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Reflect (2017) exemplifies Cummings’ practise of combining glass with metal and other materials in multiple processes – here glass, copper, brass and pewter – giving rise to painterly development of surface and interior qualities of transparency and opacity, colour and texture. Light dwells on revealed and revealing detail, each moment occluding its origins in the slow alchemical exposition of ideas, materials and processes. Slump-casting, casting, cutting and polishing techniques draw and tease to the surface an ambiguous array of geological, celestial and imaginal depths. Its one-word title, ‘Reflect’, might be an English verb or noun, but has the weight of a gentle imperative. Its etymology invokes light as an optical or mental phenomenon, meaning literally ‘to bring back’ turning outwards or inwards through optics or meditation.
The complexity of this artefact reflects upon glass as a kiln-formed fine art medium as laboured, painstaking, intractable and unpredictable. And capable of happy accidents and extraordinary transformations:
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As electric kilns and techniques matured, glass became a medium artists could work with and control within their personal studios.
Traditional kilns are heated with wood or charcoal. Electric kilns are heated with fuels including kerosene or oil. With built in temperature dials, electric kilns could be controlled with utmost precision which resulted in the advancement of glass production. This development challenged the hundred years old notion that glass-blowing was the main method for producing glass art.
In other words, as a direct result of Keith Cummings’ experimentation with kiln cast glass, the thousand year old British glass tradition was finally given the space to evolve. Kiln work, glass blowing, hot working, glass rods and pressed glass are but a few methods artists use to express themselves. With so many options, technical limitations were no longer the focus, making way for material and ideology. This redefined glass art and played a decisive role in the evolution of contemporary British glass art.
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