|
Seekers® Glass Gallery presents the work of
Michael Sosin, who creates handblown glass vessels and sculpture. Asian motifs,
and the vivid colors and contemporary styles of his California home influence
his work. He has created a line of "Calligraphy Vessels," "Wabi
Sabi Vessels" and a series called "Obi" vases.
"I love the glassblowing process,"
Michael explains. "I was passionate about it from the moment I first
gathered molten glass from the furnace. There is nothing quite as exciting as
shaping and forming this hot material. It is a material that you can never
actually touch, and yet there is such a tender and intimate relationship with
the medium.
"The basic process of glassblowing has not
changed over the centuries. The few simple tools used to shape glass centuries
ago are still used today. I can only imagine that a person working with glass a
millennium ago experienced the same elation that I do from the smooth, fluid
symmetry in a gather of molten glass.
"There is tension that builds as one works
with a piece, knowing that it can be lost at any time. No piece is ever quite
reproducible or predictable. That is part of the excitement and mystery of
glass.
"My work emphasizes the process of blowing
and forming hot glass, using design elements that can be incorporated into the
molten material. The long tradition of working with the material in its ‘purest
form’ is compelling. My challenge is to add these elements into the pieces and
still maintain the integrity of the process.
"In every piece I create I seek to capture
the beauty that can be implicit in the simplest combination of form, line and
color."
Michael earned his Master’s degree from the
University of California, Berkeley, where he later taught. He subsequently spent
two years studying glass at the California College of Arts and Crafts in
Oakland.
In 1989, Michael established his own studio,
Pinzette GlassWorks, in Northern California. He has continued to study glass at
the finest glass schools in America, all of them world renowned. They are the
Penland School in North Carolina; the Pilchuck Glass School, near Seattle,
founded by master glass artist Dale Chihuly; the Pratt Fine Arts Center,
Seattle; and the Haystack Mountain School in Maine. In 1997 he was invited to
create a glass ornament for the White House Christmas tree.
His work has been shown at major museums,
galleries and juried exhibitions throughout the United States, including the
Oakland Art Museum and the Oakland Art Museum Collector’s Gallery; the San
Jose Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art, once as
Featured Artist; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, where he
was a Featured Artist; and the Renwick Museum of The Smithsonian, Washington DC.
|
