Art Walk Award: The Klara Winner

At the First Thursday Art Walk Awards on August 5 at the Hideout on First Hill, judges Joey Veltkamp, Jason Hirata and Mike Pham (plus the crowd, who cast the final votes) gave the five-hundred-dollar prize to Klara Glosova for her ceramic work Roller Skates (Worn by Olivia Newton-John). Veltkamp quizzed her in the winner’s circle.

Klara Glosova, Roller Skates (Worn by Olivia Newton-John), 2010, porcelain, 15 x 15 x 6 inches

Can you tell us about your inspiration? I became infatuated with Olivia’s beautiful white leather roller-skate boots in Xanadu. I watched the movie frame by frame to figure out the details. She wasn’t wearing tall white custom-made boots after all. She had regular white roller skates on with some kind of leather skins to slip over them. An illusion made in Hollywood! They were never real. They were always a fantasy.

Fantasy and imagination are the yin and yang of this piece. Some might argue that fantasy and imagination are the same. But as with fire and water, masculine and feminine, good and evil, I see them as fundamentally different: imagination is active, an ability to invoke and create inner images. Fantasy on the other hand is a conceit, something ridiculous and insubstantial.

Olivia’s thirty-year-old roller-skate boots – and the movie – affirm and perpetuate the age-old human fantasy of dreams coming true. At the same time, looking at the aging boots, you get a sense of disillusionment. I used time as a factor: to pull the veil off the fantasy, to see more clearly through the fog, to expose my reality.

Was this your first time using ceramic? Actually, second time. I made some porcelain garbage for my NEPO House show this spring. But yes, as far as ceramics go I’m a total novice. Luckily, the boots weren’t perfect either (after lying around for thirty years). Their condition matched my skill. 

Any fun plans for the money? Well, this morning I learned that my kids are each charging me 1 percent from any proceeds I make on artwork, so five bucks goes to Sidney and five to Blake.

Attend the next installment of the Best of Art Walk Awards on Thursday, September 9, at Unicorn on Capitol Hill.