Special Projects
These are a collection of special projects
Sticky Situation
The most recent installment of bee themed work created by Jennifer Caldwell and Jason Chakravarty. The full round window installation is on display in downtown Tempe February-May 2023. It includes honey sliding and dripping down all windows. Various sized blown glass honey drips hang at different heights in space. Hand sculpted glass bees swarming and tasting the magical elixir. The floor is outlined with patterned clusters of honeycomb consistent with previous installations.
The artists are drawn to the culture of bees as it relates to human culture. Much of the core of human behaviors are essential in bee colonies as well. The good, bad and ugly side of how we care for our tribe during times of joy and crisis. Working in sync as a colony for the greater good while also making a collective effort to keep sickness out of the tribe. Acknowledging and accepting and contributing our individual roles, based on our personal beliefs, as it pertains to a single larger vision. The honey coated beauty of it all is both sweet and sinful.
Head In The Clouds
Mesa Arts Museum presents Head in The Clouds, a two person collaborative solo exhibition of narrative driven sculptural glass created by Jennifer Caldwell and Jason Chakravarty. The exhibition, on display January 15-April 3, 2022, features two site specific installations and a handful of sculptures.
Head in The Clouds encompasses the overshadowing cognitive weight felt during the pandemic. For Jennifer and Jason, the pandemic reprogrammed the normal yet ever changing daily cues which fed their artwork. The artists narrative backdrop which directly influences their sculptural glass has often been illustrated through the extensive and regularity of traveling globally to lecture and discuss the field of glass, participating in artist residencies, and teaching short intensive workshops. The onset of the pandemic cancelled all upcoming and scheduled events.
Takin' a dip
A residency at Barrio Glassworks followed by a solo show, Influenced by a village by the sea and a barrio that presides there.
Beecline
“Beecline”
Each honeycomb is hot cast glass and assembled with a torch then gold leafed with 22k gold. The bees are flameworked glass, sculpted using a tabletop torch and solid borosilicate glass.
We created Beecline initially for an 'eco awareness' themed exhibition. The modular nature of the piece and the potential to continue to erode and deteriorate as an installation as components sell contributes to the narrative. This notion relates to both the controlled movement of the bee population and how and where they settle and build a home once relocated. We hope that over the course of the exhibition, to see this installation not only erode and deteriorate but evolve and redefine its own beauty.
Updated statement to the viewer
The above statement has been displayed each time with the installation. A grouping of over 40 components was first shown at Vetri Gallery in Seattle, WA in 2018. Second in Aspen at Raven Gallery. Next the colony traveled to Whidbey Island, WA and lived at Museo Gallery. To complete its second trip of 2019, they were shown in Chicago during SOFA with Habatat Gallery. To begin 2020, they found a home in St. Petersburg, FL with Duncan McClellan. The summer of Covid (2020) they traveled west again to Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. The 21st annual Artlink exhibition at the Found:RE marks the first time in which the piece has been installed at home in its place of conception.
Replicating the migratory beehavior of bees, we have attempted to install this work in two new locations annually. While knowing that some bees stay behind, a few travel elsewhere, new bees are born while others stick with the pack. We are proud of this migration and thank you for contributing to its evolutionary growth cycle.
Chronicals of COV-19
Chronicles of Covid-19 continue our narrative driven work specifically in response to the daily evolution of current events related to the virus. These works are hand drawn and painted with a combination of glass enamels which are fired on and also with acrylic paint. We are applying the images to picture frames which are repurposed from local thrift stores. The world is going through something that has never existed. So much is unknown and changes with each new day. These illustrations are influenced by the influx of daily headlines. They are personal journals of how Jennifer Caldwell and Jason Chakravarty translate the progression of the world in response to unparalleled times. Our goal was to post a new image each day and in the summer of 2020 we installed the finished work together during a solo exhibition in Cannon Beach, OR at Archimedes Gallery
