Maria Roosen (NL)

Maria Roosen - Blackberry boat (2009)
Stardust (2009)
photography Dirk Pauwels

Maria Roosen (b. Oisterwijk,1957, lives in Arnhem) makes drawings, watercolours and sculptures with various materials, but is best known for her glass sculptures. An iconic work in her oeuvre is Borstentros (2010), which she made for the sculpture garden at Museum Arnhem. This is a collection of hefty glass breasts in various shades of pink, which are strung together like a bunch of grapes.

Breasts often feature in her work, in many different colours, sizes and constellations, as well as glass buttocks, sperm and penises. Roosen attached three penises – in a range of sizes and considerably enlarged – to the trunks of silly pine trees at an earlier edition of Lustwarande: Jean, Pierre et Claude (2004). Her works prompt thoughts related to themes such as physicality, fertility, growth, flourishing, love and death. They are connected to her own emotions and express feelings related to the moment of creation. For example, some works are the result of processing grief, and others of dealing with heartbreak.

In everything Roosen makes, whether she draws, watercolours, works with clay, crochets, knits, embroiders or blows glass, craftsmanship plays a crucial role. The process of making is as important to her as the final result. And her fondness for glass is the result of the extreme nature of its creation. Glass is solidified energy, matter into which life has been blown. Its creation requires thorough knowledge, supreme concentration and extreme precision. One wrong choice, one wrong move, and it breaks. It is hard and vulnerable at the same time. Roosen has become very experienced in working with glassblowers and continues to investigate the possibilities of temperature, plasticity and colour. Each new work is therefore a journey of discovery that is about exploring and shifting the properties of the material. For example, for the 2009 edition of Lustwarande, Roosen made a work for the French pond, a rowing boat covered with dark-purple and black glass spheres that resembled blackberries, in various sizes, Braamboot/Blackberry Boat (2009). The result was so stunning that you thought you saw a glass rowing boat floating there.

Roosen’s work for STATIONS was both cheerful and surprising. A colourful collection of foaming beer glasses was arranged on two branches of two different trees that were within sight of each other. They were made entirely of blown glass – transparent foot and stem, golden yellow body and white head – and were patiently waiting on the branches for someone to pick them up and drink a toast to life.

This work was purchased by Museum Voorlinden.

Maria Roosen – Jean, Pierre et Claude (2004)
Lustwarande ’04 – Disorientation by Beauty
photography Peter Cox

Maria Roosen - Schön hell / Delightful (2021)
blown glass
13 elements
courtesy Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam
photography Gert Jan van Rooij