CARISSA BAKTAY
Carissa working on the Soft Machine series - photo by Patricia Sichmanova
Carissa Baktay is a sculptor from Calgary, Alberta, currently working between Canada and Iceland. Working with glass since 2008, Carissa earned a BFA in Glass from the Alberta College of Art & Design, studied at The Rhode Island School of Design and received her Master in Glass Art and Science from VICARTE Research Unit in Portugal.
She has participated in Snow and Ice sculpting residencies in Norway, was accepted to the 2011/2012 Living Arts Center Fellowship in Glass, and has attended multiple residencies in Iceland, Finland and Norway. Most recently she has been recognized through awards and scholarships from The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and The Canada Council for the Arts.
Interview by Abby Provenzano
When did art begin to be a prime form of expression for you? Do you come from an artistic family background, or was art and sculpture something you felt naturally drawn to on your own?
I was always an artist. Collecting, looking deeply, nurturing different things I would find outside has been a part of my daily routine since I can remember. Bingo dabber paintings in my grandma’s living room were some of my first masterpieces. My parents are creatives in their own rights, growing gardens and crocheting blankets, and they have always supported my artistic ambitions.
Your artistic work, projects, and education have brought you all over the world — Canada, Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Portugal, to name a few places — how does your environment and surrounding landscape work to influence and shape your art and process?
Northern countries and colder climates have always inspired me. I find peace in the stillness of snow and ice: the muffled sounds, monochromatic landscape, the contrast between light and darkness. I think it allows me more focus and to look closer and feel deeper with less stimulation.
My focus and processes change with each new environment that I’m in, based on my surroundings and available materials and facilities. My aptitude for hand work allows me to adapt and explore local material and techniques. Traveling has been such an exceptional opportunity to be adaptive and open to being vulnerable and new, and to really look and feel differently. With every new place there is new color, light, sounds and smells that go along with it that provide new inspiration and opportunity to relinquish control and embrace diversity.
What is the artistic process like for you? How would you describe a typical day in your studio or working on a project?
I try to be in my “studio” at one in the afternoon every day, but my idea of a studio is fluid — it could be the glass work shop, sitting at the sewing machine, research at my computer or walking in nature. For me, studio is about intention.
So much of my work is process-centric, and I often spend hours upon hours in meditative, repetitive acts — placing hair strand by strand, taking hundreds of gathers from the furnace to spin glass fiber, pouring thousands of replicas from a mold. Through these contemplative hours where my movements become machine like, I allow for space to feel the idea/object and welcome play and surprise in the final outcome. I give myself license to play freely and flow between ideas, depending on what I am working on and what sort of fun material distractions I can find for myself.
Physical movement is a major part of my artistic expression and I leave space for it throughout the day either inside as part of my dance practice or outside in nature where I think some of my best thoughts. Moving my body without expectation, embracing the flow and noticing subtle feelings and thoughts is an important part of my process.
Can you speak to your experimentation with different mediums, and what drew you to working with glass/sculpture specifically?
I started taking glassblowing classes in university after my father watched a PBS special on it and convinced me to try. I was met with equal parts excitement and frustration, and I don’t think that has changed much in the last thirteen years. I keep returning to glass because of so many of its material properties. It is infinitely transformable, shiny and eye catching at the same time [it is] invisible and overlooked. There are so many techniques and processes for manipulating the material and I enjoy working in ways that initially seem impossible or completely change how the material is recognized.
I feel most connected to myself, the world, when I’m touching things, inspecting them, looking deeply and contemplating, and that doesn’t have any material restriction. Feeling and molding materials leads me to another material through shared process, shared tools, shared aesthetics. The materials I am exploring at any given time also reflect my locale through new learning and shared knowledge as well as availability. In Portugal I had the opportunity to explore works in porcelain and local beeswax, and in Iceland I have been experimenting with light and reflection, stone and horse hair.
