Van Cline earned a degree in design and architecture from North Texas University in 1976, and a Masters in Art in1977. She was introduced to glass at the Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina in 1979 and went on to study at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, where she earned her MFA in Glass Sculpture and Design in 1982. Van Cline’s inventive working process often combines hot and cold glass techniques, cast elements, and photosensitized glass into one piece. She worked with Kodak in the early ‘80’s to develop a positive photo emulsion to be coated on glass. She has taught at Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts, Kent State and University of Ohio in Columbus, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Rhode Island School of Design, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California College of Art, Oakland, Sheridan College, Toronto, Canada. She was one of the inaugural fellows at the Creative Glass Center/Wheaton Glass in New Jersey in 1983 where she helped develop a program to allow artists into Wheaton Glass Factory and was invited back as a Masterwork artist in 1990. She is currently active on their board. In 1987, she was the youngest to be awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Japan/United States Friendship Commission their Cultural Exchange Award, a six-month residency in Japan. In 1988 at the Glasmuseum in Ebeltoft, Denmark, she accepted an award, the Fujita Prize from the National Living Treasure of Japan. In 1992, she won a Visual Artists Fellowship from the Washington State Arts Commission. She exhibited at Aperto Vetro Venezia at the Museo Correr (Venice, Italy) in 1996. She was awarded the Grand Prize at the Glass Kanazawa Museum in 1998 in Japan. A large photographic glass installation was commissioned by Arts America, a branch of the United States Information Agency for an exhibition “Narrative Art in Clay and Glass” in 1993, which was first exhibited at the Taft Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio) and then traveled to fourteen venues in Southeast Asia. Her work is in many private and museum collections around the world including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery; the Corning Museum of Glass; Kanazawa Museum in Japan; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in Japan; and the Detroit Institute for the Arts.

 

For Mary Van Cline, time is the riddle of human existence. It pushes one forward and leaves one behind. It exists beyond clocks, but humanity is constantly trying to measure it. Its boundaries can drive one to despair; its passage heal. For Van Cline, time has done both, and she has chronicled the changes through her work. From her earliest work to her latest installations, her sculptures depict man’s wish to find a way to another time plane.

Like good literature, Van Cline’s work is rich in symbols which work on many levels. Ladders, sundials, hourglasses, flasks, arrows, clocks, all showing movement for Van Cline, evoke broader meanings as well, such as escape, movement between levels, transformation over time and transcendence out of the moment. The figures in her photos span the ages in their anonymity, while the very process of photography stops time altogether.

But Van Cline’s work is more than narrative. It invites us to find our own balance within the piece, both visually and spiritually. The architectural aspects – a house shape, a window, a chair – give us a familiar point of departure. However, we are quickly asked to accept the work on a metaphysical rather than a literal level. The figures interact with one another but appear not to be in the same space. Some are active, some contemplative. Those in the photos sometimes seem on the point of discovery or caught in strange landscapes. The figures in neon float in space. Over all there is a sense of serenity, a sense of time for healing and wholeness.

Van Cline’s latest work continues to call for a participatory response from the viewer. The increasing spaciousness within her pieces invites one in, to stop, to rest, to contemplate. But more than that, they ask us to look for changes in ourselves, to get out of our box, to cross the lines of our imagination. They ask us to let go of preconception, and to be, for a little while, in another space where time does not just stand still – it does not exist at all.