(Pink Whispers by Mel Archer)
On two-and-a-half acres of sagebrush and juniper trees outside Redmond, Mel Archer and Colleen, his wife of 55 years, live in an art-filled home overlooking the Deschutes River. Nearby, a low building houses a studio that feels equal parts sanctuary and engine room. Three kilns anchor this room of 1,600 square feet. Nearby, shelves carry a confetti parade of small, labeled tubs — more than 2,000 custom blends of colored frit (crushed or ground glass that can be powdery or of coarser textural bits) within easy reach. This is where artist and retired cabinetmaker Mel Archer practices his favorite sentence about creativity: “Art is a verb.”
Archer is no stranger to the study of art, having attended various art colleges. In addition, years of designing and building high-end cabinetry for his Pacific Design Inc. company tuned his eye to proportion and detail. Commissioning glass for clients piqued his curiosity, so he enrolled in a string of classes at Bullseye in Portland — concluding with Painting with Light — and the path was set. “After that, I knew I must work in glass,” he says. When Archer began, fusible art glass was a relatively new chapter in studio craft, with Portland’s Bullseye Glass Company pioneering reliable formulations beginning in the late 1970s. Archer studied with glass artist Roger Thomas and learned from the trailblazing techniques of Kathleen Sheard. Fused glass, unlike paint, blends in the kiln. Color comes alive not under brush pressure, but under time and heat, which means each choice is a surprising wager with fire.
Artists worldwide have since explored the possibilities of fused glass, but over a period of six years, Archer embraced the slow science of building a very personal palette. Archer’s studio reads a bit like a laboratory — measured blends, logged formulas, test tiles — yet the outcome is anything but clinical. It’s atmospheric in the vein of celebrated impressionists. You feel dry sage even if you can’t touch it. You see river light and gentle sunsets in the carefully chosen layers of glass.
Archer quickly recognized the kinship between impressionism and frit. If Monet built radiance from small, adjacent strokes, Archer found a glass equivalent: build ambience and settings from specks. The process is a patient kind of choreography. Each composition begins on a sheet of white glass, where Archer places elements as a painter would lay down basic colors on a canvas. The first firing at 1,485 degrees sets the tone — edges round, particles knit, and certain textures soften into the suggestion of brushwork. Then the studio’s essential ritual: place, think, adjust, and fire again. Some works return to the kiln half a dozen times, each trip clarifying what should recede and what should come forward.
The subjects shift between luminous still lifes and wide, high-desert vistas. Archer created a still-life pear using the frit he created and earned recognition as a top-20 finalist in the 2008 Bullseye’s international Emerge competition, where he competed against top glass artists from all over the world. Landscapes, meanwhile, indulge his love of Central Oregon light. Stringers whisper into grasses; mottled blues deepen into river current; a sky and landscape of fall trees become a chorus of celebration.
If there’s a craftsman’s backbone to the work, it shows in the way Archer logs formulas and tests hypotheses. A lifetime of joinery gives the pieces their quiet precision. But the artist in him makes room for surprise. He embraces that collaboration, teaching students to plan carefully and then to welcome the moment when heat teaches its lesson. “The world doesn’t need another watercolor — or another piece of fused glass,” he says with a smile. “What matters is the creative action inside the maker.”
Community has always been part of Archer’s creative life. Archer has been the president of the (very active) Board of the Dry Canyon Arts Association in Redmond for four years and has been key in moving the organization from 30 members to a current 300 and growing. His dedication for the organization to gain a community art center and permanent space for classes to bring the community closer together became a reality this past December.
Retirement from cabinetry didn’t slow Archer down. With more time in the studio, more time to lead and guide various committees and boards and actively making art a larger part of Redmond’s elementary school system, he is as busy as ever.
See Mel Archer’s work on display throughout the month of June at the Dry Canyon Community Art Center at 415 SW Sixth Street in downtown Redmond, or join him at the Art Center for a celebration of his work during First Friday, June 5, between 5-8pm.