Michchael Petry: The Touch of the Oracle

The Touch of the Oracle features three monumental site-specific installations – Golden Rain, Joshua D’s Wall, and The Dilemma. These artworks provide an opportunity for audiences to experience the work of Michael Petry, an installation-based conceptual artist that draws inspiration from art history, mythology, and contemporary culture. The distinct pieces relate and interact with each other and the visitors to the gallery creating an ambiance of sound and visual complexity.

While Petry is not traditionally… Show more associated with the studio glass movement, his creative sensibilities are stimulated by the medium of glass in monumental works. Unlike studio glass artists, Petry does not actually create his individual art objects, but seeks out highly skilled crafts people with whom he collaborates to animate his conceptual ideas. For these installations, he has worked with an inspired team of glass blowers to create works that require a high level of technical expertise.

GOLDEN RAIN

Golden Rain is an installation of 100 gold mirrored droplet-shaped glass vessels that reference the Greek myth of Danae. Petry invited 100 international artists to place an artwork, poem, object, or text inside one of the mirrored bottles, asking them to imagine being locked in a tower and having the bottle as their only means of communication. Petry then permanently sealed the mirrored bottles leaving their contents hidden but illustrated in the accompanying catalogue.

Golden Rain is like a welcome shower of nourishing rain in the dry California desert. 100 golden vessels, ranging from twelve to eighteen inches in length, are suspended from the ceiling and cascade toward the viewer in a rain shower formation. The rain vessels hang over Joshua D’s Wall, a field of glass stones, and engage in a visual dialogue with this second site-specific installation.

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