Link to article / interview On Handful of Salt Website
Link to article / interview on Art & Art Deadlines blog
Link to article / interview on Art & Art Deadlines blog
Profile

Photograph by Karen Lamassonne
I was raised in New York State and earned a BFA in photography from Antioch College in Ohio. After moving to San Francisco, I became fascinated with found objects, and my interest turned to working in three dimensions. Casting became a fundamental part of my work in 1993 after teaching myself mold making in order to bring an idea to realization. In 2002 I took a lost wax kiln casting class taught by Matthew Szosz at Public Glass in San Francisco. The unique physical properties and technically challenging nature of glass motivated me to choose it as my new primary medium.
Over the years I have studied fusing (presently the main focus of my work), sand casting, cold working, printing on glass and vitreography (at Bullseye Glass Bay Area, The Corning Museum of Glass' Studio School, and The Pilchuck Glass School). I have worked as a teaching assistant for Paul Marioni (Pilchuck) and Matthew Szosz (Public Glass). Honors include: a merit grant and residency at the Vermont Studio Center, an Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, a Pilchuck Glass School John H. Hauberg Fellowship/Artist in Residence, a Corning Incorporated award, a full scholarship for The Studio At The Corning Museum of Glass and 5 Pilchuck scholarships. My work was selected for New Glass Review 25 and 39, is in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass, Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts in Switzerland, the Racine Art Museum and the Bullseye Glass Company.
For more details, please click this link to my CV.
Over the years I have studied fusing (presently the main focus of my work), sand casting, cold working, printing on glass and vitreography (at Bullseye Glass Bay Area, The Corning Museum of Glass' Studio School, and The Pilchuck Glass School). I have worked as a teaching assistant for Paul Marioni (Pilchuck) and Matthew Szosz (Public Glass). Honors include: a merit grant and residency at the Vermont Studio Center, an Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, a Pilchuck Glass School John H. Hauberg Fellowship/Artist in Residence, a Corning Incorporated award, a full scholarship for The Studio At The Corning Museum of Glass and 5 Pilchuck scholarships. My work was selected for New Glass Review 25 and 39, is in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass, Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts in Switzerland, the Racine Art Museum and the Bullseye Glass Company.
For more details, please click this link to my CV.
Statement
My studio practice involves investigating the physical properties of materials. This exploration results in work that connects process and concept. Certain themes and ideas preoccupy me and, like a musician, I explore these motifs repeatedly with different instruments, styles and tonalities.
Selected Themes, Concepts & Preoccupations
Paradoxes
Disclosure
Mortality
Intersection of the Arts and Sciences
Experimenting and Collaborating With Tools and Materials, by:
Paradoxes
- Unified opposites. For example:
perfect imperfection, ordered randomness, visible invisibility, preserved destruction. - Appreciating beneficial accidents and blemishes such as:
decay, bubbles, devitrification and chemical reactions. - The creative liberation achieved by imposing limitations on materials & working methods.
Disclosure
- Revealing secrets and what lurks below the surface.
- Substantiating the Invisible (for example: air, magnetism and time).
- Portraying things that are too slow, small, distant or inaccessible to see.
Mortality
- Memory
- Capturing fleeting moments
- Celebrating the ordinary
Intersection of the Arts and Sciences
- Studio as research lab:
documenting experimentation. Bringing a visual and conceptual work of art to realization by experimenting with materials and/or the opposite: experimenting with materials resulting in a conceptual work of art. - Observing natural forces, human behavior & their interactions with objects & environments:
artist as cultural anthropologist. Choosing materials and subject matter because of how humans relate to them on an every-day level and using natural forces as tools (for example: sunlight and magnetism). - Systems of logic and organization, archiving and/or distributing information, specimen display.
For example: studying, collecting and/or creating similar things whose differences become apparent only when grouped together (as in a field guide or museum display) so that one can compare them to each other.
Experimenting and Collaborating With Tools and Materials, by:
- Trying to stay in control while paradoxically also allowing them to surprise me.
- Using unusual substances and techniques.
- Achieving results influenced by how they react to each other and my involvement with them.