D.C. artist Nancy Donnelly does landscapes, still lifes and figure studies, all traditional genres. But hers have an added aspect, because they’re translucent. Six years ago, Donnelly began working in glass, which makes even the thinnest of her works sculptural. “Transmission,” her show at VisArts at Rockville’s Common Ground Gallery, encompasses rectangular compositions with just a hint of depth, pieces in which certain elements protrude from the plane and works that are fully three-dimensional.

The last category includes flower arrangements such as “Bouquets,” whose simplified forms suggest pop art’s directness but whose colors subtly shift along the length of the glass fronds. Among the near-flat objects are nature scenes such as “Sea and Sky I” and the more abstract “Tribute to William Morris,” a homage to the Victorian-era designer and theorist that employs a subtle black and green palette. Perhaps the most striking sculptures are those in which well-rounded female nudes, rendered in bluish or greenish glass, emerge from contrastingly hued blocks. They’re metaphors for creation and liberation, making them pertinent not just to one artist who has found her medium.

Transmission on view through March 24 at Common Ground Gallery, VisArts at Rockville, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville; 301-315-8200; visartsatrockville.org."

This solo show of Nancy Donnelly’s glass art, including sculptural pieces and drawings in glass and on paper, depends on color and light for its effects. The show includes abstract glass plants and flowers, with prints and drawings that look almost casual but have relaxation, joy and a sense of humor at their center.

Over the last 18 months Nancy has put her artistic practice under the microscope. Nancy's glass is bigger and she includes her works on paper. She's incorporating aspects from in her current activities in her imagery, such as traveling in Thailand.

Earlier this year, DC Arts critic, Lenny Campello said of her work : 'Nancy Donnelly's new work takes the color stripes from the canvas of the 1960s giants of DMV painting and re-invents it in a fresh new approach to a 21st century dialogue in glass and concrete' In her work, Nancy strives for something like realism, but with respect for abstraction.

Trained as a painter, Nancy discovered glass as an art medium a few years ago. For her artworks in this show, she she is consciously bringing drawing and painting back into her work, working bigger, and melding glass with other materials, as well as making more art on paper. She describes her work as "trying and trying to say something without words."

A Capitol Hill artist and writer, Jim can be reached at ArtandtheCity05@aol.com

Nancy Donnelly is constantly reaching for meaning as she models and casts each glass sculpture—shaping a vision with her fingers while questioning the purposes as well as the forms that evolve through each step of the process.

Glass is just glass regardless of how pretty it is. It’s imagination wrapped in meaning that turns it into art. It’s the reaching for that meaning that makes the artist.

Glass itself holds much of the mystery. Nancy has to arrive at a mutual destination with the materials, which are both limiting and freeing. She is on a magical mystery tour, discovering the secrets of color as applied to glass: How green glass neutralizes the red hue of copper and lets the gold tints come through. And how painting on the back of the glass reveals the molded images from behind, using the glass surface as a canvas.

This is a natural approach for Nancy who began painting in the mid-90s, attending art schools in Seattle. Holding a PHD in Anthropology, she took a structured approach, studying the craft of painting and the science of color. Five years ago, she took a class at the Washington Glass School…and found her heaven.

Nancy continues to paint—she contributed two panels to fill the window spaces at the Eastern Market after the fi re— but finds glass, even more than painting, a melding of the technical and the emotional. “They have to come together.”

Schools can teach technique and craft, but only the student can supply the content. That is the essence of Nancy’s art: It’s in the reaching for meaning and creating a narrative.

The future for Nancy Donnelly? She is moving to standalone 3-dimensional figures, which are more sculptural— where you can extend your own sensitivities in an exchange with the substance of the figure.

Nancy is showing this month at Artomatic (on the 9th floor, just off the elevators).