If you’re looking for respite from the balmy weather, there’s still one more week to see Ingalena Klenell and Beth Lipman’s collaboration, “Landscape,” at the Figge Art Museum, an installation made entirely of glass that portrays a winter wonderland. “Landscape” went up in February, and there is still time to see it before it comes down June 15.
“Landscape” is on loan from the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash., where Klenell and Lipman had a joint residency in 2010. Following their residency, Klenell and Lipman worked together from their respective studios in Sweden and Wisconsin to create and plan “Landscape,” which was originally one in a three-part installation called Glimmering Gone.
The traditions of landscape painting are alive and well in Lipman and Klenell’s piece. The artists drew influence from Tacoma artist Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943) — known for her plein-air paintings of the vast and mountainous terrain of the American West — and the mountain range in the background of the installation is reminiscent of her radiant mountain facades. The two artists also reference the various and sometimes-conflicting associations connected to winter: the dormant landscape signaling death; snow as a mantle of purity; and the fragility and suffering of nature as analogous to human life.