Periphery is one of your projects that utilizes reflections and the natural world in various cut pieces of glass — what was the inspiration behind this work, and what ideas, messages, emotions, etc. do you associate with these art pieces?
Periphery was originally a series of drawings made while traveling through Iceland in the winter. The stark contrast of black and white mountain and stone in the windswept snow became repeated actions and shapes that have been explored in drawing, print, embroidery, glass, and mirror mixed with photography.
I imagined these pieces in a mirror when I first opened my studio in Iceland, during feelings of estrangement as an new comer to a foreign (very foreign) land. This work attempts to make present a place for my own reflection within this landscape in a changed and altered state. Created in recycled glass and colored mirror, it blurs borders by presenting a playful relationship to the psychological, natural and man made landscape. The glass objects in nature are reminiscent of puddles and ponds, but also reflections of something larger, something more intangible such as borders of countries, flowing lines between land and water.
This work is about the dissolution of borders, the abstraction of space, and finding my place within. Periphery unfolds over thresholds both physical and imaginary and blurs the lines between reflection and refraction, surface and volume, interior and exterior.
Images of the Periphery series
Soft Machine is another intriguing project of yours, and your image also appears in this series, an artist at work. Could you elaborate on this project and your role within it?
Soft Machine is influenced by Icelandic wool processing and involves 3D rendering, makeshift machinery and glass making as part of my deconstruction/construction process. The first time I saw glass thread pulled my mind went wild imagining a cosmos of possibilities that have held my interest since. The contrast between the hard sharpness of glass and the welcoming softness and flexibility of fiber is explored in these pieces and much of my work in horse hair as well.
I started thinking about the flexibility of glass and my own surprise and pleasure in its physical transformation to something nearly unrecognizable — when the material shifted to plastic, or nylon thread or fabric. I began building different makeshift machines to manipulate the process and try to control the final shape of something that was at the brink of its own material capabilities. After hours of the repetitive, machine-like process of gathering from the furnace and winding around a spinning structure, the built up forms are the result of a process that begins intuitively by selecting raw materials, and then takes shape through the repetition of innumerable precise actions forming a process. This line of exploration started the deconstruction of glass as I had previously understood it.
This work marked a moment in my glass practice where I began utilizing glass’s materiality and by approximation its immateriality formally, and not just because it was the craft medium I am trained in. Texture, line and weight are tools used to embody personal narratives. I began documenting the creation of these pieces because they are dynamic and fascinating in their formation and evolution — the development process as important as the final object.
Images of the Soft Machine series - photos by Martin E. Koch
Soft Machine and other works introduce the use of video/life capture and incorporating a visual of your artistic process — what has your experience been like in using technology within art? When did you first start using technology in this way in your projects?
Working with video and 3D modeling has been a learning opportunity for me. Much of my work is based so much in the process, which may or may not be expressed in the finished object, so embracing video and photography as part of my storytelling allows me to show another aspect of my practice. I started including video as a way to document and express the life span of my objects when I was working on Soft Machine, and that lead to the manipulation of video separate from the objects as a body double or stand-in for their materiality.
So much of the creative work we see now, especially since the pandemic, is seen only digitally, and I think that images and objects now more than ever need to also be understood through virtual media. The interesting part for myself as someone who is really connected to the body, the hand, and the physicality of objects, is to connect the two and work with technology that presents an absence of object in a dynamic and visceral manner while still being true to the essence of the physical object.
Are there other artists and creators who have served as influences, guides, and inspirations for your own artistic career?
Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Louise Bourgeois. I love fearless female artists and am really inspired by these persistent women’s prolific careers and challenging bodies of work. It inspires me to keep working and challenging myself by being true to my deepest thoughts, however they may be received by the current artistic environment. I am drawn to artists that have a varied and dynamic career that takes on many forms, techniques, and processes.
Much of your work embodies the idea of finding beauty and intrigue in natural, industrial, everyday, and/or simple objects; your work has been described as an exploration of the physical and natural world with emotive imagination and care. How would you define your own art and what you strive to create?
