Sometimes people think of Saskatchewan as “in the middle of nowhere.”
Wherever people live, the place they consider home is where they’ve learned almost everything about life from family members, neighbours, and friends. To them, that place is like the center of the universe. To my mother and her brothers and sisters, for example, Colonsay, Saskatchewan was the center of the universe.
Wherever you are from, big or small, it is the center of your universe. it is not “in the middle of nowhere.” It is actually “the middle of everywhere.”
We in Saskatchewan, whether from Treaty Territory 2, 4, 16 or 10, or from Métis Homeland, know our province actually is The Middle of Everywhere.
I’ve tried to depict scenes from The Middle of Everywhere which you may recognize as places you have been. I do this by taking pieces of glass which I think represent colours or patterns of fields, sky, crops, or water, cut them up and put the pieces together to make a picture out of glass. I then put the glass in one of my glass kilns and heat it up to the range of 1300-1450°F. This fuses the glass together as one piece.
Some of the pieces are abstract, others fairly close to realistic, and some are in between.
When you work with glass, your kiln is your partner. Some guess work is involved as to how the heat will interact with the glass, and whether you will get the picture you’re trying to create. You are not sure what the piece is going to look like when you open up the kiln after requiring it to be closed during the approximately 30 hour fusing process.
I am grateful to the Art Gallery of Outlook for allowing me to present my first solo show.
Enjoy your time in The Middle of Everywhere!
Eric Cline*