1. Introduction
Hello. Welcome to the exhibition Glass music by Julia Protkova. For your convenience, the exhibition is divided into three parts. The first contains my key signature works. They are enough to show my range and skill level. If you want to delve deeper into my music, the second part of the exhibition is at your service. The third section will show you my latest developments and ideas.
2. Red dot. 2015. Mosaic. 60х60 см
There is a guided tour in English. The story about the works in Russian is located in the audiolink under each work.
Mosaic Red Dot was created in 2015 immediately after three months in the mental hospital. My whole life collapsed, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I did not know how to live on. And then I remembered myself. Young, strong, brave and beautiful. The mosaic was made from a 1990 photograph, where I am 25 years old. I am sitting on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and smoking the strongest Russian cigarette Belomor. These are the years I worked as a geologist in the Russian Arctic on the New Siberian Islands, from 1987-1991. I am dressed in an expeditionary jacket with my hair a little messy deep in thought. And this thoughtfulness, I carried throughout the years. The red dot of the cigarette burns - this means that life goes on.
Although this work was created in a moment of despair, it is a very life-affirming work. Let this woman be your guide to this exhibition today.
Although this work was created in a moment of despair, it is a very life-affirming work. Let this woman be your guide to this exhibition today.
3. Sunrise Flower. 2010. Витраж. 60х60 см
When I was creating Sunrise Flower in 2010, I did not know what the design would be. I had been living in Montreal for two years with my son, returning late at night after work and continuing to work on my stained glass. I was torn between glass and my son. But my son has been and remains my greatest support all these years. This is a very difficult stained glass work. And so I, blindly, intuitively, moved from the center of the piece to the edges. If you focus your eyes in the center, you will see the illusion of volume, but if you look at the edges, you will get the feeling that it is spinning. This stained glass is my emblem, my logo, my calling card.
When I was creating Sunrise Flower in 2010, I did not know what the design would be. I had been living in Montreal for two years with my son, returning late at night after work and continuing to work on my stained glass. I was torn between glass and my son. But my son has been and remains my greatest support all these years. This is a very difficult stained glass work. And so I, blindly, intuitively, moved from the center of the piece to the edges. If you focus your eyes in the center, you will see the illusion of volume, but if you look at the edges, you will get the feeling that it is spinning. This stained glass is my emblem, my logo, my calling card.
4. Ornamental Fantasy. 2011. Stained glass. 84 см х 124 см.
Ornamental fantasy is my largest stained glass work. In this work, I played with the illusion of volume. If you look at the sphere, you will see numerous axes of rotation, that is, visually the sphere is spinning in different directions and in different planes. I wrote a short explanation for this stained glass work. There are small cubes flying in the sky. They represent the human souls and other pieces of the Universe. They are flying in the sky and sometimes falling to the earth, forming a beautiful ornament consisting of human lives.
In this ornament one can see different orders and various patterns. They represent different human connections and different life paths. Souls are leaving from the earth and returning back to the sky and in time they will fall back down. This is the process of reincarnation, the process of a continuous life cycle in the Universe.
5. Glass Herd of Durer's Rhinos
There are four rhinos in front of you.I call them Glass Herd of Durer’s Rhinos. . This is Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving called Rhinoceros, created in 1515 and re-created in glass. Interestingly, Dürer never saw a rhinoceros, this drawing is a figment of his imagination.
In 2012, I made the mosaic you see on the left, which I called Ways of Imagination. I wanted to come up with a colour scheme for the Rhino. This is a very fine, detailed and intricate mosaic in which I used rare pieces of glass. This work is a hymn to the genius of Dürer and a hymn to coloured glass. On the right, you see three rhinos made with a technique called fusing. All three works are created with a needle and glass powder. This is my own technique that I came up with, I work with and I continue to further develop. But Dürer's Rhinos stand apart in my glass work. This is the pinnacle of my technique, this is Everest, just so that you understand the significance of these works for me. Why did I make three rhinos? Starting with the first, I realized that I could not accurately reproduce Dürer's masterpiece. By doing the second, my skill had grown, but the third is the most accurate reproduction. These three Rhinos took me a year to complete. There is a movie on my YouTube channel about the creation of the Glass Herd of Durer’s Rhinos
There are four rhinos in front of you.I call them Glass Herd of Durer’s Rhinos. . This is Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving called Rhinoceros, created in 1515 and re-created in glass. Interestingly, Dürer never saw a rhinoceros, this drawing is a figment of his imagination.
