"IN THE SHADOW OF..."- Chapel in the Hospital Nordlandssykehuset, Vesterålen, Norway

in collaboration with Espen Tollefsen

Client: Hospital Stokmarknes
Architect: BOARCH
Photo credits: Ove Aalo

Technique: Digital printing and airbrusj on laminated safety glass

In my work as a visual artist and photographer, I have always wanted to explore and challenge photography. In the work of combining photography and glass, Glasmalerei Peters has had great respect for my work at the same time as they have used their long experience with glass art and come up with solutions that have taken my work further. In the work at Nordland Hospital, they came up with new solutions and techniques I have not used before and I am brilliantly satisfied with the result.

Working in the workshops at Glasmalerei Peters is like entering a candy store for a visual artist.

- Espen Tollefsen, Artist

DESCRIPTION: The landscapes of Vesterålen have a strong presence in Tollefsens work. The minutely observed and interpreted landscape appears repeatedly in his oeuvre. The sense of seeing „the great in the small and the small in the great“ gives an entry into the reading of his photography. In his large scale work on glass, Tollefsen is concerned with the sense of a landscape, the appreciation of weather and the feeling of light. Scaling up the small details of a landscape that is so familiar to him into a large format creates potential for new interpretations. Further layers are created through the translation of these details and motifs onto glass, using printing techniques combined with traditional craft skills such as sandblasting and hand enamelling.

Tollefsen has produced two large scale works so far with Glasmalerei Peters in Paderborn. The first is installed in the St. Konrad Pfarrkirche in Falkensee near Berlin, where Tollefsen won a competition to complete a new glass wall in the renovated church. The second project is the glass recently installed in the new hospital chapel in the North of Norway. In the later work, Tollefsen has developed a technique with Peters which combines digital print photography with enamelling, sandblasting and etching. In this project they have worked with three layers of glass to create extra depth and dimensionality. The enamel colour, applied with airbrush, adds further intensity to the colours. Sandblasting and etching applied to details strengthens the highlights in the motifs, and is particularly effective as the light through the glass changes. The motifs in the design include small details of branches, straw and heather, photographed backlit, with minimal depth. These are again enlarged several thousand percent. The blurred areas and reflections suggest new landscapes and abstractions. These abstract landscapes are perfectly served by the new combined techniques.

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