Portland, Michigan-based artist Mark Lewanski is the winner of this year’s public vote at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. His piece called "Arras" is a large, colorful work of woven glass.
He received the $100,000 grand prize despite the public not being able to see "Arras" over the last few days of the voting period. That’s because it was displayed in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum which has been closed by the federal government shutdown.
WKAR's Scott Pohl visited Lewanski in his studio to talk about the piece and the win.
Interview Highlights
On where the idea for the piece came from
"Arras" is a piece I dreamt up around eight years ago, and I wanted to take this concept, you know, the glass weaving idea, and make it on a grand scale, do something just really enormous, something that you'd have to walk from one end to the next and just have this experience over the course of this time and examining this surface. And, I wanted this to be seen by a lot of people. I wanted this to be a true museum piece.
On working with glass
When the pieces are being woven, the raw material we use is so fragile and so thin, the shop floor is literally littered with broken stuff, little threads and loops and everything. It goes all over, and the pieces are very fragile. And we do weave them together by hand, and there are times when things go wrong, and you can have breakage, but it's a problem we can fix.
On the federal shutdown closing the museum where the piece is displayed
It was kind of a surprise to everyone. Maybe some people weren't surprised. We were a little surprised. We had been warned. And, I never really thought that would happen. But when it did, we immediately made arrangements to move outside, so I could still show some work. But many people did show up unaware of the closure, very disappointed that they didn't get to see my work, the other work in the Ford Museum, and it was a little bit of an air of disappointment around the museum, but we made the best of it. And, you know, obviously, things worked out great.
Interview Transcript
Scott Pohl: Portland, Michigan-based artist Mark Lewanski is the winner of this year’s public vote at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. His piece called "Arras" is a large, colorful work of woven glass.
He received the $100,000 grand prize despite the public not being able to see "Arras" over the last few days of the voting period. That’s because it was displayed in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum which had been closed by the federal government shutdown.
For WKAR's weekly series Inside the Arts, I visited Lewanski in his studio.
Tell me about "Arras," and I want to begin by looking at the pieces that I'm surrounded by here in your studio that are similar but much smaller. Tell me about your work and how "Arras" fits in with your work.
Mark Lewanski: Right. So, the pieces that you see around you are work that I commonly do. These are pieces that I have for sale on the website, and we do a lot of art shows. So, this is what I would call my standard body of work.
"Arras" is a piece I dreamt up around eight years ago, and I wanted to take this concept, you know, the glass weaving idea, and make it on a grand scale, do something just really enormous, something that you'd have to walk from one end to the next and just have this experience over the course of this time and examining this surface.
And, I wanted this to be seen by a lot of people. I wanted this to be a true museum piece. So, that was the idea. It took eight years to get here. I bought the kiln eight years ago that had the capacity, and it was only until this moment, until ArtPrize, that I was able to finish the piece and achieve this goal.
Pohl: I am one of the people who, when I visited ArtPrize, was unable to see it because it was placed for ArtPrize in the Ford Presidential Museum, which closed in the middle of last week. So, sadly, people like me didn't get to see the prize winner.
Lewanski: Yeah, it was kind of a surprise to everyone. Maybe some people weren't surprised. We were a little surprised. We had been warned. And, I never really thought that would happen.
But when it did, we immediately made arrangements to move outside, so I could still show some work. But many people did show up unaware of the closure, very disappointed that they didn't get to see my work, the other work in the Ford Museum, and it was a little bit of an air of disappointment around the museum, but we made the best of it. And, you know, obviously, things worked out great.
Pohl: So, is the piece still there?
Lewanski: The piece is still there, where we're just waiting to see what's going to happen. I would love to show it. This piece is for sale, and we're trying to find a local buyer. And it's difficult right now to give that little exhibition or tour, because I can't. I don't have any access to the piece.
Pohl: We're talking with Portland, Michigan, based artist Mark Lewinski. His piece, "Arras," won the public vote grand prize at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids last week. Tell me more about the technique of how you do this with glass.
Lewanski: A lot of people see that the woven structure of my work, it's a simple basket weave, so it's the over, under, over and under method, and due to the size of the strands of glass I use and the bright colors, people commonly mention pot holders, and they commonly mentioned the rag rugs that we had in the '60s and '70s, and it's a great little nostalgic trip for people when they see my work. It brings them to a different place.
It wasn't intended to be that way, but it's something that everyone connects with, and I hear the comments a lot, and it's kind of fun to evoke that. You're going to have pieces that are anywhere from a quarter inch to maybe three-quarter inches wide, and they have like an up and down, over-under pattern that is achieved with multiple colors.
There are very thin pieces that we are calling stringer in the glass world, and we have canes that are round pieces that have been created by stretching the glass and twisting it. All of these elements go into each piece and add to its detail and its richness.
Pohl: It strikes me that you have to do this while the glass is pliable, and that it cools and becomes less pliable, and with a piece as large as "Arras," were there times where in the middle of the process it got too stiff, you couldn't complete that strand? Does that happen, and what do you do when it does?
Lewanski: All the time! When the pieces are being woven, the raw material we use is so fragile and so thin, the shop floor is literally littered with broken stuff, little threads and loops and everything. It goes all over, and the pieces are very fragile. And we do weave them together by hand, and there are times when things go wrong, and you can have breakage, but it's a problem we can fix. We can remove pieces, replace them, put the right ones back in and keep working.
Pohl: Mark Lewanski is the artist behind "Arras" which won the $100,000 public vote grand prize at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids last week. Congratulations. Continued success. Thanks for your time.
Lewanski: Thank you very much. It was really nice talking to you.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
