New piece of Art
If you have never heard of Sabrina Knowles and Jenny Pohlman, it is time you have! Keep reading! Their collaboration spans over two decades and their artwork has truly evolved into something brilliant! At our office, we now have a one of a kind fantastic piece that we can’t help but blog about! It is the first piece like this in 5 years, and well, it took years of collecting and creating each of the pieces before it was ready to come all together.
They are inspired by their worldwide travels. As ‘seekers’, Jenny and Sabrina have taken numerous international journeys to places such as Ghana, South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, Mexico, Uganda, Botswana, Laos, and the list goes on, some trips spanning two months at a time. When they travel to many of the developing nations, they do so in a way as to absorb the essence of that area. From the politics and religion to current affairs, the architecture, but also down to the individuals and their stories. Their work has been featured all over and they have won numerous awards for their works of art.
The piece in our office has everything from Japanese pine cones, Chinese stones, walnut pods from Hawaii, West African beads, Horse teeth from Sayulita, Mexico, even parts of an old chandelier (that they purchased from a guy who has been on the TV show ‘Storage Wars’, who purchased a storage unit and it was one of the treasures inside!
Although I still don’t know how you even begin such an intricate piece, Jenny and Sabrina clearly have it down! If you notice in the upper right side, a bird looking behind itself. In Ghana, this symbol means “If there’s something in your past worth going back for, go back and get it.” It has become an informal, unifying national symbol and they saw it everywhere while traveling, painted on gourds, buildings, fences, posters, pop cans and thus for the first time in a piece like this, they added it. You will also notice the head in the middle of the piece, it is there to act as the spirit keeper. All of the glass work was done by Jenny and Sabrina, freehand, in their hot shop, and anything they didn’t create, they found and repurposed it. There is a lot of symbolism in the piece that reflect back to healing and rebirth from the glass root forms to the numerous pods.. they have truly touched on a language of symbols, that if you think about it, is a universal language understood by all of mankind.
We urge you to stop by and take a look! Notice all of the tiny details within the piece. We won’t worry if you are still standing there 20 minutes later admiring!
