ASTONISHING GLASS ART HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
Today we are reveling in the astonishing glass art we found happening right now. From gigantic glass flower sculptures by Jason Gamrath, to slices of glass portraits by Loren Stump, to glass/rock boulders by Ramon Todo. Get ready for gorgeous glass!
JASON GAMRATH
Award-winning Seattle-based glass artist Jason Gamrath creates incredibly beautiful gigantic glass flowers. They highlight the beauty of the tiniest features of flowers which often go unnoticed. Their scale elevates their grandeur.
Gamrath hopes that all those who view his large-scale glass art will be able to appreciate the everyday, seemingly normative beauty of even the smallest of flowers.
Focusing primarily on orchids and carnivorous plants, Gamrath’s glass sculptures are remarkably realistic and detailed.
“The most beautiful, extravagant man-made object could never creatively equal the simplest and smallest naturally occurring life form. The purpose of creating this series on a macro scale is to bring to light the beauty that exists within the micro scale of nature.”
Glass has always fascinated Gamrath, ever since he was a child. He marvels and celebrates its reflective and transparent qualities as well as its fragility.
“Most interestingly of all, glass freezes a moment in time,” says Gamrath. “The tool marks and bubbles I force into glass will greatly outlive my physical self.”
Gamrath studied at the famed Pilchuck Glass School, founded by master artist Dale Chihuly. At age 17, he became a student of Master Glass worker Randy Walker, and served as his artist assistant for five years.
Gamrath also worked with Karen Willenbrink, and studied with Richard Royal, Ross Richmond, Preston Singletary, and Sally Prasch.
Now, a glass master artist himself, Gamrath says “I now consider myself an artist, only due to the fact that I have found mortal purpose in attempting to perfect and refine this mysteriously powerful form of expression. I am second a glass worker, as it has proven that immense skill and practice is necessary in order to make manifest the physicality of my imagination.”
Gamrath’s most recent exhibits, from this past year, have included enormous, life-like orchids that have been featured in: ‘Botanica Expressa’ (a show he did during the past summer), the Northwest Flower and Garden show at the Design Garden and many others.
LOREN STUMP
Self-taught artist Loren Stump, a native of Sacramento, California has been a stained glass blower for the last four decades. At first sculpting with glass in molten form, Stump has experimented with many types and forms of glass-art. But, his most recent creation really rocks!
Stump creates loaves of glass which, like loaves of bread can be sliced, but Stump’s slices are far more miraculous. Italians call these glass loaves murrini. They are made by carefully layering glass rods that, when sliced, reveal a painstakingly detailed portrait in cross-section.
“Madonna of the Rocks,” perhaps his greatest work, feels like a classic painting. Color, form and composition all rival the great masters.
Loren’s incredible artwork has been displayed or is currently on display at the Corning Museum of Glass, The Ertz Israel Museum, and the Kyokei Fujita Glass Museum.
Check out Loren Stump’s website for more.
RAMON TODO
Glass comes from rocks… specifically silica. But Japanese glass artist Ramon Todo rocks glass in a totally new way. Using volcanic rock, fragments of the Berlin Wall, and other little boulders as his starting point, Todo inserts slices of glass in the middle of their forms.
Juxtaposing fragility and stability, opacity and transparency, roughness and shiny smooth surfaces, Todo’s glass sculptures are beautiful in how uncanningly weird yet natural they look.
Challenging viewers to understand how two such unlike items can be made as one, Todo’s art is as much thought-provoking as it is simply aesthetically pleasing.
To create each piece, Todo first finds stones as he walks through various landscapes. For Todo, the stones he selects symbolize the history of the land. He takes out a slice and replaces the stone layer with a highly polished glass layer.
Todo shows us there is beauty in contradiction as he creates a totally new kind of Beautiful Glass.
Read more about Beautiful Glass, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Beautiful Glass Books Now, The Universe in an Orb of Glass -- Now and 10 Fine Art Glass Finds for Fine Dining Now.
Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Glass in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 10.11.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!
PHOTO CREDITS:
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Glass Flower.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Glass Flowers.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Jason Gamrath. Larch Orchids.
- Photo: Courtesy of Loren Stump. Glass Loaf.
- Photo: Courtesy of Loren Stump. Making a glass loaf.
- Photo: Courtesy of Loren Stump. Glass Loaf.
- Photo: Courtesy of Loren Stump. Glass Loaves.
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: “o.T. -spitz.”
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: “Basalt - cn.”
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: “o.T. - Trapez #02.”
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: Glass inserted into rock.
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: Glass inserted into rock.
- Photo: Courtesy of Art Front Gallery. Ramon Todo: Glass inserted into rock.
