Warren Carther

Last updated
Warren Carther
Born1951 (age 7273)
Education California College of the Arts,
University of Manitoba, BFA.
Known forGlass artist

Warren Carther RCA (born 1951) is a Glass Artist based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His educational background includes study in glass blowing at the Naples Mill School of Arts and Crafts, New York (1974), glass art at the California College of the Arts, as a student of Marvin Lipofsky. [1] During his early career (1979-1986), Carther's love of architecture inspired him to create sculptural works that were not for architecture but were in homage to architecture. His international works are many, often featured in airports, corporate and government buildings. [2] Carther is best known for his large-scale glass sculpture and innovative approach, including his creative use of dichromic glass, acid-etching and abrasive glass carving in his works. [3] Most notable works include Chronos Trilogy, Hong Kong (1998) and Euphony, Anchorage International Airport, Alaska (2004). Carther's work has been published in many books and magazines, among them; International Glass Art by R. Yelle [4] and Colours of Architecture by A. Moore. [5] His awards include; The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's the Allied Arts Medal, Award of Excellence, the Allied Arts Medal (2007), [6] and The Ontario Association of Architects Allied Arts Award, for innovative collaboration with an architect for the Canadian Embassy, Tokyo (1992). [7]

Contents

Biography

Warren Carther's interest in glass as an art form began with blown glass. In 1977, while a student at the California College of the Arts, in Oakland California, Carther began to envision creating enormous walls of sculpted glass. He soon realized that the architectonic scale he was seeking was not possible at the end of a blowpipe, therefore in order to achieve the scale he desired, he would have to push glass in new ways, beyond what had been considered in the past. [8] Thus began a long process of experimentation and discovery in technique and structure, which led to the work he currently creates. It is Carther's aesthetic vision, combined with an understanding and emphasis on the structural qualities of glass, which has enabled him to create sculptural works of unique form and immense scale. His interest in working large, sculpturally and within the architectural environment has led him to develop techniques which produce work that defies categorization and at times, blurs the boundaries between art and architecture.[ citation needed ]

Euphony, Anchorage International Airport, Alaska, 2004 WarrenCartherEuphony.jpg
Euphony, Anchorage International Airport, Alaska, 2004

Statement

Carther believes that art is an essential component of architecture and that the lives of human beings benefit significantly from art that they encounter in their daily lives. His understanding of this drives his desire to work in the architectural environment.[ citation needed ]

Carther's ambiguous, multi-layered themes serve to assist the architectural environment in defining a sense of place. All of his work addresses, in some way, the idea of the interdependence of human beings and nature. They represent our innate desire to comprehend the world around us; to look beyond the rational and the visible; to reveal some essential truth about the world and our place in it.[ citation needed ]

Innovation

In 1972, when he first became intrigued with the notion of working in glass, it was not what he had seen that excited him but what it was what he had not seen. At a time when all other art forms were changing, glass, it seemed to him, was not. He wondered why so few artists were exploring a material, which was capable of so much. After becoming aware of the, still very young, Studio Glass Movement in the USA (Studio glass), he studied glass blowing in New York (1974) and California (1975–1977), Carther returned to Canada to explore the material on his own.[ citation needed ]

He wanted to work sculpturally in glass on a very large scale and within architectural environments. Not wanting to accept the structural and aesthetic limitations of stained glass, he began experimenting with techniques such as acid etching and abrasive blast carving. In 1981, Carther came to the realization that he did not need lead at all, that if he worked with thicker ¾ inch plate glass, he could carve deeply into glass with abrasive blast and not compromise the structural capabilities of the glass, allowing him to work at almost any scale. He also began to fire glass enamel onto the plate for colour. This method of working became his primary technique.[ citation needed ]

History of work

North America

Canada

Carved glass sculpture, stacked glass technique, 12.2 ft. X 7.2 ft. X 3.4 ft.

Carved Glass Wall, 15 Ft. X 9 Ft.

Two Carved Glass Walls: 22Ft. X 6Ft. X 1.5Ft.

Carved Glass Sculpture, 14 ft. X 12Ft. X 6Ft.

Carved Glass Sculpture consisting of two towers of glass, each 35 Ft. high X12 Ft.

8 courtroom entries - 16 Carved glass panels

United States

Carved Glass Panels, multiple panels, Total length: 52 ft. X 8 ft.

Carved Glass Sculpture consisting of nine towers of glass. Total length: 135 Ft. Height: 27 Ft.