In 2012, I made the mosaic you see on the left, which I called Ways of Imagination. I wanted to come up with a colour scheme for the Rhino. This is a very fine, detailed and intricate mosaic in which I used rare pieces of glass. This work is a hymn to the genius of Dürer and a hymn to coloured glass. On the right, you see three rhinos made with a technique called fusing. All three works are created with a needle and glass powder. This is my own technique that I came up with, I work with and I continue to further develop. But Dürer's Rhinos stand apart in my glass work. This is the pinnacle of my technique, this is Everest, just so that you understand the significance of these works for me. Why did I make three rhinos? Starting with the first, I realized that I could not accurately reproduce Dürer's masterpiece. By doing the second, my skill had grown, but the third is the most accurate reproduction. These three Rhinos took me a year to complete. There is a movie on my YouTube channel about the creation of the Glass Herd of Durer’s Rhinos
The works on this wall will tell you about me. I am a self-taught artist. In 2003, I attended a two-day stained glass workshop. And so, my new life began. I fell in love with colored glass and was captivated. I lived in Calgary back then, worked as a research scientist and was an expert in electron microscopy, but the glass was slowly but surely crowding out everything else. I started making very complex and very ambitious stained glass projects with little to no experience, but with a great desire. In those days, I only made stained-glass works.
In 2006, I conceived a stained-glass work called Harmony of the World. Our world, unfortunately, is far from harmonious. Is harmony possible? Is a world without hatred, based on tolerance, possible? It was while working on this stained glass piece that I realized that I wanted to become a glass artist. I believed in myself and in my talent.
Every color, every detail in this work has a symbolic meaning. I wrote a meditation for this stained glass work. It is this piece that inspired someone to write music that you can hear on my youtube channel.
Harmony of the World was invented and cut in Calgary in 2006-2007, but was only able to solder it in Montreal in 2008. Against the backdrop of the starry sky, Harmony is dancing. I am an idealist, I dream that the world will become kinder.
8. God the Geometer. 2012. Powder fusing. 19 cm x 24 cm and Homo Explorer. 2019. Powder fusing. 25 x 31 cm
God the Geometer was created in 2012 and is a recreation in glass of a 13th century medieval manuscript picture. For me, this work is priceless. This work is my personal icon, a witness to my life's twists and turns, my joys and tears. It is made with multicolored glass powder using my own technique. God the Geometer was one of the first works in my newly emerging technique. Looking back, I understand that it was a very brave step - to aim for such a high level of work, when the technique was not yet fully developed.
On the right, you see a kneeling pilgrim who has found a loophole and is listening to the Universe. This work is called Homo Explorer. This piece is again made using glass powder, 7 years later in 2019 where you can see the technique is much more refined. This work is my own color interpretation of the famous Flammarion engraving made in 1888. I see myself here, I am the pilgrim. I show these two works together because they complement each other. See? The pilgrim saw God the Creator. He hears.
God the Geometer was created in 2012 and is a recreation in glass of a 13th century medieval manuscript picture. For me, this work is priceless. This work is my personal icon, a witness to my life's twists and turns, my joys and tears. It is made with multicolored glass powder using my own technique. God the Geometer was one of the first works in my newly emerging technique. Looking back, I understand that it was a very brave step - to aim for such a high level of work, when the technique was not yet fully developed.
On the right, you see a kneeling pilgrim who has found a loophole and is listening to the Universe. This work is called Homo Explorer. This piece is again made using glass powder, 7 years later in 2019 where you can see the technique is much more refined. This work is my own color interpretation of the famous Flammarion engraving made in 1888. I see myself here, I am the pilgrim. I show these two works together because they complement each other. See? The pilgrim saw God the Creator. He hears.
9. My Soul. 2021. Powder fusing. 33 см х 43 см
First, let me read to you what is written. Hello. My name is Julia Protkova. I am a Russian-Canadian. I am 56 years old.You see my hands as a 55 year old woman who is a glass artist. You see me a a 7 year old girl. This is what my Soul looks like. My Soul loves coloured glass, my family and the World at large. I want to color the World with my glass. Hello World. Nice to meet you. This work is called My Soul. This work was made using my technique called drawing with glass powder. August 2021.
If you pay attention to the hands - the contour was applied on the back of the glass. That is, my right hand is on your left, and my left hand is on your right. We can say hello and greet each other. However, My soul is fragile and has the look of a seven-year-old girl with a stubborn look.
