Artist Statement

I find glass as seductive as it is challenging. As a particularly unforgiving medium, an artist has endless creative opportunities to design for its unique properties--the only limitations are their imagination and skill in working with the material. I've always been captivated by how one can use this enigmatic material to achieve virtually any form, hold elements in suspension, and achieve great detail or soft abstraction. Its flexibility as a medium is matched by the difficulty it presents in using it to execute precise work.

My current work is an intensive exploration of patterns, colors and transparency created through multi-layered cane and murrine (colored rods and patterned cross-sections of glass). While varied in composition and design, I most often create work within a series of graceful forms that I consider three dimensional canvases. The diversity in my compositions reflects my desire to constantly experiment and explore a variety of ideas simultaneously. Some themes in my work include windows into or through a piece, things hidden & revealed and extreme detail. Colors in contrasting and/or complementary tertiary tones woven into complex patterns challenge expectations of the amount of detail glass can carry and its place in the art world. My influences include textiles, ethnically distinct colors and shapes as well as the marine environment.

Creating my work begins with meticulous planning and designing of colors and patterns. After I pull the cane and murrine, I carefully compose these elements to design the final work, all days prior to blowing it. I enjoy this process of thoughtful creativity and the contrasting intensity of executing work in the hotshop, where the limited window to shape molten glass requires precision and urgency. The dual challenge of designing and executing complex work satisfies both the artist and the craftsman in me and I continually find it exciting to create a piece I've poured days over, watching it come to life in the fire.

Bloom

Recently I've been exploring a range of sculptural ideas which have evolved into a new body of work titled Bloom. Over the years I have experimented with the concept of precious things hidden and revealed and only recently found an expression for these ideas. Bloom are organic forms that reveal something unexpected and precious that reward close inquiry. Bloom are natural but non-representational and intentionally somewhat curious and hard to place. Since human brains are pattern matching machines ("oh, that looks like x"), I wanted the work to feel vaguely familiar but lack a single point of reference leaving it to the viewer to consider what it could be, how it evolved, what inspired it, what it communicates and what it could mean. Bloom are all one-of-a-kind works that vary in color, texture, interior pattern and overall form, but they are all of one 'species.'