These are the wonderful animal sculptures of Shelley Muzylowski Allen. She mostly focuses on horses, but she makes other large animals, too. Allen takes as her inspiration early depictions of animals in everything from cave paintings to early scientific illustrations.

After completing a fine arts degree, Allen pursued a career in painting until a colleague suggested her work would translate well to glass. She began studying at the Pilchuck School of Glass, where she realized glass was just the medium she’d been looking for.

I love how much motion there is in her work. There’s a tension represented in their poses that makes them seem like they were caught in mid-leap. And her jubilant use of color and texture, whether it’s pigments or colored glass or rusted metal or horse hair, adds to the sense of the figures’ vitality. Many of the pedestals they’re on feel like works of art in their own right. I am particularly drawn to the ones that end in dagger points. I love their fierceness!

I hope you are as intrigued by her work as I am!