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Nathan Youngblood & C.S. Tarpley - The New American Aesthetic
Long before they ever met, Nathan Youngblood and C.S. Tarpley were traveling on parallel paths. They shared an aesthetic, a vision, even similarities in their art, and they each strongly admired the other’s work. Many people, including collectors, told the artists that they should consider a collaborative project, and privately they each thought it was a good idea. Finally, their mutual friend (Gini Inman) decided the two had to meet face to face. She introduced them—and in a surge of creative synergy that shows no sign of slowing, the parallel paths converged.
Tarpley is known for his luminous, copper-inlayed glass vessels, carved with motifs drawn from ancient cultures around the world. Youngblood is a sixth generation potter from a renowned family of Santa Clara potters. He has long been acclaimed for his deeply carved, stone-polished vessels that combine age-old methods with a contemporary sense of design and form. Both artists hold themselves to extraordinarily high standards of quality and technical mastery. They knew their collaborative efforts must achieve that same level of excellence and beauty. And based on a first-hand look at their prototypes, it appears that those standards have not only been met, but surpassed.
With an initial series of 25 one-of-a-kind glass and copper vessels of varying sizes (which will require the better part of a year to complete) the pair employs Tarpley’s uncommon techniques and Youngblood’s exquisite Santa Clara Pueblo designs. The artists admit that the combination exceeds even their own expectations. “When I look at these finished pieces I think, yeah, this collaboration was meant to be. I loved the first piece, and then each succeeding piece has become my favorite, in turn.” Tarpley declares. “Working with Nathan’s designs has actually reinvigorated my love of glass.”
And it must to be love, indeed, for an artist to invest as much time and effort into a single piece as Tarpley does. Blowing the glass is the quick part, he says. Though its speed belies the years of experience required to produce subtly graceful shapes in glass that are uniformly thick enough to be deeply carved. Tarpley has this to say about his blowing process, “Most contemporary glass blowers have been trained in the Italian style (which holds the ability to blow thin/delicate forms to be the true mark of a maestro). But I came to the bench with a very different idea in mind. I had no interest in those techniques because the look that I was striving to achieve required a very thick piece of glass that could withstand an intense carving process. After a full day’s work, most of the glassblowers that I hire to assist me in the hotshop come to understand just how different it is to blow very thick forms, as opposed to thin. It can seem counter-intuitive to those unaccustomed to working so dense. The heats are different, the timing is different, and it is easier to accidentally burn-out certain colors. Furthermore, it requires more core strength to sling those things around on the end of a blowpipe. To see one of my finished blanks, it looks so simple and straight-forward. But you wind up working your team a lot harder than you expected to with these pieces. Depending on just how thick I go, one of my twelve inch vessels will weigh anywhere from five to ten times as much as a similarly sized Italian-style vessel. Personally, I prefer the solid heft of these vessels in my hands. These pieces are very tactile and beg to be touched, as much as viewed.” Rather than relying on ornamental bits or an overly complex use of multiple colors, Tarpley places his focus on creating voluptuous curves and smooth transitions between concave and convex surfaces. This makes his forms more pleasing to the eye. “For me, it is the exploration of these subtleties of form that mean the difference between a perceived failure or a personal triumph. Simply put, some shapes are more viscerally satisfying to me than others. In that respect, I believe that I have always approached the idea of shape and form in much the same way that a potter does. For example, before Nathan ever thinks of picking up a carving tool, he is focusing on these same subtleties of form. Even before they are carved, his clay vessels are already incredible works of art. He has a solid grasp of simple, understated elegance that I can really appreciate as a glass artist.”
Tarpley, who grew up in Santa Fe, spent the better part of a decade learning to blow glass in Seattle before returning to New Mexico. Now, he routinely travels back to a Seattle hotshop to undertake the glassblowing process. For this project he has assembled a world-class team that includes people who have worked with other renowned glass artists such as Dale Chihuly and Lino Tagliapietra. Youngblood is learning to blow glass as well, and is becoming increasingly involved in the multi-step process that follows. “I quickly developed a deep appreciation of just how difficult the glassblowing process is after putting my own hand to it.” Youngblood exclaims. “I remember calling my wife and son from Seattle after our first day in the hotshop and trying to describe this ‘dance’ that was spontaneously occurring between these artists. Chris had met half of the people on the team just that morning, but somehow they were able to communicate with almost imperceptible nods of the head or quick glances toward the furnace, once the work began. Chris would bark out a one-word order and everyone would move into place to execute some vital task as though they had all spent weeks choreographing the event. Each one of the people on the blow team was obviously highly experienced in the field. It was an exhilarating thing to be a part of. The thing that made the greatest impression on me, though, was the heat. It’s quite a different experience from the heat of firing clay. Working with molten glass can be a little intimidating at first. But, once you get a feel for it, there is an almost masochistic thrill to seeing just how far you push the envelope with this material. You want to see how close you get your hands to the hot glass without flinching. It’s a powerful and hypnotic experience. You are literally shaping a force of nature. Frankly, I can’t wait to get back to Seattle to try it again.” Smiling, Tarpley nods in agreement.
