A collision of past and present, tradition and innovation – Leckie Gassman smashes them together as never before in his new exhibition Cold Cuts. Greco-Roman vessel forms are made with a new and technologically driven process inspired by one of the most difficult and oldest wow-factor techniques in glass. His unconventionally but painstakingly constructed vessels are brightly banded canvases for freehand engraved images that narrate the dynamic tension between dualistic concepts, double meanings and ironies.

Incalmo, in the Venetian dialect, means to graft two separate parts together – it also means ‘calmly’ (calmo). In the field of glass, it is foremost a traditional and advanced technique of fusing together two separately blown glass hemispheres, typically each of different color, while they are still hot. Precision is key; diameters must be exact, and the glass formulas must be compatible so that the contraction during cooling happens at the same time and rate, thereby maintaining the bond. At its simplest, the results is a unified vessel of two distinct colors, with a crisp line dividing the two. This incredible feat of glassmaking skill has become a beneficiary of technological progress, radically changing the process while emphasizing its essential effect. In the past few decades, advances in kilns, cutting tools and chemicals have allowed artists like Leckie to modify the traditional process to produce a previously unimaginable abundance of incalmo within a single large object. Instead of relying on finicky hot connections, cold tubes of glass are cut into bracelet-like bangles, stacked, joined and fused in a kiln before being picked back up on a blow pipe. Chemical bonding of cold elements can further amplify the effect, as in Leckie’s vessels, where the tops and bottoms are made separately and assembled. Where once a three color incalmo would have been an amazing feat to achieve with the hot process, quintuple incalmo - and well beyond - is now perfectly achievable, as Leckie demonstrates with Cold Cuts.

In Leckie’s new series of vessels the bounty of incalmo is riotously overwhelming. What few broad areas of solid color the artist allows, he covers with his spontaneously hand-engraved imagery that develops this new work’s dualistic theme. For example, while the pineapple is a traditional symbol of hospitality, in modern subcultures when it is turned upside down, it is an invitation to partner-swapping. Leckie extends his theme with upturned cornucopias, clowns who terrify and entertain, and a romanticized waterscape titled ‘Flood”. The engraved areas are rubbed with car enamel to create instant contrast as in the well-defined images on Attic pottery with their narrative bands. Common to all images is an irreverent juxtaposition of the historic with contemporary.

This body of work is a love letter to progress and the celebration of ever-evolving human ingenuity; new tools, new processes, allow for new vivid expression - like never before.  Leckie’s message is clear; be fearless, do not stand on ceremony, be no slave to old ways – innovate to allow tradition fresh life.

-Damon Crain