Maze of Glass..

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20somethingrlNYC
November 3rd, 2009

Soma

A creation of fantastical porportions can be the only way to describe artist’s Ayala Serfaty glass interpretation of the essence of nature in its most abstract form. Along with photographer Albi Serafty, Ayala Serfaty created the studio Aqua Creations in 1992 which seeks to develop and produce furnishing and lighting items through an artistic approach. It is in the comfort of her studio, whose headquarters are located in Tel Aviv and, as a result of her studio’s success, a showroom that is located in New York, that she has managed to create these almost underwater like glass reefs which evoke in its beholder a childish, awe-eyed amazement resulting in serenity and a peaceful deafness.

The Soma Artists:

Soma

Visionary Ayala Serfaty began her creative path studying Fine Arts in the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, after which she won the America- Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship to Middlesex Polytechnic in London where she concluded her BFA. Followed by practice and participation in group exhibitions, Serfaty naturally transcended into design practice and she ranks among today’s leading designers. Since 2002, Ayala Serfaty has been intensively working on a unique and inimitable research leading to the development and creation of glass and polymer-skin light sculptures called Soma. Today, Serfaty’s voice is best expressed in the merging of art and design and her works have been displayed in major museums world-wide, among them the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Pompidou Center in Paris, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Cooper- Hewitt in New York. Her works can also be found in private collections and public spaces.

Born in Moscow in 1968, Anna Gautier received her degree in Fashion Design and Imaging from the Moscow Technological Institute of the Light Industry. After relocating to Israel in 1993, Anna worked as an evening gown designer and dressmaker, while concurrently studying stain glass, kilnforming, and lampworking. Anna Gautier has been a member of the Aqua Creations team since 1999. She began her path in the studio’s Silk Department and in 2004 Anna joined the Soma team, where she researches, develops, and creates Soma light sculptures. Anna continues to independently design and create glass works and jewelry and has exhibited her works in the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv and at the Yaniv Glass Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Soma Etyan Hall was born in Israel in 1973. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Glass from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. A year prior to his graduation in 2002, Eytan won a scholarship to the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle where he mastered the art of glassblowing and lampworking. In 2004 Eytan Hall joined Aqua Creations in Tel Aviv and has since worked alongside Ayala Serfaty and Anna Gautier in the research process, development, and creation of Soma light sculptures.In 2000 Eytan’s personal designs were exhibited in a solo exhibition in Kibbutz Hatzor in Israel and in 2002 he participated in the Bezalel group exhibition in Flensburg, Germany.

What is Soma:

Soma’s structure is composed of ‘lamp-worked’ layers of tinted transparent glass veins that create both depth and surface. A clear membrane-like skin is webbed over the glass structure. Both materials are extremely fragile. Their symbiotic relationship creates a strong spatial structure, merging the two materials into a new specificity. Soma illuminated objects explore the interaction created between the glass structure and the skin, and the relativity of coverage to visible depth. The practice of Soma evolves from one piece to the next. Each of these pieces explores ways to transform calligraphy into texture and into structure. In each piece various particular relationships are created between the surface, light, and shade. The configurations show a more abstract authenticity of the Soma practice, a form created by free drawing in space, captured like a frozen moment of existence. (Via Ayala Serfaty)

How Soma is created:

First, Soma is sketched and drawn out much like an animator would sketch out their story boards..

Following the sketch, 2mm thick glass filaments are used to create light sculptures which are manufactured by Sergio Serra in Empoli, Italy. Per Serafart’s requests, Serra manufactures these filaments in many different colors and transparencies..

This is where the gentle hands of Eytan Hall and Anna Gautier are now put to the test. Working diligently and in accordance to Serfaty’s designs, Hall and Gautier bend and twist the glass into willow-like shapes, intertwining them into one another so as the viewer cannot tell where one begins and another ends..

Ceramic bases, produced by hand by Serfaty, are then, in many designs, used to harness these intricate glass manipulations. Flourscent bulbs are attached to Serfaty’s hand made bases to provide the light for which provides these glass treasures with life..

To add the finishing touches the now morphed glass is encased in polymer membrane-like web resulting in the colors of glass filaments seeping through the skin, as well as the inner depth of the piece.