Back in a Santa Fe studio, the artists work on one piece at a time. First, Tarpley covers the glass with a rubber stencil material, onto which Youngblood draws his fluid, often intricate designs. “It may not sound as exciting as the glassblowing process,” offers Tarpley, “but this is really the step where the heart and soul of one of these pieces is truly born.” Youngblood’s designs are based on ancient Pueblo cosmology and symbolism, but also touch on primal elements of life that are central to every culture. “Much of our design work is very universal,” Youngblood explains. “For me, the specific vocabulary of images comes from Santa Clara Pueblo, but tribes all over the world have similar symbolism.” This sense of tapping into deeply shared aspects of the human experience, no matter our cultural heritage, is another way in which the artists see eye to eye.
Like many Americans today, both come from families with wildly multicultural roots. For Tarpley the mix includes Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and a smattering of various other tribes from Texas and Oklahoma. His European heritage is equally convoluted, being a mix German, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, and sundry southern European nationalities. Youngblood is solidly Pueblo on his mother’s side, while his paternal grandfather’s family came west in a covered wagon. His more distant ancestry contains Dutch, Scottish, and Irish. He can even trace his European ancestry back to an 11th century English lord. Youngblood’s peripatetic childhood underscored a connection with all people as well. Raised in a military family, he lived in such diverse places as Holland, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and California before returning to New Mexico to learn how to coil traditional pottery from his Grandmother, Margaret Tafoya.
“Chris and I have had a chance to talk in depth about this,” Youngblood reflects. “Although we both trace our ancestry back to the First Nations, we like to think of ourselves as American Natives, rather than Native Americans. But whatever box people try to put us in, we are American Artists, first and foremost.” Still, by choosing to faithfully carry on the age-old traditions handed down to him by his family, it is clear that Nathan has firmly set his roots down in the soil of Santa Clara Pueblo. As such, he can’t help but tell a story that reflects his own personal experience of life on the pueblo. “As I am carving Nathan’s designs, I can’t help but pick up on a hidden narrative within his work.”, says Tarpley. “The story I see may not necessarily be the one Nathan had intended to tell, but that is the beauty of art - The meaning can change depending on the cultural context of the beholder. These pieces are alive and they speak to people in the universal tongue of beauty. I have plenty of time to contemplate these pieces while they are in process and I never cease to be delighted at what I find in them.”
That’s because once the design is drawn and the stencil is cut away where the glass will be carved, Tarpley spends many days cutting deeply but ever-so-gradually into the glass with a sandblasting tool. Next comes the electroforming process, which fuses copper onto the glass. And this is where the alchemy begins. Because glass is non-conductive, the vessel must be selectively coated with an expensive silver-based paint and covered with dozens of conductive copper wires. The prep-time alone can take days. The piece is then suspended in a chemical bath that also contains suspended copper ingots. Over a period of several weeks—during which the chemical solution must be constantly monitored and balanced—an electrical current sweeps copper ions off of the suspended anodes and deposits them, layer by infinitesimally thin layer, onto the glass cathode. Perfected by Tarpley’s teacher and colleague (glass artist, Michael Glancy) in the 1970s, electroforming is so time-consuming and tedious that only a vanishingly small handful of Glancy’s students work with it in a serious way. In Tarpley’s own words, “The process can be very unforgiving.”
While Tarpley’s vessels are extraordinary in and of themselves, his partnership with the award-winning potter takes the work to a whole new level within the realm of the American glass art movement. At least one piece in the initial series is, at least, 31inches tall. It’s a size that’s “insanely large” for a hand-blown glass vessel of that thickness, Tarpley laughs. “It really is amazing how many steps are involved in completing just one of these glass and metal pieces.” Youngblood continues, “You wouldn’t think that glass could survive all of these different processes intact. It’s such a demanding medium to work with.” Tarpley interjects, “But that is just one more parallel that can be drawn between our work. Nathan has to jump through just as many hoops to finish one of his stone-polished vessels.”
Youngblood summarizes, “Both of us have to work through many pain-staking steps to realize our vision in our respective mediums. And we can’t rush through any one part of the process without dearly paying for it later. The overall way in which we collaborate is perfectly harmonious. That’s because, as artists, we both had to independently develop a deep sense of patience in order to carry ourselves through to the point of realization. Whether you are working with clay or molten fire, you have to get in touch with your center in order to shut out the infinite distractions of a world bent on instant gratification. You have to will yourself to truly live in the moment. It’s not always an easy place to find and it sometimes comes at a price.”
Apparently it is a price that both artists are willing to pay, because this is not likely to be the last time we see these two names together in print. After the initial collection is publicly introduced by Kiva Fine Art during the 2006 Santa Fe Indian Market, the pair will begin a second series. “A lot of times artistic collaboration is a one-shot deal,” Youngblood observes. “But between the two of us, we probably have enough ideas to keep us going for another fifteen years.”