Shadow Dance
“Shadow Dance #1” 1988, silver gelatin print, 16” x 20”
Artist’s Statement: Shadow Dance
The Shadow Dance series was taken over a period of years adjacent to a rock cliff wall on the banks of the Snake River in Oregon. The purpose of the work is to capture in a contemporary context the atmosphere of mystery and the supernatural characteristic of Upper Paleolithic cave art and pre-Columbian pictographs and petroglyphs representing human and animal forms. Knowing the artistic traditions of the Cro-Magnon cultures of Europe and the tribal peoples of the Americas are related through history and similar in form, I have attempted to recreate the essence of the visual, aesthetic and emotional experience of our ancestors with camera and film. Some images incorporate contemporary scenes in the recognition that fire, darkness, and shadows stir our imaginations and serve to enhance and animate our illusions as they inspired the awe and excitement of those before us, even though the context has changed.
Quotes from Reviews of the "Shadow Dance" Series:
“Shadows aren’t something to be afraid of,” Glenda says. “They are to be played with! My goal [in this series] was to accent human commonality and shared tribal origins.” Both are evident in the indeterminate forms, representing all people and all races.
Arches, Tacoma, Washington, Cathy Tollefson, 2004
And yet, the same elemental power and mystery infuses both territories [the Southwest and the Northwest], whether reflected in abstracted landscapes such as Georgia O'Keeffe's “Black Place” series or Tacoma photographer Glenda Guilmet's “Shadow Dance No. 78.”
News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington, Keith Raether, 1995
The perspectives and messages of Guilmet's art hold great insight.
Spectator, Seattle University, Donald L. Mabbott, 1994
Three photographs in the Shadow Dancing series by Glenda Guilmet of Tacoma evince ample evidence of creativity. . . . Who are they [the shadows of figures]? Are they two-dimensional (as are racial stereotypes) or are they three-dimensional, real people? They may be caught in acts of spiritual meditation or temporal love, of aggression and conflict. The figures caught against the grainy rock walls are hieroglyphic -- hence ancient -- but they also are Natives of this land now.
Reflex, Seattle, Washington, Mayumi Tsutakawa, 1993
Guilmet lines people up in front of half-lit rocky cliffs and captures only their most ephemeral reflections -- dancing patterns of black and white that slowly resolve into leaping human-animal shapes, some with arms held up like horns or antlers. Guilmet's phantasmic visions are modest but rich in evocation, calling up the whole history of human wonder -- from Altamira to North American pictographs to Plato's cave -- at the same time suggesting a thoroughly contemporary skepticism about photography's capacity to capture the facts.
Seattle Weekly, Seattle, Washington, Lyn Smallwood, 1993
Such archetypal images using modern techniques speak to the tribal heritage of us all.
The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington, Carole Beers, 1993
The works of Glenda Guilmet are widely known and deserve their popularity. The “Shadow Dance” series is an attempt to portray a certain spirit of commonality, of mutual understanding between humans.
Russian Morning, Vladivostok, Russia, 1992
The shadow has become an obsession in her work, which by every indication is inseparable from her life. . . .”Shadow Dance” images project the essence of primal human links with nature.
Morning News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington, Keith Raether, 1990
Glenda J. Guilmet's “Shadow Dance” series has a primitive force, evocative of early cave drawings.
Northwest Ethnic News, Seattle, Washington, Charles E. Rynd. 1989
Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity
"Sol de Jayuya" 2000, oil/canvas, 47" x 42.5"
Artist’s Statement: Womenscapes
I first started developing my "Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity" series in the late 1980's. I displayed many of the images in this ongoing project at my solo exhibion of the same title at the Daybreak Star Art Gallery in Seattle, WA in 2005. I was given "Hot Ticket" by the Seattle Times for the best visual arts exhibition in the Northwest region.
