Jeremy Popelka Featured at Museum of Wisconsin Art

Jeremy Popelka at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Submitted.

Jeremy Popelka is included in an exhibit titled Fore and Aft: A Vitreous View of Time at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. The show is on display from Aug. 18, 2018 to March 31, 2019.

Popelka’s sand cast glass monoliths impress with their sheer presence. Straddling the boundary between representation and abstraction, these works take their shape from Popelka’s experience of nature and his atypical opinions about the beauty of glass.

Sand casting, a process in which molten glass is poured into an impression made in a miniature sandbox, scars the sculpture’s surface with the sand’s texture. Popelka prizes this ‘imperfection’ as a subversion of the conventional values of glass art, which emphasize sleek surfaces and crystalline clarity.

Popelka’s aesthetic vocabulary derives from the patterns of the natural world, in particular the fossil-rich environs and striking geological features surrounding his home and studio in Door County. Instead of representing particular creatures and formations, Popelka’s architectonics are variations on themes that reveal characteristic features of natural phenomena.

Museum of Wisconsin Art is located at 205 Veterans Ave in West Bend. For more information visit wisconsinart.org/exhibitions/current.aspx.