Artist Lecture #4 - Emma Blount & Janina Sabalauskaite
Emma Blount has been working in stained glass since 1999, after graduating with a degree in Art for the Community (Public Art) from Roehampton University, London. In 2007 she won the Award for Excellence from the Worshipful Company of Glaziers & Painters of Glass, and in 2008 won 1st prize in the Stained Glass Association of America Conference Competition.
She started building her business bit by bit by handing out leaflets to Edwardian or Twentieth Century houses in London that she noticed had stained glass panelled doors and offered to repair/replace cracked panels. From here she gained some commissions friends and family by becoming known to as someone who worked with glass. This included hand painted motifs and family portraits, also sometimes using sandblasting/etching, to offering personalisation to people's homes either as part of panels or as separate decorative work.
She spoke how when designing for commissioned spaces, such as churches for example, it is important to be aware of the existing work as many people believe that designs and colours should complement their surroundings, as opposed to unlimited creativity creating a juxtaposition.
She gained more work by attending parties and talking to anyone she could about what she did. Through doing so she gained a commission to create a piece to fit in with an existing Whitefriar's window style to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill for St Martin's Church in Bladon, Oxfordshire. This was unveiled on 8th June 2015 by HRH Duchess of Cornwall. She explained how even after the Royal unveiling her work and income fluctuated, sometimes only making £2000 a year. Despite this, she explained that as an artist you will experience failures time and time again, and how it is important to not let this knock you back.
Her work has featured on Time Team, as well as Song's Of Praise. The latter work involved designing and making five windows for St Nicholas' church Radford Semele after the church burnt down. For this she used a combination of techniques including traditional leading and fused glass and covered themes including Rejuvenation.
Janina Sabaliauskaite was born in Lithuania in 1991. She studied photography, video, and digital imaging from 2011-2014 at the University of Sunderland. Her degree work was based upon identity and how as we age, our bodies mature gracefully with dignity and respect. Her work celebrates the body's rawness, the texture of the skin, and how it sags and wrinkles over time. This was inspired by a local woman called Carole Lusby who had the confidence to pose for Janina for a series of black and white photographs.
Janina exhibits her work locally. An example is 'Dirty, Pretty Things' in Newcastle 2014. This addressed domestic themes of sexuality, feminism, ageing and loss. She has contributed to other local art scenes such as SOLO in 2014-16. Other exhibitions include The Caravan Gallery in the NGCA (Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) in Sunderland, a mobile exhibition space that is accessible to public engagement. This included 'The People's Map' where locals could record places that used to exist on a map, helping the community to reconnect with its past and share memories. The 'Art Lending Library' also engaged with and made art accessible to the general public. Just like a book can be booked out at a library for an allotted time period before being returned, artworks (by artists working in a variety of different materials) could be loaned to people for a week.
She has also photographed local celebrity Sophie Lisa Beresford who described herself as 'My work is my spirit, my essence is my work [and]...I do art by any means necessary'. A series of energetic stance photographs were displayed as Sophie's exhibition 'Geordie Mackem Magic' for which Janina shot a cover photo (below) capturing her colourful spiritual rebirth.
Prefering to use an analogue camera and developing and processing her own film, she established her own dark studio in Newcastle Wood Recycling as well as at The Newbridge Project. Here she has taught local teens how to expose their own photographs.
Janina's photographs typically focus on exploring human action, social relationships, taboos, love, the blurring of gender, sexuality, identity, desire, and morality.
As part of #dysturb, the non-profit community she aimed to bring-to-light global issues occurring abroad that had not been reported/publicised on the news. Here she amassed images taken abroad and enlarged and posted them on billboards and urban spaces around Newcastle to help raise awareness. It is a prime example of how improvements in technology and access to telecommunication devices such as mobile phones, that anyone around the globe can document images and share them to report injustice, yet some are still denied this publicity due to the bias of media moguls. Awareness can lead to support and pressure from outside countries can help change the world for the better good.
'On Our Backs' was another of her exhibitions in Newcastle that focused / celebrated the first American magazine set up by lesbians for lesbians, as opposed to ones established by men telling lesbians what they wanted rather than listening to their needs. Real couples were portrayed how they wanted to be, instead of being judged by others, opening the way for the free acceptance that the majority of the world takes today in regards to sex, desires, and love.
This magazine also addressed more serious issues including international sexual orientation movements, censorship issues, and promoted safe sex, with one of the first articles on AIDS. An archive was made to celebrate this and material was amassed and displayed on walls in a narrow corridor-like space.
I attended 'The Unmarketable Art Market' in December and saw some of Janina's photography. It was suggestive BDSM. I remember thinking how that sort of thing would have at one time been shocking for the audience, whereas now, the media in the form of television, film, and social media, as well as social attitudes to sex have changed to the point where it's no longer considered so. As such, Janina could have made the photos hardcore and with little opposition or outrage, I doubt anyone would have cared. Instead she captured the topics in a soft and playful way using liquorice, apple juice, and washing powder balls, in a suggestive way. My questioning as to whether there is now any point in displaying such themes was answered by the fact that we are all so used to such themes that simple dissociated objects are now thought of in an entirely different way to what they would have been previously, hence the art makes us question the subject matter, as most art aims to and is the point in its existence.