The oil and acrylic paintings in my newest mixed-media series, Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity, blend images of women with florals and landscapes. The beauty of nature and feminine nature are merged as one; continuity between womenkind and the world. Five of these oil/canvas images emerged after a trip to the Rio Camuy Caves in the highlands of Puerto Rico where I was on a quest to understand more fully my Taino Indian heritage; Sol de Jayuya, Attabeira Calls the Waters Home, Attabeira Seeks the Sunlight, and Attabeira Makes the Flowers Grow. I combined images of Attabeira, the water spirit in Taino Indian creation mythology, with flowers and island landscapes. Some of my 2005 additions to the Womenscapes series blend high-tech materials with sand, rock, shell, and other organic and inorganic substances found in nature. I try to weave a delicate fabric of plastic torsos and landscape backgrounds. I try to create continuity between images of womenkind and the environment in these works as well. These mixed-media works range from petroglyphic and pictographic images of pre-Columbian times to the plastic-derived figurative forms of the post-modern era. A few of my Womenscapes works are individual figurative female shapes and forms.
Quotes from Reviews of “Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity” Series:
Jacob Lawrence once advised her to concentrate on shape and form. Glenda Guilmet listened. Her new exhibit at Daybreak Star Art Gallery, “Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity,” is all about shape and form, blending images of women’s bodies with florals and landscapes to, as she puts it, “provoke an emotional response from men as well as women” In “Womenscapes” Guilmet, like a magpie, collects and employs all kinds of materials, from oil and acrylic paint to buttons and plastic female figurative forms salvaged from COSTCO. Hi-tech plastics meet sand, rock and shell. If Guilmet’s show explores the changing cultural contexts for looking at women’s bodies, from Pre-Columbian to postmodern, it also reminds us that some things are constant. “Betty-Boop, in shape, was Pre-Columbian, by the way,” the 47-year-old artist laughs. “Womenscapes” is no feminist manifesto; it’s about the act of seeing and our reactions to what we see. One works sends up the Hollywood exploitation of the female form, and yet, “Yes, women’s bodies are used to sell,” Guilmet says. “But women’s bodies are beautiful.”Four of Guilmet’s images – sunbursts of women and flowers and island landscapes – came after she traveled to the Rio Camuy Caves in Puerto Rico while on a quest to explore her Taino Indian heritage.Guilmet . . . brings a sense of play to her work. . . “Womenscapes” raises more questions than it needs to answer. Which is the point.
Guilmet, who has won a ton of awards and recognition, aims to challenge and surprise. Her works are enigmatic jets of intensity. If the viewer goes away with more questions than answers, she feels she’s done her work. “I evoke a conversation,” she says.
The nature of reality might be slippery, but Guilmet is dead sure about some things: “We are shape and form.”
Queen Anne News, Magnolia News, Seattle, Washington, Mike Dillon, 2005
HOT TICKET
From early rock paintings to plastic figurines, artist Glenda J. Guilmet has been looking for a deeper understanding of her Taino Indian heritage and her feminine nature. Her new work at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center takes a cosmic view of the female form in the show “Womenscapes: Expressions of Femininity,” including the mixed media “Question?” pictured here [shown above].
Seattle Times, TICKET, 2005
“Attabeira en Cacibajagua” . . . emerged from the imagination of Glenda Black Guilmet B.A.’81, B.A.’89 after a trip to the Rio Camuy Caves in the highlands of Puerto Rico. On a quest to understand her Taino Indian heritage, Glenda learned about Attabeira, the water spirit in Taino creation mythology. She combined Attabeira’s visage with the hibiscus, a plant native to the island, to create this, the first in her Womenscape series. Caves have long been a stimulus for Glenda’s art. “They are the oldest museums,” she says.
Arches, Tacoma, Washington, Cathy Tollefson, 2004
Photoglyphs: Shadow Dancing on Sandstone, Schist and Shale
(photographic emulsion on stone)
"Photoglyph #26" 1999, photography on schist, 15" x 26.4"
Artist’s Statement: Photoglyphs
These photoglyphs are an extension of my Shadow Dance series which displayed shadow dance images as silver gelatin prints on paper. I have continued to try to improve on my ability to capture in a contemporary context the atmosphere of mystery and the supernatural characteristic of Upper Paleolithic cave art and pre-Columbian pictographs and petroglyphs representing human and animal forms. Most recently, I have printed new shadow dance images on sandstone, schist, and shale. As before, I have attempted to recreate the essence of the visual, aesthetic, and emotional experience of our ancestors with camera and film. However, I am now printing directly on rock surfaces eliminating the paper medium. Each image is transferred from rock to film to rock surface creating metamorphic and sedimentary visions. My goal is to accent human commonality and shared tribal origins.
