Totem Press : The New York Sun 08/03

Australian glass artist Elaine Miles says she doesn't mind if her pieces get broken; in fact, she encourages touching, handling, and moving her designs.

At Ms. Miles' first international show "Visible/Invisible", which opens today at Totem, a series of glass objects and shapes hang from the ceiling, Ms. Miles, who was in the gallery/store yesterday helping to set up the exhibit, said she felt that the chiming sounds passers-by make as they brush past her 50 strands of dangling glass boxes are just as important as the forms themselves. She wants viewers to use their senses of touch and hearing, as well as sight, in exploring her work.

Ms. Miles, who has had three solo shows and more than 30 group shows in Australia, has two distinct bodies of work. Her commercial series consists of colorful hand-blown vases boxes, bowls, and trays - functional, but also deliberately inexact, uneven, and often apprearing to be on the verge of collapse. Many of the objects look as if the air has been sucked out of them. Their sides artfully ripple, droop, and twist. Her commercial objects will be for sale at Totem throughout the exhibition. Her "Ripple Bowls" and "Flattened Vases" are priced at $70, while her "Textured Bowls" and "Hedge Series" vases cost $400.

Her conceptual art series consists of hanging-glass installations such as the "Containers for Space" currently showing at Totem. These will be available for purchase later in the summer and are priced at about $2,000.

Ms. Miles studied math and science in college in Australia, but quickly became disillusioned and quit her studies to work at a florist in her 20s. She said that the experience of putting together bouquets and eyeing the ways that various colors and forms complement each other shaped the way she sees and interprets the colors of her glass today.

Also formative for her were six months she spent living in an aboriginal community in Australia. The aboriginal art she saw led her to experiment with more random, repetitive, and organic textures.

Ms. Miles, who just finished making a recording of meditation music using her bowls (pitched at three different octaves) as the primary instruments, hopes to incorporate her glass objects further into her spiritual interests.

"When we touch objects, we leave an impression on it," she said. "But it also leaves an impression on us."