I want to pull people in, just like I get pulled in, to all sorts of materials and experiences, natural phenomena, sights and smells through beauty and visual interest that then create a deeper narrative. I feel deeply and express my honesty through my work in the hope that it invokes honest feelings for someone else, whatever those may be. I am not just drawn to beautiful moments, but also find comfort in the uncomfortable or ugly, objects that border beautiful and mundane, and I strive to create space for these same moments in questioning our surroundings and the value in them.
Something that has become increasingly important in my practice over the last few years, and ties into my relationship to location and changes in available materials as well as changes in landscape, is my emphasis on ecological responsibility as a maker. I want to live gracefully and lightly with our planet and this philosophy has transformed my current studio practice through the materials I use and how I use them. Being resourceful and open to play has helped me move past material hang-ups and allowed me to create in a way that supports my practice and lifestyle.
sweetC design was established in 2012 [as] an alternate practice to your conceptual body of work, allowing for the creation of easily accessible glass objects with beautiful design. What are your reflections here on wearable art — such as in fashion, jewelry, and other glass pieces — and what it can achieve? How does sweetC design encapsulate the feeling and artistic endeavor of your other work, and what inspired you to establish it?
Speaking honestly, I created sweetC in order to sustain my artistic body of work that involves creating objects that are not traditionally sellable. I use recycled and locally sourced materials to create objects that I want for myself, and then I make them in small batches for other people to enjoy. I feel a responsibility as a maker towards an earth-centric mode of creation and have adapted my studio practice to support this philosophy. More than ever I think it is time to move towards praising well made, sustainable objects that stand the test of time and were created through earth-centric modes where feeling the makers touch adds value to the object. This is something that I maintain in my commercial line of work while creating wearable or functional objects that relate to body, nature and the landscape.
I am drawn to objects that blur the line between art and the commonplace and that support artists by allowing their work seen by a broader audience (art/craft, fashion/art, design/craft). I think these marriages allow people who don’t call themselves artists to enjoy the dance that creatives move in between art and life. I don’t think in terms of distinctions — art, craft, fashion, design — I believe objects and experiences can live in the flow between any of those systems.
Are there any particular projects or moments in your artistic career that you’d like to speak to?
Moving to Portugal was a big game changer both for my studio practice and for my personal growth. Before 2016 I was working almost singularly in blown glass, and moving to Portugal provided a change in scenery and raw material that changed the way I looked at art, material, and life in general. I grew immensely as a person and a maker because I was allowed time and space to be honest with my own artistic voice and to start from the ground up with new materials, processes and perspective. I developed a playfulness and an adaptiveness that still facilitates and nourishes me today.
In the last two years I have been honored with a number of grants that have allowed me to continue working experimentally in my practice. I am especially thankful to the Canada Council for the Arts and The Alberta foundation for the Arts for their continued support.
What has your experience as an artist during quarantine and the current pandemic been like? How have the current times changed your work and/or artistic approach?
I spend a lot of time alone in my studio in general, which hasn’t changed much in the recent months, but this year has been a great opportunity to push myself to create quicker, more playful sketch like projects. There is something cathartic in abandoning the idea one places on themselves of what work should look like, and embracing the vulnerability of play for its own sake.
Do you have any upcoming projects or endeavors we should be on the lookout for? What are you currently working on?
Yes! I have been locked down in my studio playing with hair! I have been playing with horsehair since opening a studio in Iceland when I started exploring horsehair as a material proxy for glass thread. In 2021 I will present a solo exhibition at The Manitoba Craft Council of strange and beautiful creations in hair, glass and mixed organic materials. I am also super excited to present a solo show at the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark in 2021, which will present a look into my artist studio and the evolution of Soft Machine. It will involve glass threads, rudimentary machines, video and industrially processed glass.
Carissa wearing one of her recent horsehair masks - photo by Julya Hajnoczky
