For years I’ve had ideas about how photography and glass might work together to create unique images and objects—- hybrids that carve out new artistic ground. My recent work is a direct result of that effort.

This piece functions as a camera obscura and includes four main sections: a 27 lbs. kiln cast white glass sculpture; a blown glass, suspended light shade with 40W light bulb; an internal, all-glass diorama made of float glass, glass rods and tubes; an optical construction that uses a lens, a mirror and a ground glass focusing screen.

I have several new pieces under construction that use optics and image-forming lenses as critical components of the final pieces. 

Series in Progress: “The Lincoln Lecture”

Inspired by revisionists, and the idea that history can be revised to better align with one’s own beliefs ––– no matter how absurd and utterly insane those beliefs might be ––– I’ve begun a three-part series that blends fact with fiction and focuses on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Borrowing from the original photographs by Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and others the project rewrites history.  

One part of the project assumes that Abraham Lincoln was given a Polaroid camera for his fourteenth birthday by his good friend and mentor, Matthew Brady. From that day forward Lincoln became an avid image-maker, recording anything and everything that came his way. As my story goes, the series by Lincoln, “Presidential Polaroids” feature glass plates in the Polaroid format and were taken with his camera, affectionately named, The “Land of Lincoln.”

The camera is made up of three separate sections of cast glass that are held together by powerful magnets and is hollow when assembled. With a lens in the in the front and a ground glass at the back, the camera is a functional camera obscura and the viewer can see what the camera sees.

Polaroids by Lincoln   3 ½” x 5” glass plates

This cast hand and arm with optical lens, is part of the “Lincoln Lecture Series”  (only partially complete at this time).

PUZZLES

The puzzles represent my first attempt to combine kiln cast glass with fused enamel imagery (decals). Each puzzle piece is individually cast, fused with a decal, cold-worked, and is designed to be interchangeable with pieces from other puzzles, thereby allowing the meaning of the artwork to shift with the addition or subtraction of new content. Pull a puzzle piece and add a new one, and the narrative or context can begin to change. (The pieces are held in place with magnets)

“The Golden Girl”  2019, kiln cast glass , attached to a steel plate (20″H x 16″W x 1″D

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“The Girl in the Golden Gown”  2019, kiln cast glass, attached to a steel plate (20″H x 26″W x 1″D)

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“The Man of Many Lips”  2019, kiln cast glass, attached to a steel plate  (20″H x 16″W x 1″D)

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“One Becoming Two”   Kiln cast glass on steel plate  (22″H x 28″W x 3/4″D)

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detail (the white edges reveal the opaque glass underneath the fused enamel images)

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“Islands for the Colorblind”

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“The Thinking Man’s Son”

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CAMERA OBSCURAS

For thirty-five years I’ve been building cameras and optical devices and teaching workshops and classes in the same subject. This is my first all-glass camera obscura. The head is a single piece of kiln cast glass, the lens is made of optical glass, and the film plane (where the image comes into focus in the interior of the head) is made of  ground glass.

“The Camera Man”  2019, kiln cast glass w/ lens and ground glass, on a steel base 20″H x 12″W

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GLASS JEWELRY

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Included in my research of kiln cast glass I’ve created a series of wearable glass jewelry that incorporates either fused dichroic surfaces or hand painted oils.

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hand painted kiln cast glass 2017

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hand painted kiln cast glass popcorn