Seekers Glass Gallery presents the work of
John Mc Donald, who creates handblown and hot formed glass pieces that include
paperweights, perfume vials and sculpture.
John is an emerging young glass artist from America’s
Midwest who began working with glass in 1984, when he was a high school
freshman. He describes his style as "self taught" having been
influenced by many of the contemporary glass world’s heavyweights as well as
his own trial and error experience beginning at an exceptionally young age.
We see his art evolving along sculptural lines, with his use
of the medium emphasizing color, light and form. Typically his pieces involve
transparent or translucent colors encased within clear crystal, allowing the
viewer to look within at a floating form of one or more colors.
His sculptural pieces have an alluring freeform shape that can
been viewed as a flame, wave or other asymmetrical form.
Primarily, John uses glassmaking techniques that are thousands
of years old, along with some of his own invention.
In his quest to explore new artistic possibilities of this
ancient medium, John uses bits of rare dichroic glass in many of his
pieces. (The word dichroic is from classic Greek: di means two and chroic means
color.)
Dichroic glass was developed in the 1960s for use in high
technology applications. To create a kinetic visual effect, John places bits of
various dichroic glasses on top of a colored gather of molten glass, and then
encases the piece in clear crystal. The intense heat sometimes causes the
dichroic coating to granulate, adding texture as well as flashing spots of
colors that appear to change or shift in hue when the viewer moves in relation
to the piece.
Mc Donald was fortunate to attend a high school with a
four-year glass program in its art department, which he followed with two years
in college developing his skills as a glass artist. Subsequently, he studied at
the prestigious Corning School of Glass and counts among his mentors Josh
Simpson, Charlie Correll, James Nowak and Lino Tagliapietra. After college he
worked at a local glass studio for seven years then left to establish his own
studio, Meridian Street Art Glass, in 1999.
His work has been shown at galleries and juried exhibitions
throughout the United States.
