Glass menagerie

A walk into the Lowe Gallery’s William Morris show is like a peek into God’s tackle box. Morris is a glass artist with a sense of the epic whose human and sculptural forms dangle on rattan ropes that could hook a Jurassic carp. Morris in some ways evokes Dale Chihuly, who Morris once worked with and who is also represented in Atlanta by Lowe. Both artists contort glass into surprising new forms and command the enormous prices of innovators in their medium (Morris’ work at Lowe runs a cool $25,000-$950,000).

But where Chihuly revels in the brilliant colors, transparency and glossiness of the medium’s surface, Morris’ vessels and sculptures look like objects birthed out of the earth’s molten center or remnants of some ancient civilization. Their intense, dusky colors and imagery of Native Americans, corn, skulls and animals evoke cave paintings, Egyptian statuary and totem poles. They are as dense as Chihuly’s work is light. Morris’ distinctly un-glass-like surfaces suggest materials from stone to clay to metal, making them as earthy as Chihuly’s are ethereal. Chihuly’s fixation is sea life and flora, while Morris’ inspiration is more mythic, a kind of collective unconscious of animal and human totems.

The natural world looms large in the work, in sculptures of antelope, buffalo and an astounding variety of delicate bird, fox and animal forms seen in the exquisite “Mask Panel,” featuring 18 gorgeously rendered animal heads. Morris’ investment in Southeastern motifs can at times wobble precariously toward kitsch, as in the frowning Injun sporting long black braids in “Cabeza.”

It is, ironically, often the artist’s smaller works that best encapsulate the mix of the mythic and the capricious that gives Morris’ creatures their sense of life. A “Rhyton Bull,” the size of a loaf of bread executed in bronze, rests its surprisingly massive body on ballerina-dainty feet and carries a bandolier of antlers on its back, like a gaucho’s extra ammunition. Translating the exquisite delicacy of the natural world is what makes this eclectic show hum with purpose and will.William Morris: Comprehensive Survey of New Glass and Bronze Sculptures runs through Jan. 7 at the Lowe Gallery. 75 Bennett St. Space A2. Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. 404-352-8114. www.lowegallery.com.