Pittsburgh glass artist Kathleen Mulcahy was worried. She didn't know whether she'd be able to dream again.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette photos Kathleen Mulcahy and Ron Desmett, co-founders and artists-in-residence at Pittsburgh Glass Center, display their work in the exhibition "Truth/Beauty." Click photo for larger image.

Mulcahy and studio and life partner Ron Desmett started drifting out of the quiet daily rhythm of their Oakdale studio 15 years ago when they began working to establish the Pittsburgh Glass Center. That vision became a reality when its doors opened in the fall of 2001.

Although they had continued to make art during that period, their physical and creative energies were dominated by their responsibilities as co-founders and permanent artists-in-residence at the center.

With the center on its feet, it was time to return to the studio. But was the Muse waiting?

"I don't know if I have any new forms inside," Mulcahy told her husband. She needn't have doubted. Not long after that discussion, she says, she dreamt about three images, which she scribbled down upon awakening.

They're now part of a richly realized exhibition at the center of her work and Desmett's, "Truth/Beauty," the title taken from a poem by Keats. The artists will give a free public talk there at 6 tonight.

Kathleen Mulcahy with her piece "West Branch of the Susquehanna." Click photo for larger image.

Both artists exhibit engaging work that reflects new directions they've taken as well as pieces from accomplished ongoing series. Among the former are three glass and steel wall-mounted pieces, simultaneously delicate and substantial, that are the end-product of Mulcahy's dream.

In each, a large rectangular slab of weathered steel is covered with a slumped and etched pane of 1/4-inch plate glass to which are affixed individually created glass forms that sparkle with reflected and refracted light. Open areas in the frosted surface allow glimpses of the bluish, orange and gray surface below.

The result is a mysterious, beckoning quality like that of a steamed window on a rainy day, or of deep water. There's also something of the fleeting emotion of a memory.

Clear glass drops trail down the surface of "West Branch of the Susquehanna," inspired by years of canoeing, Mulcahy says. A "Trace" of glass spheres that curves across another surface is part gestural line, part recall of frog eggs seen in a pond. Mulcahy isn't trying to mimic specific things, but instead she tucks what she observes into a "form vocabulary" that she subconsciously draws upon.

It will be interesting to see where she takes these new works, perhaps integrating the blown forms more thoroughly into the other layers; or, breaking the rhythm entirely, fragmenting the glass cover, peeling it out into the plane of the add-ons. She might also find that the glass veil and its steely base have sufficient, if minimalist, power of their own.

	Ron Desmett with a his piece "Lidded Trunk Vessel #13." Click photo for larger image.

The bejeweled, movement-infused "Spinners," for which Mulcahy is known, stand in formal contrast to her newer work but come from the same determination, technical skill and gutsy machismo.

Where they capitalize on the dazzling vibrancy of glass, Desmett's handsome opaque, black "Lidded Trunk Vessels" challenge stereotypical perceptions of the material. They're made by blowing glass into molds comprising wetted tree trunks that must be pulled away while the glass is still molten, a spectacular technical achievement, considering the many overhangs and the split-second timing required.

They were losing four out of five in the beginning, Desmett says. Once, he got too close to the hot material while blowing a "Trunk" and an assistant yelled, "You're on fire!" Desmett replied, "Well, put me out!," unwilling to stop and lose the piece.

The new works are formally different but share the interiority, the intellectual pondering, that Desmett brings to his expression. If his "Trunks" are indebted to his ceramic skills, these draw upon painting and printmaking experience.

Desmett also uses altered plate glass -- slumped, etched, sand blasted -- in framed, layered works fed by notions of memory. But he interrogates the realms of the psyche, examining the ramifications of experience. Images, some personal, some clip art, are interspersed.

The viewer makes connections as he or she looks at the works from different angles and shadows shift and images are revealed or obscured. If "Cat's Cradle" conjures childhood and a kind of longed-for innocence, "Momentum" is a darker work.

"A Book: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle Age Man" is a show-stopper that seems to glow from within. The plate glass has been curved into the soft bow of open pages upon which the markings gain a textual connotation. Its presentation, on a stand in the gallery center, activates cultural attitudes about "book" -- knowledge, authority, gospel. An invitation and a confession; the self-portrait re-configured, although Desmett doesn't personalize it so specifically as to limit its applicability. It's a commendable fit of material and concept: a dual representation of reflection to both eye and mind's eye.

The artists' statement is prefaced by a passage by the poet Rumi that, in part, reads, "You appear; all studying wanders. I lose my place ..."

It's about finding something that makes you so passionate that you forget all else you've done, Mulcahy says. Like the way "we were so taken, so immersed, and so gathered by the vision of the Glass Center."

She's found it again in front of the glass furnace. "The minute I walk onto that floor and take that first gather, I immediately lose my place. I'm only right there."

"With this exhibition, we've come full circle," she says.

"Truth/Beauty" continues through Sept. 8 at 5472 Penn Ave., Friendship. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays. Admission is free. For information, call 412-365-2145 or visit www.pittsburghglasscenter.org.