun in Atlanta, owns the architecture, design and research firm BROSROMANBRAUN in Indialantic, is a Glass fan.
“My wife, Angie, and I collect what we love and it’s interesting to see how her pieces fall into our life representing different milestones,” he said. “Many of my friends from architecture school love her work. Her work has so many layers of scientific process behind it, you can’t help but get drawn towards it.”
Roman has known Glass since elementary school and, like her, lived in far-flung locations like Shanghai, where he helped build up the leading architecture and design firm of Neri&Hu Design and Research, before returning home to Brevard. He is currently working with Glass to translate her images into the medium of textiles.
Fellow collector Jill Hoover sees childhood memories through the artist’s works, but ultimately, she collects Glass works for a very simple reason.
“I adore her style,” she said.
For inquiries, contact Jennifer Glass at 305-321-9805 or visit jenniferglassartist.com.
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