The International Year Of Glass, Reflected By A Berkshires Artist
Natalie Tyler's "WildFire" sculpture stands sentinel over the United Nations.
The United Nations declared 2022 the International Year of Glass, and the final formal event in its myriad of worldwide exhibitions, conferences, and workshops features a local artist whose work is lighting up the plaza at the United Nations in New York City until Dec. 31.
Great Barrington-based glass artist Natalie Tyler’s sculpture, WildFire, depicts a burning tree engulfed by flames. The flames, cast in glass, light up as the sun passes through them and the sculpture illuminates to look like it’s on fire. The United Nations International Year of Glass celebrates the essential role glass has had (and will continue to have) on society, but the sculpture also reflects one of the UN’s global goals, that of tackling climate change. For over half a century, the United Nations General Assembly has acknowledged important fields of human endeavor and their contributions to society by declaring International Years.
Exhibiting WildFire at the end of the International Year of Glass 2022 coincides with the celebration’s debriefing event this week at the UN. The invitation to exhibit WildFire came to Tyler with just a week’s notice, so she had to scramble to get the piece installed. She rented a truck, padded the piece and strapped it in. The glass fire reflects the sun, but she added bulbs inside for constant illumination. Good thing, too; she had to install it in the rain.
Natalie Tyler. Photo: Kaitlyn Pierce
Tyler, who specializes in kiln cast glass, is currently working on public artworks about climate change and its catastrophic effects on the environment. She received her Master's in Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and studied in Bologna, Italy. She has been a United States Embassy sponsored artist in Dublin, Ireland and in Tallinn, Estonia where she exhibited at the Estonia Museum of Applied Art and Design. Tyler has received grants and awards from Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Art Students League of New York, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, and Cornell University.
Conferences, exhibitions, and workshops have been held across the world helping to build alliances and collaborations that use and innovate with glass. Tyler has been active in the glass community, working with other artists as well as people from different disciplines in the glass industry — engineering, manufacturing, academia — who, Tyler says, have been encouraged to think outside the box and innovate with input from glass artists.
Tyler had been casting in bronze for 20 years, but was stymied by its lack of colors; painted sculpture didn’t interest her. Casting in glass, she found, offered so many elements to work with: shine, frosting, lighting and, of course, color. “It’s a versatile material,” she says, “and it brings the work alive.” As a native Californian whose work has always been influenced by nature, Tyler’s WildFire is an homage to the fires in her home state and points to the catastrophic effects that we all face.
As the International Year of Glass comes to a close, over 1,000 events in more than 95 countries have advanced the glass industry and engaged a wider audience. WildFire stands as a final representative of the role of the arts in the world of glass.
It’s a ‘pinch me’ moment,” Tyler says of the honor. “A dream come true.”
