Review

"Sorry", Glass.

Tyler Kimball
Games

9 a.m.-5 p.m (but call for appointment)

Millennic Glass
1901 Wyandotte
Kansas City, MO
816.472.6266

Artist's site: http://www.tylerkimballglass.com

If you thought the only badminton-related art in Kansas City was on the lawns of the Nelson-Atkins, think again.

From now until the end of September,  at Millennic Glass in the Crossroads, you can find a veritable flock of birdies -- albeit on a far smaller scale. (Just remember to call ahead for an appointment.)

Add in several bocce sets and the giant Sorry piece pictured above, and it's not hard to see why Tyler Kimball titled his show Games.

Glass can be an unforgiving medium, easy to ruin when it's hot or break when it's not. But there is nary a false curve or marred expanse in Kimball's work, which testifies to his skill and the time he has spent honing it through study and practical application.

Kimball has always had a fascination with glass, sparked by the passage of light through the stained glass windows in his parents' home.  His first profession, though, was the shaping of words.

Through my college years, studying English, Creative Writing, at the University of Montana, I found myself turning writing assignments more into research about glass, writing about glass-working and its process through my stories, he writes. I continued to spend my spare time with a glass-cutter in hand. After college I got a job writing for a newspaper in Bozeman, Montana. But it turned out that when I wasn’t writing about glass, the writing no longer took precedence in my life. Each moment away from my job was spent soldering together new designs of stained glass windows. And when I started to discover fusing and slumping of glass, it became wildly apparent that my writing job was holding me back from my true passion of glass-working. So, at 24, I packed my bags and moved to where I could learn as much as possible about the medium, a place where the glass flows freely; Seattle, Washington.

During his years there, Kimball shifted from making stained glass windows to glassblowing. And over time, his style took shape:

I found my work began to show a unified theme of light. It’s no wonder that I found myself dwelling on the play of light through the material since it was what first captured my attention about glass as it poured through those beveled edges in my parent’s living room window.

The Games pieces, opaque and transparent alike, fairly glow with inner light. If he wished, Kimball could settle into a comfortable niche, making nothing else, and be well-remembered as a glassblower and an artist.

Games isn't "game over" for his development, though: My glass experiences refuse to rest and will always continue to evolve; whether it is births of new interests from classes taken or from bodies of work created, there will always be new avenues to explore and uncrossed paths to travel in my glass endeavors.

Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

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