Thaddeus Wolfe

Here is some groundbreaking work by progressive glass artist, Thaddeus Wolfe. Some of the free-blown glass vases we have featured are a part of a series titled, Inclusions. In that series, Wolfe incorporates a technique of injecting colored glass into clear molten glass to create floral patterns. If you can afford them, you can purchase the captivating and sensual objet d’art here.

essay excerpt via WheatonArts:

Non-specific yet teasingly almost recognizable structures in Wolfe’s art suggest the intricate dance of knowledge in which each scientific “advance” reveals a new maze of seeming opacity or confusion. At WheatonArts where Wolfe was a Spring, 2007 Resident Fellow of the Creative Glass Center of America, he had access to an oil saw. The saw was originally made to cut stone but capable of making very straight cuts through accumulations of irregular glass modules. These slices present an unexpected view of structures. They could be compared to slices of frozen tissue samples and analyzed microscopically, for example, to detect cancer cells.

Wolfe is interested in science and the crystalline structure matter. He says, “Underlying and unperceived, on a molecular level there is a structure of organic matter.” The oil saw exposes irregular cell-like cross sections resembling laboratory specimens, but do not represent specific things. One work, a tangle of clear glass threads with a knot of bright red at its center suggesting blood vessels, but it isn’t intended to be blood vessels. Perhaps it’s more about a visual context, the representation of a world in which these kinds of arcane scientific/medical imagery are commonplace, a world in which people frame fetal sonograms as if they were portraits. And they are as much artifacts of emotional life as a dance program.