Steven Easton

Artist Statement 

My work is a collision between obsession with art history and fascination with nature. In the emotional debris from this messy train wreck, my portraits, figures, architectural fantasies, and other glass castings emerge, thrive and grow. While visions of Greek and Roman sculptures, Assyrian carvings, and Egyptian hieroglyphics dance like sugar plums in my head, it’s exciting to sculpt portraits that feel ancient and universal, instantly recognizable in context of the history of portraiture, yet vitally alive with a contemporary sense of identity. There have never been glass portrait castings on this scale, I’m doing something that is unique, now possible through technology made available by the Studio Art Glass Movement.

Trees are my people; I was always a tree hugger.  In forests serenity and inspiration finds me. Much of my figurative work in clay has morphed into depictions of “green men” and women, nature spirits cast in glass that looks like moss, chalcedony, agate, sapphire, and water. In these works, I combine architectural elements, bark textures, and classical references to develop organic portraits. I think of working in glass as making things out of jewels, casting diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. Glass is treasure. The potential of making art using a material that might last for thousands of years is thrilling because it is a link to sculptures that have survived from antiquity.

ARTIST BIO

Working with glass feels like fashioning objects from light itself. My vision is of a world filled with joy through connection with nature. The substance of my work is making things in my studio, attempting to create beauty. This is as my antidote to trouble in the world, and my anxiety. Glass is treasure. These new pieces are castings that feel like they are made from precious jewels - emeralds, tourmaline, sapphire and morganite. Their vibration is one of vivid colors that evokes happiness. 

“Lost wax” is a Bronze – Age technique which captures minute details like fingerprints, and bark, eroded rocks or the smooth surface of an egg. First my sculpture are made in wax. A high temperature plaster mold is cast around it. The wax is steamed out. When the mold is fired, the glass flows into it. Everything happens at 1600 degrees inside a kiln.

Eggs symbolize new life, rebirth, fertility, and hope. My architectural still – life tableaux sometimes use an egg to suggest the perfection of a specific moment in time, and the potentiality of change. Another theme that intrigues me is the pathos and emotional immediacy that can be found in a human face. Portraits are both distinctly individual and somehow universal, connected to art history and also boldly contemporary.

Trained as a glass major at Rhode Island School of Design from 1978 to 1983, my work is in the permanent collection of The Newport Art Museum, The Rhode Island School of Design, Corning Museum of Glass, and The Museum of Art and Design NYC, among others. My studio is in Pawtucket Rhode Island.