AACG News
Thaddeus Wolfe awarded 2016 Corning Rakow Commission
Brooklyn-based artist Thaddeus Wolf was named the recipient of The Corning Museum of Glass’ 2016 Rakow Commission. Awarded annually to an emerging artist whose work has yet to be represented in the premier glass museum’s collection, the $25,000 award is designed to encourage “emerging or established artists to venture into new areas that they might otherwise be unable to explore because of financial limitations.”
Wolfe’s colorful, jagged works are reminiscent of minerals — ones native to the alien world of the artist’s imagination. “I think of my work as being composed of imagined crystalline forms and architectural structures made in blown/cast-glass objects,” Wolfe said in the Corning announcement. “The pieces utilize formal elements of color, texture, pattern and smoothly polished surfaces to create a specific expressive, dystopian visual language.”
Wolfe's mold-blown, angular structures are achieved through his elaborate constructions of cut and glued styrofoam, which are used to create a plaster-silica mold. Once the styrofoam is removed, the glass flows into it in the kiln, a process requiring exacting attention to timing and detail to fill all the complex surfaces and achieve the unique coloration.
Raised in Toldeo, Ohio, Wolfe studied glass at the Cleveland Institute of Art before moving to New York, where he has served as an apprentice for glass artists Jeff Zimmerman and Josiah McElheny. Wolfe has held residencies at Pilchuck Glass School, the WheatonArts Creative Glass Center of America, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington.
His upcoming Rakow-commissioned work will be displayed in the Corning Museum'sContemporary Art + Design Wing, and become part of the museum's permanent collection.
| Posted 16 Sep 23
