The Documenta Project by Mary Van Cline at the Chicago International Sculptural Objects and Art Fair in 2017.
Mary Van Cline is a Seattle-based artist working in glass and mixed media. She has received much attention for her sculpture that combines hot and cold glass processes, cast glass elements, photo-sensitized glass, and her haunting and enigmatic photographs. Van Cline’s most recent project, which began in 2017, is an ongoing series of nearly life-size portrait photographs that she calls the Documenta Project. The Documenta Project is meant to capture, preserve, and make visible the personalities – including artists, collectors, curators, critics, suppliers, and gallerists – who have created an international and close-knit community around the practice, teaching, marketing, and collecting of contemporary studio glass. The Documenta portraits, captured on black and white film using a Hasselblad camera and a large-format digital Phase One camera from Denmark, are true collaborations between Van Cline and her subjects, who she almost always knows well. A project that Van Cline hopes to continue into the next decade, her photographs are notable for their honesty, humor, and grace. For more information, https://urbanglass.org/glass/the-documenta-project.
By Tina Oldknow
Independent curator currently
(Previously chief curator of Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass for years)
My portrait by Mary Van Cline