- — December 18, 2009
Draft
Put Your Hands All Over Me. Greg Clark, glass artist
Selected by Jenny Kilmenkoff, co-director, far4 gallery and store
Greg Clark works in glass, not porcelain like most of the artists represented at far4, but his work still espouses the values of handmade craftsmanship that are so important at Moscow’s Porcelain Studio Klimenkoff (the birthplace of this family-owned gallery). “A lot of what I make is really striving to be functional and accessible,” Clark says. “Not just something to put on a shelf and look at. I like the idea of people actually using the things I make.”
A glassblower since he first got hooked on the hot-shop process in high school, Clark found his niche in a factory job, creating designer light fixtures with traditional Italian glassblowing methods and rare materials. “I had access to three furnaces with molten color in them and two Saturdays a month to make my own work,” he says. “I was one of few people that took advantage.” Now he’s got his own company, DeCicio Glass (after his mother’s maiden name; pronounced “deh-cheecho”), and he’s working on building his own private furnace.
Jenny Klimenkoff, half of the brother-sister team that runs far4, responds to the classical influences in his work: “In Seattle, there’s an old tradition of celebrating modern glass. Greg has a different approach. My favorite piece of his is a yellow and blue vase. What really strikes me is the way it interacts with light. I had it in the window [before it sold] and every day when the sun shone through it, it was just so breathtaking.”
Artist Stats
Artist Stats
Hometown: Seattle
Education: UW, Pilchuk and Pratt
Other job: Landlord
Influences: Ethan Stern,
Dante Marioni, Benjamin Moore
Has also dabbled in: Playing guitar and drums
Hardest part about glass art: “It’s absurdly expensive to do.”
To see more: decicioglass.com
