PERRYSBURG – When I interviewed Kristine Rumman and Adam L. Sanzenbacher their work was still in the
staging area at River House Arts. On a table in the back room, small pieces of molded and cut glass
landscape were still emerging from boxes … much like artists’ young careers.
The River House show, States of Matter: the Human Animal, is their first exhibit of a large body of their
work, and that work is largely a result of the last couple months of work.
Paula Baldoni, the gallery owner, was taking a leap of faith in hosting an exhibit of their work.
Baldoni was inspired to give the young artist a show when she saw two of the first pieces to emerge from
their still new collaboration at the Toledo School for the Arts. She said she was pleased to find young
area artists challenging the usual in a media so connected to this area.
They take glass, she said, to places it has never gone, and integrate it with unusual materials.
The story of Rumman and Sanzenbacher is rooted in the Glass City. In his case some of his ceramic
sculptures are made literally from the city’s dirt.
Both studied at Bowling Green State University, though they didn’t meet there. Rumman graduated in 2008,
and Sanzenbacher studied at BGSU for a couple years before going on to Ohio State, where he graduated
in 2010.
He found his way back to Northwest Ohio, and she continued to study and teach in the Czech Republic and
Seattle.
The artists met when she returned to Toledo. He was living in a rambling, over-100-year-old house in
Toledo Old West End with a number of other artists. She had a close friend who also lived in the house.
They were brought together, she said, by shared aspirations and a similar "level of
seriousness."
When Rumman entered his number in her phone she included the note "of the like-minded."
Hearing this detail for the first time during the interview, Sanzenbacher laughed. After a few
conversations about their materials and concepts and how they overlapped, he said, they decided they
should do some work together.
But that collaboration was limited to talk for a while, talk and some sketches and models.
Rumman was still unpacking the boxes she’d sent from Seattle. "I had my whole life shipped back to
me," she said."
The work she did out there was inspired by the mountains. "It was the first place had lived that
had terrain," she said. But it was "unfinished."
As one large piece emerged it particularly caught Sanzenbacher’s attention. He had created a vacuum table
for creating plastic molds. They started making molds of Rumman’s forms. The result was the work Baldoni
saw earlier this year.
They also began to sand cast pieces, then slicing them into small landscapes then arranging them
together.
The glass came from a sample box from glassmaker Pilkington passed along to Sanzenbacher.
It’s just an example of the array of material Sanzenbacher has brought together in a warehouse. "I’m
fortunate to know people who are generous with the things they are going to throw away and deposit them
on the porch."
"We got to play with this industrial architectural glass with all these coatings and surfaces so we
started integrating this industrial material with these organic forms," Rumman said.
This speaks, she said, "to man’s desire to manipulate their environment and how we have moved
farther from experiencing the world directly."
Sanzenbacher has included pieces from his own Pelt of Achievement. These are, a gallery statement
explains: "A series of richly hued plastic trophies topped with finely cast crystal fur-pieces. The
plaques are designed to reward us for our ability to develop ‘the tools, techniques, and technologies
which, in turn, have distanced us from our closest evolutionary ancestors.’"
The States of Matter is on view through Nov. 2. A closing reception will be held Nov. 1 from 6 to 8 p.m.