Carved glass Wall, 25 Ft. X 15 Ft.

Carved Glass Wall, 27 Ft. X 15 Ft.

Europe

England

Carved sculptural glass panels, 12.5 Ft. X 6 Ft.

France

Reflective Carved Glass Wall: 100 Ft. X 6Ft.

Asia

Hong Kong

Three Carved Glass Sculptures located within one office tower: 40 ft. X12Ft. - 100Ft. X 27Ft. - 27Ft. X16Ft.

Japan

Carved, sculptural glass wall, 25Ft. X 22Ft.

Awards and distinctions

Elected to the academy

Five time nominee for Canada's most prestigious craft award.

Received award for innovative collaboration with an architect, for the glass sculpture in the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo

Received American Craft Award in architectural glass; Received American Craft Merit Award in sculpture

Publications

Periodicals

Hong Kong SpaceHong Kong
Stained Glass QuarterlyUSA
Asian Architect and ContractorHong Kong
Canadian House & HomeCanada
Nu MagazineHong Kong
Process Architecture Japan
La RepubliqueFrance
New York Times USA
Maclean's Magazine Canada
Western Living MagazineCanada
Gourmet Magazine USA
Ntz’ainAthens, Greece
B.C.S. MagazineJapan
Border Crossings Canada
Azure MagazineCanada
Reader's Digest Canada

Books

Lectures

Carther is often invited to speak about his work and public art. He has spoken in Canada, the US and Australia. In June 2007, Carther spoke on transformations in the relationship between public art and glass in the late 20th and early 21st centuries when he presented a lecture to the Glass Art Society (GAS) in Pittsburgh, PA. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santiago Calatrava</span> Spanish engineer and architect

Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, particularly known for his bridges supported by single leaning pylons, and his railway stations, stadiums, and museums, whose sculptural forms often resemble living organisms. His best-known works include the Olympic Sports Complex of Athens, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Turning Torso tower in Malmö, Sweden, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York City, the Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas, Texas, and his largest project, the City of Arts and Sciences and Opera House in his birthplace, Valencia. His architectural firm has offices in New York City, Doha, and Zürich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaume Plensa</span> Spanish artist and sculptor (born 1955)

Jaume Plensa i Suñé is a Spanish visual artist, sculptor, designer and engraver. He is a versatile artist who has also created opera sets, video projections and acoustic installations. He worked with renowned Catalan theatrical group La Fura dels Baus. He is better known for his large sculptures made up of letters and numbers.

Judy Jensen is an American artist who resides in Austin, Texas. She is best known for her reverse painting on glass, although she incorporates other mixed media into her glass pieces. According to Nancy Bless, Jensen's works "lie somewhere between a collage and a collection."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brad Cloepfil</span> American architect and educator

Brad Cloepfil is an American architect, educator and principal of Allied Works Architecture of Portland, Oregon and New York City. His first major project was an adaptive reuse of a Portland warehouse for the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. Since 2000, Cloepfil and Allied Works have completed cultural, commercial and residential projects including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Dutchess County Residence Guest House and the Museum of Arts and Design. Recent and notable works include the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, completed in November 2011; the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary, Alberta, which opened in July 2016; and the Providence Park expansion in Portland, Oregon, completed in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grotesque (architecture)</span> Fantastic or mythical figure used as architectural element

In architecture, a grotesque or chimera is a fantastic or mythical figure carved from stone and fixed to the walls or roof of a building. A chimera is a kind of grotesque in which the figure is a combination of animals. Grotesque are often called gargoyles, although the term gargoyle refers to figures carved specifically to drain water away from the sides of buildings. In the Middle Ages, the term babewyn was used to refer to both gargoyles and chimerae. This word is derived from the Italian word babuino, which means "baboon".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy Langford (sculptor)</span>

Jeremy Langford is a British/Israeli glass sculptor and designer. His artistic specialties are monumental stacked glass sculpture, architectural glass, and stained glass. He has been commissioned worldwide to create glass art for governments, private houses, corporations, hotels, and religious organisations. Major works include monumental glass installations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the ancient tomb of the Matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem, three massive sculptures for the Trump Towers at Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, and the new Waldorf Astoria hotel in Jerusalem. His studio is in Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Paley</span> American modernist metal sculptor

Albert Paley is an American modernist metal sculptor. Initially starting out as a jeweler, Paley has become one of the most distinguished and influential metalsmiths in the world. Within each of his works, three foundational elements stay true: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human presence. Paley is the first metal sculptor to have received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects. He lives and works in Rochester, New York with his wife, Frances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová</span> Czech contemporary artists

Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová were Czech contemporary artists. Their works are included in many major modern art collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Dailey (glass artist)</span> American artist

Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.

Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific installations in which his glass structures dwarf the visitor. Sound and projected digital imagery are also features of the environmental works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass art</span> Art, substantially or wholly made of glass

Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Joyce</span> American sculptor

Tom Joyce is a sculptor and MacArthur Fellow known for his work in forged steel and cast iron. Using skills and technology acquired through early training as a blacksmith, Joyce addresses the environmental, political, and social implications of using iron in his work. Exhibited internationally since the 1980s, his work is included in 30-plus public collections in the U.S. and abroad. Joyce works from studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and since 2012, in Brussels, Belgium, producing sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and videos that reference themes of iron in the human body, iron in industry, and iron in nature.

William George Mitchell was an English sculptor, artist and designer. He is best known for his large scale concrete murals and public works of art from the 1960s and 1970s. His work is often of an abstract or stylised nature with its roots in the traditions of craft and "buildability". His use of heavily modelled surfaces created a distinctive language for his predominantly concrete and glass reinforced concrete (GRC) sculptures. After long years of neglect, many of William Mitchell's remaining works in the United Kingdom are now being recognised for their artistic merit and contemporary historic value, and have been granted protective, listed status.

Grace Nickel is a Canadian ceramic artist and art instructor in post-secondary education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nehemia Azaz</span>

Nehemia Azaz, also Nehemiah, Henri or N H Azaz, was an Israeli sculptor, ceramicist and architectural artist, who spent half of his working life in the UK. Best known in Israel as founder of the Department of Artistic Ceramics at the Harsa factory in Beersheba, Azaz made his studio base in Oxfordshire, England from the late 1960s onwards, working in stained glass, wood, concrete, bronze, brass, copper and aluminium.

Greta Dale (1929–1978) was a Canadian mural sculptor who executed numerous public and private commissions in Canada and the United States, including the mural in the lobby of the Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Ann Gardner is an American glass artist known for her large-scale sculptural and architectural installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erwin Timmers</span> Dutch-born American artist

Erwin Timmers is a Dutch-born American artist and the co-founder of the Washington Glass School in the Greater Washington, D.C. capital area. Timmers has been recognized as one of the early "green or environmental artists", working mostly with recycled glass.

Nikolas Weinstein is a San Francisco-based American glass artist known for his large-scale architectural sculptures. Weinstein’s primary medium is Borosilicate Glass tube which he shapes using a modern kiln casting technique in custom kilns —some of which include a computer-operated pin bed. Weinstein's sculptures mimic flowing fabric or origami. Several of Weinstein’s sculptures hang in public buildings in Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte Lindgren</span> Canadian artist (1923-2023)

Charlotte Lindgren was a Canadian sculptor-weaver, installation artist, photographer and curator. Lindgren gained worldwide fame for innovative weaving due to the response to her distinctive installation Aedicule in the 1967 International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her architectural textile works — usually large — are single woven planes that transform into three-dimensional forms. They explore the interplay between positive and negative spaces, allowing for dramatic shadows and movement.

References

  1. "Glass Art Society's 2007 Conference: Transformational Matter" (Press release). The Glass Art Society. 7 June 2007. Retrieved 22 December 2010.
  2. Mayes, Alison (17 June 2007). "Warren Carther's giant sculptures capture the movement and music of glass". Winnipeg Free Press. Winnipeg.
  3. Grierson, Bruce (June 2000), "Walls of Glass", Western Living
  4. Yelle, Richard (2003), International Glass Art, Atglen: Schiffer Books, p. ?, ISBN   978-0764318344
  5. Moor, Andrew (2006), Colours of Architecture – Coloured Glass in Contemporary Buildings, Boston: Hachette Book Group, p. ?
  6. Architecture Canada, 2007 RAIC Awards of Excellence: Allied Arts Medal – Warren Carther , retrieved 22 December 2010
  7. Ontario Association of Architects, Celebration of Excellence – 1991/1992: Residential Design Awards: Allied Arts Medal , retrieved 22 December 2010
  8. Knapp, Stephen (2000), The Art of Glass: Integrating Architecture and Glass, Minneapolis: Rockport Publisher, p. 43
  9. The Glass Art Society (June 2007), "Innovation & Transformation in Architecture, Public Art and Architectural Glass", GAS Journal: 23–25