New Chrysler Museum exhibit transforms sand to glass
Glass artists Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck want us to look down.
To look at the sand under our feet and think about the people who have lived on it. The events of captivity and liberation on the beach at Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton. The sand at the Oceanfront that cradled the knee of a person proposing marriage. The joy someone finds in digging into the yard of their first home.
The Dutch artists have created a crowd-sourced exhibition, “To See a World in a Grain of Sand,” that is on display at the Chrysler Museum of Art through Jan. 22.
The show contains 270 samples from around the globe, several of them from local areas including Fort Monroe, Naval Station Norfolk by the USS Cole Memorial, the Oceanfront in Virginia Beach, and a long-lost baseball field in Portsmouth.
For more than a decade, the two have asked people to bottle sand that has a personal significance and send it to their studio in the Netherlands. The samples range in texture, size and color, which speaks to the spectrum of sand as a material. The artists then melt the sand into glass to reveal its beauty while symbolizing the beauty of the stories and people behind it.
A piece of rock erodes from a mountain or hills and is transported by rain, wind and feet to a shore. Over time, rock becomes sand — and generations of people and animals might walk on the same grains. These shared experiences are what connect people, and they are what connect us to the land, Sterk said during a recent visit to the Chrysler.
Materials in the sand will tint the glass different colors depending on where it’s from. Hampton Roads, for example, has sand composed largely of quartz, which typically makes clear glass.
The artists placed each sample in a crucible, a small porcelain cup, and melted that sand into glass. The pooled glass might crack, Sterk said, but the cracks help bring out the colors because light refracts through the imperfections. The thickness of the glass determines the deepness of the colors. It is like looking over the ocean: The deeper the water, the darker the blue.
Some might call the glass “impure,” Sterk said, because it is not transparent.
“I think this is actually purity because we do not do anything to it,” she said. “We only melt it and see what comes out.”
Terry Brown, former superintendent of Fort Monroe National Monument, collected sand from the beach there and contemplated its complex history.
“It took me a while to embrace the beauty of Fort Monroe,” he said. “Enslaved Africans were brought here in 1619. They were also freed here 242 years later.”
Norfolk’s former City Beach, now known as East Beach, was a segregated beach for Blacks. Black community members faced resistance in creating the beach and often had to walk past white hecklers to get to it. Once on the sand, the residents created a safe space, separate from an unaccepting world.
Kathleen Edwards, an independent researcher, collected sand from East Beach for the project.
“We could go fishing and crabbing, we brought tons of food to share with others, walking through gravel, glass, rocks and debris and disrespectful white residents, just to get here,” she said.
Another sample was collected by Lindi Dina in South Africa, who heard about the project through word of mouth. Her story stood out to Sterk because of Dina’s enthusiasm to be included in the project. Sterk was impressed that she had even heard about it at all.
The sand was taken from a few steps outside Dina’s home, a shack near Pretoria that she is proud to own. She was worried that the sand would not be good enough, but Sterk assured her it had a place in the project.
“This humbled me in so many ways,” Sterk said. “Over there you see next to nothing, but the positivity and excitement for her to contribute were incredible.”
Testimonies like these are the heart of the project and why Sterk and van Ryswyck wanted to keep the artwork as simple as possible. They melted the samples but left the glass as is to show respect for the people who sent in the sand and focus on the history that comes with it.
“This is an archive to show the color and richness of an area,” Sterk said. “We did not want to distract with shape.”
Some of the sand from Hampton Roads was sculpted into glassware during a recent demonstration to show how glass is made.
Sterk was surprised when the sand from Fort Monroe turned aquamarine. Other local samples turned into varying shades of blue and green.
Plastic was an issue with some of the samples. The artists tried not to remove anything from the sand, but if the pieces were too big they would take them out by hand.
The process is long, but Sterk does not mind. She loves to work with glass and create something with meaning.
“Glass is magical,” she said. “I feel like an alchemist creating gold.”
Everett Eaton, 262-902-7896, everett.eaton@virginiamedia.com
___
If you go
When: Through Jan. 22
Where: Chrysler Museum of Art, One Memorial Place, Norfolk
Tickets: Free
Details: chrysler.org
NOTE: The Chrysler Museum of Art is not accepting donations of sand.
