The Melting Glass Company

mail@meltingglassco.com

nyegm@aol.com

www.meltingglassco.com

Artist's Bio

I began working in glass in 2000, after working many years in construction administration. I started out blowing glass and then moved into fusing and kiln-casting. I have worked at both Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY and at Brookfield Craft Center in Brookfield, CT. My studio is an old shed at the rear of our property in Pound Ridge, NY.

In college I trained as a medievalist and developed a serious interest in how the artisans of the time tried to capture light and then used it to reflect the wonders of the universe. Optics was a heavily debated topic among the medieval philosophers as many saw light as revelatory of the divine. For me, it was more about light streaming in windows and radiating, sometimes pulsating, on stone floors giving the surrounding world a shimmering sense of intensity.

In working with glass, my main goal is to create a sense of balance between color and form. I look to many 20th century artists for direction: Matisse, Newman, Flavin, Judd and Kelly. I also find rhythm in nature and try to recreate it. Rhythm is all important. It is the pulse of the universe. It is how we breathe, how we remember things. Rhythm is one of the two essential components of music, the other being tone. I see my work as making music with glass, using color as the tonal component. One can get lost in glass as one can get lost in the tones of music.

I love glass as a medium. It changes shape only at very high temperatures, then once cooled, it does not bend. If asked to, it shatters. It is full of the contradictions one finds in the struggle to make sense of life. It is opaque and translucent at the same time. It is solid, yet it can be seen through. It is strong, yet it can break.