Brooklynite Jamie Harris has a unique, painterly way of working with glass. His techniques incorporate elements of blown, kiln-cast, cold and hot-worked glass. His pieces are blocks of clear glass to which color is added. By playing with translucency, Harris is able to capture the same movement that he sees is glass when it is heated to 2,000 degrees. To produce the liquid effect, he combines bubbles of glass in a mold and cools them in a kiln. He then heats them back up to their top temperature, causing the individual elements to slowly melt in to one another.

“I approach my sculptural glass work more from a painterly perspective than as a traditional glassblower. My work is about loud splashes of color, about capturing the innate way glass transmits, reflects, and absorbs color. You can see the sensibility in a number of approaches, from the strictness of my blown work to the organic looseness of my cast wall panels. Yet all of my work shares a similar love of, and foundation in, color and color patterning. In my blown glass work, I merge a classic Venetian sensibility with a Modernist approach. Though I have intensely studied the Venetian tradition of blown glass, my work is fueled more by color theory and abstract concept than reflections on historical glass.”

Like many of my favorite glass artists, Harris studied at Pilchuck Glass School, Rhode Island School of Design, Fenland School of Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and my favorite, The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass.

You can see all of Jamie Harris’s delicious designs on his website.