15th Glass Symposium in Nový Bor

I traveled with my father to the Czech Republic, to Nový Bor - where we had lived as a family when I was a child - The nostalgia of going back to that area was potent and I was such a pleasure to be there for creative work! This trip is coupled with participation in the 15th International Glass Symposium (IGS). My father and I used mold making techniques, coupling with the hot shop at Jílek Glassworks, a team of wonderful glass professionals with truly beautiful formulated glass colors - The work we made for the symposium combines themes in my work of material mutability, symbology, and the precedent of my father’s works, figurative sculptures about themes of power, violence, the absurdity of war, and the beauty and horror which combine in death. For me the collaborations with my father have been an expansion in utilizing symbology, while challenging the material limits of mold making in glass, dialoguing with his many years of experience. This was a fresh opportunity to process my feelings and reflections about current events, scenes of horror and fragile bodies victim to the force and weight of collapsed buildings under bombardment.

Some more of the things we made, and the process and fun we had while there, besides the professionalism there was a lot of fun and mischief with friends in this collaboration.

Dissociation at HI Space Gallery, 2024

Sebastian Llovera writes about the recent show at H.I. Space Gallery:

“The world that surrounds us often presents itself as something we feel separated from. The homogeneity of urban landscapes, driven by globalization, is something our brains take for granted; unnoticed as part of a mechanism to conserve energy when exposed to frequent stimuli.

Helena focuses on things we might never have noticed before. In Dissociation, she presents a compilation of her works from the last 10 years to the present. The series of paintings results from a multi-step process, where she uses mold-making techniques to capture textures from various materials found in the places she’s been. These textures, mostly from industrial materials, are reproduced with high fidelity and cast in acrylic paint, which serves as the medium for the final work. Her methodology combines complex mold-making techniques, requiring extensive technical knowledge, with intuitive, almost outsider aesthetics and methods. This makes both rational and intuitive approaches equally important.

The translation from the original surface to the casted version serves as a way to strip the material of its evident meaning, transforming it into something that appears identical to the original but in reality is not. This creates a sensation of contradictory beliefs, allowing her to acknowledge the contextual attributes of the materials while also glimpsing something beyond words—a perceptual experience of "the thing as it is" beyond conceptual frameworks. Most recently, the extensive time Parriott has spent with such materials has given her the ability to recreate such textures with a precision indistinguishable from the “real ones”, adding another layer of  fiction within  fiction.

In a natural progression of her practice, the Glimmering and Mirage series is inspired by popular building and decoration techniques seen in the streets of New York, and Brazil, where she currently resides. This series incorporates fragments of the previous Dissociation series, combined with found pieces of broken mirrors, in an attempt to engage with perception—a game that seeks to dissolve the duality of feeling like a separate entity from the world around us.

This ongoing desire for immersion in a world of textures and color has led Helena to create her Diorama pieces, which serve as prototypes for envisioning an alternate space where the textures, symbols and movement form the entirety of the environment.

Helena’s practice becomes a way to experience the world more holistically, where contradictions are embraced, and reality is not just what we see, but more. Through observation, time, layering, and color, her works take on qualities that feel both real and magical at the same time.

Artifacts: Inverted Waste

In a process I ended up caling “Inverted Waste” I developed a way to utilise the flattened, broken, or partial parts of objects discarded in my path as I walked through streets in urban zones. Often the road has perfectly flattened objects: cans, water bottles, cigarette packs, grates, etc. I would collect these objects, and look at their outlines, how they could have aesthetic use, and devised a painting process using them. At the time I was in a small town, with a little room I could use as a work space, some basic paints, and was able to buy spray bottles - I started using these pieces as resists to spray layers, I would layer new pieces in the composition, until arriving at a completion. The finished works from these efforts can be found here.

Through this spray process, when I lifted the flattened waste pieces from their use as stencils, I fount that they too were painted in beautiful and unexpected ways - there were small compositions painted on them, which I found really beautful and another co-part of the process to be shown. I photographed some of the most intriguing pieces to share -

Parbolic Construction with my Father

We live in an ecovillage that has commitments to preservation and permaculture innovations in building - One thing we have in abundance is the sun! There is a dry season lasting several months, in which there is uninterrupted sun exposure. This resource could be used to replace electricity for some processes, and also for binding plastic together - apparently a solar oven maintains around the temperature at which plastic can be fused. I know household waste can be used as a resource with art and functional processes, in single household and expansive models. 

My father Charlie was able to visit me here, and we set aside some time to construct a parabolic! A satellite dish, with metal inserts which can reflect light into a centralized point. More experiments will be able to occur with this technology soon.

Glass Bottles: Bioconstruction with light!

While in the building process, I have experimented with glass bottle modules, using basic cutting technology and silicone adhesive. I noticed the difficulty of using whole bottles - if you lay them on their side with the mouth and base exposed, the mouth is open to receive water and other life forms, and bottles tend to be more wide than conventional bricks. In this project, I cut 2 bottles, so each base could be joined and form the width of the bricks we used, constructing our bathroom, which were made with formed and dried red-clay mud. Color mixing, by combining 2 bottles has been an exciting innovation in the process, and I look forward to setting up production of various functional and sculptural applications on the land.

Life and Vitality in Brasil

I am currently operating between Seattle an Brasil, I have been living in a region of the state of Goias with my partner, Fabricio, since moments before the pandemic. I felt for a long time a strong curiosity for the place of Brasil, and entered here through work and the connection of a Capoeira learning process I have had for more than 10 years in my life. Discovering the richness of the place, and what it means to create food an life in this place, the ecosystem called the Cerrado. With the roads that look like velvet after it has rained. It’s a place of high elevation, with a dry season, in which there are plants with deep roots that are able to bloom in the driest of moments. For some time I have desired strongly access to a space to plant the nutrition and minerals that I consume.. this life experience is an answer to that desire! Having the privilege of plant seeds and create at least a part of my sustenance from the things I produce, this place has been an incubation space for artistic, musical, cultural, recycled material, and permacultural reflections, which I feel blessed to have experienced.

Glass House Assembly: Chatrč

At the age of 15 I attended the Železný Brod Technical Glass highschool in the Czech Republic, learning how to draw and design for glassmaking. My return to the artistic glass practice led to an invitation to come back to the school for a lecture and residency in using the layered hot mold technique I had recently been exploring. The result of the experience was the creation of 2 projects using pre-formed glass embedded in the mold, and blown with the technical crew in the hot shop.

The inspiration for this house format is the ingenuity of builders who use whichever materials they have at hand for creating structures. I have come to love texture and collage, and structures which unintentionally invoke collage artistry peak my interest. At the same time the idea of “constructs,” the way we use it in language and identity is a theme in the work. We have parts and peices of “meaning,” more or less anchored in cultural and individual logic, which we have sewn together, often dwelling in these “spaces.”

The trip back to CZ was the first in 15 years! I was reunited the glass and drawing professors who supported me while I was studying, and with my amazing friend Vladimira who sheltered me with warmth and hilarity during my stay as a young adult.

Coaster Collages

Small, simple exercises collaging materials is part of the development of my work and its logic. Thinking about composition, color, texture, context on the scale of bar coasters. Friends have sent me their coasters for these exercises. In general, I try to maximize all I can use from my process, and from the materials I create, and elements I collect for aesthetic potentials. These collages have been developed between 2016 and 2019.

Glass!

My father was a glassmaker. Over the years I began fabricating glass components in the syntax of the Dissociation work, to explore the medium and where it could take the concept of the work, into sculptural dimensions. Having been raised by a glass maker and studying the material since my teens, I have been compelled to continue my explorations.