Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Those of you who, like me, studied Latin at school and University will know that this phrase means 'Thus Passes Worldly Glory', ie fame is fleeting and the glorious are soon forgotten.  But fortunately that is not the case in this Blog.

 

I recently compiled for the members of the NZ Society of Artists in Glass a quiz on earlier NZ glass artists.  Some of the questions were easy, come were harder. One question, however, was apparently so hard that not a single person answered correctly.  I asked:

Which two artists made glass under the partnership name Gloria in Auckland in the 1990s? 

The answer is Ruth Allen and Vivienne Bell. The fact that they appear to have been forgotten is all the more galling since Ruth was the President of the NZ Society of Artists in Glass in 1996-8, and Vivienne was a speaker at NZSAG panels and conferences at the same period.

 

Signed GLORIA NZ 1997

 

 

  

Ruth Allen was born in New Zealand, and attended the Canberra School of Art, studying under Stephen Procter, Klaus Moje and Elizabeth McClure.  Ruth graduated in 1993 and travelled to Japan and the United States to further her interest in glass.  In 1995 she came back to New Zealand to establish a glass studio in Auckland.  She was joined by Vivienne Bell, who was born in Christchurch.  In the 1980s Vivienne was an apprentice scientific glassblower at Victoria University of Wellington, where she also undertook studies towards a B.Sc. in Chemistry. Moving to Auckland she taught at Unitec school of design, and joined with Ruth in the partnership they named Gloria.  They made and sold glass in a number of galleries, and exhibited with NZSAG in an exhibition at the NZ Parliament.  At the end of 1999, the Gloria partnership was dissolved, and the studio was sold to Peter Viesnik.

Signed GLORIA NZ 1998

 

Signed GLORIA NZ 1998

Ruth returned to Australia and is based in Melbourne, where she has a busy and active studio, and has studied for a Master of Fine Arts degree in glass and sculpture at Monash University.  She is featured as one of the women artists in the Robusty series of short documentaries (https://www.robusty.com.au/).

   

 Screen grab from Robusty documentary

Vivienne went to the United States, where she has taught and exhibited in a number of centres.  Between 2002 and 2005 she managed the Chapell Gallery in New York, and is currently an artist / designer in New York.

   

 

 Screen grabs from Vivienne Bell.com

 

In March 2019 Ruth participated in the joint Ausglass NZSAG CoLab Conference held in Whanganui.  I was delighted to be able to purchase this amulet that she exhibited there.

 

 

 

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Ruth has written "I have been working with the manifestation of Amulets in glass since 2004. I hold strong spiritual and physical ties to my birth-land Aotearoa. I am excited by the serendipitous nature of hot glass, I love carving glass and working with surface textures. In the end, I hope to create an object that holds power for those that wear it."

 

For me, at least, the glories of Gloria have not transitted.