Quotes from Reviews of the "Photoglyphs" Series:
For her Shadow Dance series Guilmet photographed the silhouettes cast on Snake River canyon walls by conscripted dancers, as they frolicked around a Neolithic campfire. . . Coating a liquid photo emulsion on to real slate shingles, she creates photoglyphs that transpose the projected shadows from canyon stone to gallery stone in a strategic act of sleight-of-hand (pun intended). This is a self-aware art where the subject and its representation are for once interchangeable, where stone-age imagery is magically brought to life through an act of transubstantiation – in performance and in object – that completes the circle of time. What more could one ask of a work of art?
On Center, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, Jake Seniuk, 2005
[W]hen one steps into the two darkened rooms where Guilmet's spot-lit work hangs, the viewer is drawn into a world where the play between reality and imagination is part of the show's drama.
In 31 pieces, Guilmet evokes the haunted margins beyond the bonfire, summoning images our ancient ancestors might have seen, or thought they'd seen, and then recreated on cave walls in the form of petroglyphs.
One human-shaped shadow raises a stick against a looming, bear-like figure with extremely short arms. Another image seems to represent three Sasquatches walking in single file. If most images appear ancient, why do several human-like shadows, sitting, seem to be wearing broad brimmed hats? Or are they?
Guilmet, the trickster, only smiles, taking in the viewer's reaction. . . .
The results seem to be human and animal likenesses lifted from actual caves. In fact, a few viewers were convinced Guilmet's chief artistic talent lay in desecration. . . .
Guilmet comes equipped with a keen sense of humor, but she is a serious artist who, in explaining her work, sometimes doubles her fist and closes her eyes as she searches for the right words to convey her message. She wants her “Shadow Dance” series to strip away the illusion of time and the differences between people. The show's aim is to reveal the commonalty between people. “We're all tribal,” she said. “whether we're from European or Indian backgrounds” . . . .
Guilmet, energetic, personable, and challenging, is intrigued by viewer's reactions to her "Shadow Dance" series. . . .
One of the “Shadow Dance” images seems to depict four figures holding spears upright, as if leaving on a hunt thousands of years ago, but with the striking immediacy of this morning. But what about this one? Two figures appear to be holding an inner tube, or maybe a huge donut. Either way, the round thing is a modern figment. What are they doing?
“These works reflect whatever your thinking,” Guilmet smiled.
Queen Anne/Magnolia News, Seattle, Washington, Mike Dillon, 1999
Glass People
"Glass People #23" 1996, Polaroid SX-70, etching, Ilfochrome print, 16" x 16"
Artist’s Statement: Glass People
I am using the metaphor of glass to capture the fragility, brittleness, and translucence of the self cross-culturally. All people share a human nature that is the product of our long hunting-and-gathering history. Our nature developed in small-scale, family-based tribal societies living in close relationship to the environment. Yet, human populations globally are all experiencing the shift to living in an urban, high-tech culture foreign to their nature. The Glass People have fragile selves (adapted to small-group survival on the land) which are easily shattered when faced with the insecurity, alienation, and isolation that modern urban living often presents. They are in search of a strong-clear definition of self in a rapidly changing world: glass buildings, glass people, glass worker bodies, glass landscape, glass musicians, fragile humans, broken glass. They are in need of self-help.
Quotes from Reviews of the “Glass People" Series:
Guilmet shoots Polaroids of bits of the natural world -- dirt, grass, flowers, flame -- through a glass plate, a crystal vase, a clear bowl, whatever creates an Interesting distortion. Then, while the photo emulsion is still wet, she etches it with a marmot's tooth and paints on it with acrylic, before rephotographing and enlarging the Image. Strange creatures emerge. They appear to be people washed in flame, with empty, sometimes completely obliterated faces -- like molten glass that emerges tempered, yet brittle and desolate. Some are still burning, glowing like glass in a kiln or, in one case transformed to a star hovering in a black void with its face martyred and downcast. One of the “Glass People” is reduced to a huge unblinking eye, another is the magnified face of a wolf, an icon of desperation and alienation. One image shows two tormented faces, like creatures out of the upper tiers of Dante's inferno, who seem ravaged but beatified by their particular punishment.
