Gary Beecham

"Most of my current work consists of heavy, thick-walled vessels and large flat platters. In these vessels I coordinate form, depth and design, making the interiors serve as reflecting and refracting surfaces rather than as containers. With the platters, I present a flat design in which the varying degrees of depth are an illusion.

"My technique of first making color overlay rods, and then fusing them into patterns, lets me suspend tubes and ring of pure color within my work. This process allows me adequate time to conceptualize and to make changes during the design stage, and frees me to concentrate totally on the form while blowing. I try to bring the forms into harmony with the ethereal quality I strive for in the colored patterns.

"I feel that studio glass in general today has many parallels to ancient glass in that amount of time and energy a glass maker can put into a piece is again unlimited. We have finally broken from the factory tradition that limited a successful piece to the number of minutes required to complete it".

Gary Beecham is exhibiting at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts as part of the exhibit Where There's Smoke... Ceramics and Glass.