Friday 5:01 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

 Review by David Ferguson

One of the more fascinating alchemical tricks of the great artists I admire is the ability to transform medium into message. A trombone is a rigid metallic object, but in the hands and breathing of a gifted player, it sounds as fluid and evocative as flowing molten brass or water set on fire by the light of a setting sun.

Noah James Saunders sculpts with metal wires, a medium rarely praised for its softness and organic humanity, and yet his show this year “Ode to a Watering Hole” is awash in soft textures and gentle feelings. The sculptures are figures and faces of people drinking cocktails, smoking, flirting with each other.

If Saunders had drawn these lines on paper rather than across expanses of space, they would have a figure-drawing’s exuberance, the writhing energy of a barely contained pencil. In the air, however, they must also be structurally stable, which makes their feeling of swirling effortlessness all the more remarkable.

The layers of lines — some straight and fine; angular expressions of cheekbones and jawlines, others softly curled as the tufts of hair they depict — give the faces of the denizens of this bar a certain sweaty, world-weary quality, but also an emotional openness that you see in a summer-stuffed night room where everyone’s skin seems to shimmer with softness and faint sweatiness, and secrets are far too much effort to keep.

Unlike the blank-faced, rigid, styles of traditional portraiture, the viewer finds oneself wondering what these people would say if they could talk, what histories would they unspool? Tales of summer nights, perhaps, nursing the last few sips of a lukewarm beer, while a dream of love disappeared overhead like spreading wisps of Marlboro smoke.

Noah James Saunders’ work does that divine trick of bending tremendous feelings and forces into organic, deceptively soft-textured art. However, it’s like music by the Cowboy Junkies and other acts whose layers of pleasing, assonant sounds mask feelings wild and untamed enough to cut like flying metal, cut like wires.

Monday 7:27 p.m. ‘red thread’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”

Thursday 10:16 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Thursday 1:45 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”

Thursday 7:46 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Wednesday 3:02 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Friday 10:33 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”

Saturday 3:02 a.m. fused glass, copper wire,wood, gesso 11x12x1.5”

Saturday 11:00 p.m. ‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5”

Friday 11:11 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Sunday 7:27 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Monday 10:46 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Tuesday 5:02 p.m ‘ode to MZ’ fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 11x16x1.5” SOLD

Tuesday 6:57 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD

Wednesday 6:03 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Thursday 9:30 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD

Thursday 11:42 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Friday 5:01 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Friday 8:12 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Saturday 2:01 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD

Saturday 2:49 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

Saturday 7:42 p.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5”

Sunday 12:31 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 16x11x1.5” SOLD

Sunday 1:57 a.m. fused glass, copper wire, wood, gesso 12x11x1.5” SOLD

‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ Artist Statement

‘Ode To A Watering Hole’ - a series of portraits rendered in copper wire held fast between sheets of fused glass - portrays life among “the regulars” playing out in the local bars of Athens Georgia. 

The images presented in ‘Ode' are both a true innovation in my art and in the canon of wire sculpting. As noted by my friend and glass worker Christie Moody copper and glass have the same expansion rate,  This means that one can melt glass around copper without the glass cracking. After a few experiments, Christie and I realized that I could use hair thin copper wires to create ephemeral wire drawings preserved between sheets of fused glass. 

This innovation brought with it an explosive burst of creativity. Working with barely there wire allowed me to work swiftly and intuitively. As I did,  a distinct theme quickly emerged - the life we find in Athens’ local watering holes! I found myself putting into my art what I have always found fascinating - the ways in which the mood of a bar shifts from hour to hour. So I started creating a series of what I called ‘portraits of a moment,’ naming each work by the day of the week and the hour of the day. So Friday 5:30 is all about happy hour with large groups of people all winding down from a long week. Whereas Friday 10:45 is about dates and intimate conversations over ‘one more round’ 

As I delved deeper, I remembered the lovingly contentious debates about composition with my fellow German Expressionists inspired artist Art Rosenbaum. Both of us loved Max Beckmann’s work and Athens’ watering holes. So, I decided to build  the show around my late friend’s idea of sculpting the scene in the bar we were having a pint in. 

As the series developed, I made some unexpected discoveries. The fused glass raises the copper lines ‘off the page’ just enough to give them a dynamism found in relief work.  These reverberate the same way cave art does when viewed in flickering fire light. This discovery guided me and Joe Willey, who built the frames,to mount the works onto textured gessoed panels giving them a truly dynamic quality, resulting in what might be called contemporary urban Cave Art.

https://flagpole.com/arts-culture/art-notes/2025/01/15/noah-james-saunders-ode-to-a-watering-hole/