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December Issue 2007
Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC, Offers Exhibition of Works by Daniel Clayman
On Dec. 15, 2007, internationally known studio glass artist Daniel Clayman will debut an entirely new body of work in the exhibit, White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman, on view at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC. The exhibition will feature seven original glass works made exclusively for this presentation. The exhibit will remain on view through May 25, 2008.
"Art glass" has become a familiar household term and is characterized by color and glitz. In contrast Clayman's work exercises the most severe form of restraint. He creates Minimalist forms which explore both the subtlety and the drama of form and movement, and light and shadow. By paring down shapes to their absolute essence, he creates an aesthetic that is defined by spare elegance. His sculptures often use geometric forms such as cubes, cones, planes and triangles. White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman takes Clayman's geometric forms and erases color and texture and adds light.
The piece Circular Object 1, resulted in a turning point away from Clayman's signature glass and bronze combinations to create monumental forms in a single medium. "By taking away all the color and precious qualities of glass we are forced to look at the form for what it is," Clayman says. "In 2004, I completed Circular Object 1. It greatly satisfied me with its visual simplicity."
This exhibition displays Clayman's newest body of work, white large-scale forms, full of subtle melt and flow marks, combined with dramatic lighting to create formal arrangements of line and shadow. His work has been described as spare, elegant, evocative and understated.
As with other internationally renowned glass artists such as Ben Tré and Dale Chihuly, Clayman recognized the need to work "big." His pieces have gained size in recent exhibitions and now appear in larger-than-life scale. A computer-modeling program entitled "Rhino" allows a scanned drawing to be manipulated into any size the artist desires, making it easier to contemplate the finished product.
Clayman fell in love with the effects of lighting while working as a lighting designer for numerous theater and dance productions. He then trained as a studio glass artist in various private studios and schools across America. Since receiving his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986, Clayman has pursued the art of cire perdue or "lost wax" casting, creating unique sculptures in glass and bronze. From the opaque to the translucent, these materials alternately serve as sheathes and the sheathed; containers and the contained. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he developed a series of organic pod forms which explored the themes of protective nests and enclosures. This exploration evolved into studies of form and movement - channeled forms in particular. In White Light, we see the seeds of his mature style, defined by its increasing refinement of form.
Clayman has sculptures in the permanent collections of leading craft museums, including the American Craft Museum in New York City, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue with an essay by Janet Koplos, senior editor of Art in America, author and noted art critic.
The exhibition includes a PowerPoint presentation and working drawings of the seven glass pieces detailing each step of the lost wax method used to create them.
A lecture, Daniel Clayman on Daniel Clayman, will be presented on Jan. 6, 2008, at 3pm at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. The lecture is free with museum admission.
Also on view at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design through Feb. 24, 2008, is the exhibit, Fiberart International 2007, organized by Society for Contemporary Craft/Pittsburgh.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 704/337-2000 or visit (www.themintmuseums.org).
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