[T]he work has meaning for anyone who has experienced the shattering of the self from emotional conflict, traumatic experience, or from adapting to an unnatural environment. Guilmet's images speak to that shared feeling of “trial by fire” and provide a testimony to the human ability to become whole through the act of artistic creation. This is the second strong body of photographic work that Guilmet has shown at Sacred Circle, and more than fulfills the promise of her evocative earlier series ”Shadow Dance.”
Seattle Weekly, Seattle, Washington, Sheila Farr, 1997
Look closely at Glenda Guilmet's series “The Glass People” (1995). They look like Pilchuck glass but are completely fabricated color images the 39-year-old Taino artist made in her studio. Adapting a glass candleholder, vase and salad bowl, Guilmet creates images of transparent figures as a metaphor for the fragility of native populations.
The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington, Matthew Kangas, 1996
Glenda Guilmet's photographs are not cut from the raw material of life. She's photographing a series titled “Glass People,” and they do not exist outside her prints of them. She takes a Polaroid of a glass, fingerpaints in acrylic on the print and photographs it again. Sometimes the glass is crushed and gathered together in a heap, with cavities for eyes and mounds for nose and ears. The layering takes place repeatedly with etching, paint and drawing, until the image seems cast in ice and smoke, frozen and fragile.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, Washington, Regina Hackett, 1996
These photographs are iconic images that have been created through a complex and somewhat technical process. . . [T]he image is unmistakably transformed into a human figure. These figures, while unmistakably human, are, nevertheless vague as to race, gender, age and ethnic type. They are, like the shadows, Everyman.
Art Access, Seattle, Washington, Joanna Koss. 1996
Oil Paintings
“Unemployment Line on Venus” 1992, oil/canvas, 24” x 36”
Artist’s Statement: Oil Paintings
In many of my earlier paintings shadows came to life, took on an existence all their own in my studio, and found a new and altered place and form in the images I painted. I sometimes planned, but I did not consciously control this process. Only the shadows know their past, their present, and their future. They are living entities that come to light, to awareness, to creative expression. I see shadows as positive reflections of life, not repressed things to be avoided. They are to be played with. They are the only visible nonmaterial things. Shadows do not offend; they slumber and sometimes mend. This is the way the world is between the idea and the reality, between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response.
Quotes from Reviews of the "Oil Paintings" Exhibitions:
Glenda Guilmet can't shake her shadow.
It followed her to Les Eyzies in the south of France in 1986. She tried to photograph it communing with pictographs and in a Paleolithic cave, but authorities said no.
The shadow showed up later that year on the great rock cliffs above the Snake River near Hell's Canyon. Ore. Guilmet had her camera but didn't have the right film. She came back in 1988 and, on a moonlit night, shot rolls of frames that became her “Shadow Dance” series. . . .
Guilmet has since begun to stalk her shadow. She transcribed the photograph “Shadow Dance No. 1” into paint. She visited the caves and ceremonial grounds near Utado, Puerto Rico, and was mesmerized by more silhouettes. She found more pictographs, traced more shadows, painted more images. . . .
Guilmet's new exhibition at Galleria on Broadway is part shadow painting, part flower painting, part “Crows Bad Dream” and “Environmental Circus.” Her travels “back in time” to remote sites that conjure ancient cultures remind her how “the modern environment has become a total environmental circus.” . . .
“There is commonality wherever you look in this world. I hope people see that in my art.”
The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington, Keith Raether, 1998
Guilmet paints in and around the edges of light. Shadows live in our wake, defined by our shape and the objects upon which they are cast. Guilmet casts her shadows on the walls of caves, once used as sacred canvases by ancient painters and the Taino Indians of Puerto Rico. These shadows are a very natural subject for a “two dimensional” artist, as they are truly two dimensional. Shadows also symbolize or represent matters of absence, fear and death; here is a rich conceptual soup of possibilities. Guilmet uses this foundation to create life-affirming compositions where shadows draw, perceive, and influence our surroundings.
Guilmet's exhibition also includes a collection of evocative paintings of massive flowers, depicted in jungle and domestic settings. These paintings are as full of light as the shadows are empty, creating an overall fulfilling sensation to this retrospective of a decade of an artist's work.
Tacoma Voice, Tacoma, Washington, 1998