Why did I do this project? I understand that I am a grain of sand in our World. But I want to create large glass projects and will show you my ideas at the end of the exhibition.
If you pay attention to the hands - the contour was applied on the back of the glass. That is, my right hand is on your left, and my left hand is on your right. We can say hello and greet each other. However, My soul is fragile and has the look of a seven-year-old girl with a stubborn look.
Why did I do this project? I understand that I am a grain of sand in our World. But I want to create large glass projects and will show you my ideas at the end of the exhibition.
We started this exhibition by looking at my mosaic work called Red Dot. The mosaic Aelita was created at the same time. If in the Red Dot I desperately thought about how to live on, then Aelita is my impressions of myself going crazy before entering the mental hospital. That is, Aelita dances a crazy, unrestrained dance. For the first time ever, I used other materials, not only glass. There are computer disks, beads and wool. That is, Aelita is a study of my madness.
You can see two of my stained-glass works. The lower one is called Divine Beauty and was created in 2004. This is one of my first stained glass works. It's not technically perfect, but it's aesthetically beautiful. I have spent endless hours contemplating my stained glass works including this one. There is a story associated with this piece. In the winter of 2006, our house caught fire. I remember my shock when I entered the burnt house and saw the burnt wall and the broken window in the kitchen where my Divine Beauty was hanging without a single scratch.
The Stained glass piece called Passion was created in 2021. This is my exploration of the feeling of passion and my passionate obsession with glass. Since 2016, I have been making my stained glass works under the guidance of a professional, Rock LaPlante. Rock teaches me the secrets of stained glass art and I am immensely grateful to him for this. Each color in the stained-glass work Passion is symbolic. For example, the ash-dark frame signifies emotional burnout, the glass background with raindrops represents my tears on the stained glass path. But in general, my passion is a delightfully wonderful feeling.
The stained glass piece called Flow was created in 2014. I had a very busy day, I was overstressed and could not fall asleep. I had a small stained glass work made in 2009 that I called Frozen Flower, which you can see in the center. And so at night I came to my glass workshop, put Frozen Flower on the desktop and cut the entire stained-glass piece in a few hours. I didn’t have any design in my head at the time, it was pure impromptu. I really like it for its conciseness and movement
The work Prayer is a conceptual work. It was conceived suddenly and created in September 2022. The prayer is addressed to God the Geometer - the Creator of the Worlds. I often turn to God in my works. I have no doubt that there is a Supreme Intelligence in the Universe. I am convinced that we know very little about the world around us. The work Prayer has undergone numerous changes in ideas and design, and as a result turned into a piece of the starry sky. This work is not like any of my other works, although I have created several works with starry skies. Despite the randomly scattered constellations, there is a Higher Order here. It is not visible, I deliberately hid it, but it is there. There are Beacon Stars here that form the structure and Curtain Stars that hide the structure. There is a movie on my youtube channel on how I created this work.
12. Dance of the Universe. 2014. Fusing. 122 см х 183 см
In front of you is my largest work created in the fusing technique. This is very important work. This is the scheme of the Universe as I see it. I am convinced that everything consists of music. If you look at the sun from the left, you will see a ray that reaches the rhombus and triangle. This is the Beginning of Everything. If you look at the rhombus and the triangle, you will see how they begin to change and intensify as new colours are added to them. This is a dance. This is the dance of the universe. The lower right quadrant looks like an abstract painting, but it's not. If you look closely, you will see a map of the world. This is a tectonic map of the world, which I laid out with tweezers grain by grain. I graduated with honours from the geological faculty of Moscow University. That was in 1988, a very long time ago. But it shaped my worldview. For me, this map is like musical notes. After all, our Earth is alive, it breathes, it sounds. In the upper left corner you see God. I am convinced that there is a Supreme Intelligence in the Universe. The rest of the space is filled with a starry sky - these are stars and galaxies, which also consist of music. Above the tectonic map on the right, above Russia, there are two polar bears - these represent my years of work in the Russian Arctic and a lullaby from a Russian cartoon, which I sang to my son. On the left side, above Canada, are the figures of a seated woman and a boy standing on one arm. This is my son and I. I am thinking and my son is dancing. That is, in the center of my Universe - my son and I. And all around us is music.
On this wall is another picture - this is a magnified view of a detail in the Dance of the Universe - exactly the scene where my son and I are located. Pay attention to the glass particles from which the Dance of the Universe is made. It was my first time working with this material and I was delighted with it.
This is the end of the first part of my exhibition.
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