Danny Lane How to Spend It.Pdf
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CLEARLY A Danny Lane made his name as an avant-garde glass artist 25 years ago. Today his vibrant, technically challenging and, some say, undervalued work is attracting both private and corporate fans, says Helen Chislett. Portrait by Jonathan Root. eeting Danny Lane in his studio – a melting “shish-kebabed” on to steel rods. When tightly com- pot of glass-making, steelwork, woodwork pressed – he uses the metaphor of parking a London and engineering – it strikes me he is a throw- bus on each one – glass is hugely strong, 20 times more back to the medieval times he so admires. He so than concrete. Twenty-five years ago, he began mak- would have been in his element helping to ing furniture this way, producing jagged-edged tables Mbuild the great cathedral at Chartres, for he is an artist who with stalactite legs and chairs that appeared to have also understands craft and believes in pushing the technology been carved from the palace of the Ice Queen. It was a of the day to its limits. Neither has he lost any of his passion style popular with glamorous collectors such as Mick for the material through which he first found fame: “All Jagger and Elton John and a technique that was soon materials resonate within us on some level. Clear glass copied around the globe. throws no shadow so it baffles perception; it does not appear However, in the 1990s Lane began concentrating less to be substantial. Glass is a poetic and phenomenal mate- on functional pieces and more on large-scale sculpture rial with a structure that is quite mysterious, within which – huge statement pieces such as Parting of the Waves at it holds many reflections. We associate it with fantastic Canary Wharf and Veil for the headquarters of British spiritual qualities such as cities of crystal. The alchemists Land. As his friend and associate Theo Theodorou sug- used to talk about ‘material prima’, the clear, invisible sub- gests, Lane is hard to compartmentalise: “His work has stance with which the universe was made. It is not my an ethereal beauty that inhabits a sphere that is rooted in perception alone: glass really is a magical material.” art but is created in the tradition of skill, technique and Lane made his name developing a technique whereby artistry.” This is as true for the objects he produces today layered industrial float glass is cut to shape, drilled and for the domestic environment – such as tables and chairs Main picture: Danny Lane with glass elements from his installation Colourfield, £65,000. Below: Lane’s coloured-glass Goldfish, 2006, £19,500. 00 – as for the sculptures he produces for public art collec- tions or heavyweight corporations. There is something of the rock star about Lane, a char- ismatic figure with real physical presence who inhabits an ego as big as Mount Rushmore. There is never a ciga- rette far from his lips or, for that matter, some well-chosen expletives. Right now he is full of evangelical zeal for the new creative direction he has embarked on. He has spent two years and £200,000 of his own money developing a new glass-making process and he wants us all to wake up and take notice. Forget industrial green. This new work is an explosion of colour – a throwback, perhaps, to his acid- soaked youth in his native America. Walk into his 15,000sq ft west London studio – adjacent to the site of the old Rolls-Royce factory – and at every window are massive discs of solid colour, from saffron to amethyst, indigo to crimson, primrose to powder pink. The floor is a trail of rainbows, an unbelievably pretty sight in such a hard-edged, macho environment. For producing coloured glass to this size means making it yourself (the industrial sort was always bought in), so Lane now has a team of technicians to run the two furnaces, large kilns and forge with power hammer, industrial float glass machinery, wood workshop and steel shaping facilities. He compares himself to a musical conductor: “This is my orchestra, but I have a lot of virtuoso violinists playing for me.” It isn’t essential to understand the process by which glass is made, but what he is keen to emphasise is that this is a radical new method that makes it possible to produce pure colour in glass in something to say if you can get the mind out of the way. Art “It is the fact that I follow a studio tradition rather than having designs is not just an entertainment, not simply luxury goods – it is something that gives nourishment to the human soul.” independently manufactured that distinguishes me from many of my peers.” However, when he left Central, it was Lane’s pragmatic streak that drew him back to glass: “I was an OK painter but I was inspired by the medieval view that does not dis- tinguish between making a table or making something to hang on the wall: art is a quality of life, a way of living. I was very taken by the work of Gaudí, an artist and archi- tect who had also made forays into applied art objects such as lamps and tables. That’s what got me started.” The step from college to Ron Arad’s then design emporium One Off, in London’s Covent Garden, was a surprisingly swift one. “Ron really put a lot of people on the map – he gave artists such as Tom Dixon and myself solo shows and, through him, I also exhibited at Milan. There was so much fresh blood coming out of One Off that people were describing it as the reverse invasion – from Hadrian’s Wall down to Rome.” However, he left Arad’s stable within three years, deter- mined to plot his own path: “I did not want to run a factory; I wanted to make unique pieces. When I make an object, I follow an easel technique. I develop it organically in a studio, adding and subtracting, looking at it as it develops, finding spontaneity in the process. If I could write down how to make something and ask someone else to do it for me, it would not feel real to me. It is the fact that I follow a studio tradition rather than having designs independently manu- factured that distinguishes me from many of my peers.” The split with Arad was Lane’s choice and one that he made final. However, it turns out that One Off was not unconventional size and thickness. “Colour Top: Lane’s Light Relief windows, he discovered at Burleighfield surpassed so aptly named – in fact, it spawned an army of shops speaks directly to the soul; it bypasses the 2007. Above left and right: anything he could have imagined: “I went and galleries similarly dedicated to a seemingly insatiable mind. I see it as a peg on which to hang all Leviathan, 2007, and Ulmus straight into very deep and genuine teach- appetite for 20th century design. Arad and Dixon have kinds of new creative possibilities.” Impudicus, 2007, both for The ing from an artist who also had an incredible become huge stars, but there are other supernovas now Lane was 20 when he moved to England Red Mansion Foundation, London. knowledge of history, so he would take us on in orbit – names such as Marc Newson and Zaha Hadid, from the US in 1975. As a teenager he was these big cathedral crawls around Europe. the former setting the world auction record for a living raised on “protest, flower power, the drugs culture and, of Through Patrick, I began to really understand what art is designer with his Lockheed Lounge, sold by Christie’s in course, music”. He believes it was the right time to leave: and what it can be, with none of the cynicism you often October 2007 for £748,500. (It is worth mentioning that “The hippie movement was over – everything in the US was find in the design and art world today.” in the same sale, Christie’s also sold three pieces by Ron becoming flat and dreadful and I was looking for a way out.” The year with Reyntiens was followed by a summer Arad: Re-inventing The Wheel for £90,500, Big Easy Volume Perhaps not surprisingly, the catalyst for escape was a six- school at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in II for £94,100 and Two legs and a Table for £120,500.) month jail sentence for marijuana-related offences. More Oxford, followed by a foundation course at the Byam Shaw If ever Lane feels a trace of bitterness at being excluded surprisingly, was the escape route: a year at an independent School of Art in London – “I was one of the last people to from the party – the one that has seen prices for the work art school, Burleighfield House in Buckinghamshire, then draw Quentin Crisp; he made a couple of nostalgic appear- of some of his peers go into the stratosphere – he does a run by Britain’s most eminent stained-glass artist, Patrick ances there as a model.” Lane’s degree was in fine art at the good job of keeping it under control. “The couple of years Reyntiens, the man responsible for transforming John Central School of Art & Design, where he was taught by the when I collaborated with Ron were a real growth period Piper’s stained-glass designs for buildings such as Coventry artist Cecil Collins, who was also the author of The Vision of for me – a powerful jet stream of publicity.