hpgrp gallery New York - RON DESMETT

Artists

Lidded Trunk Vessels
New sculptural vessels by Ron Desmett

February 7 - March 7, 2007

Sculptural blown and etched black glass vessels that capture the primal energy in the making, reminiscent of funerary urns and Japanese Ceramics, where beauty resides within the dark angular recesses of the form.

The painter Ron Desmett is also a skilled glassmaker. Instead of viewing glass as simply another canvas, he recognizes and exploits the molten bubble as the very different creature that it is. Desmett's stumpy, lidded vessel proves the powerful sculptural potential of blown glass - a difficult and seldom successfully realized task. There is a figural quality in the neck and soft shoulders of opaque blackness.

The solid shape recalls the beautiful pragmatism of cast iron and also clearly relates to Japanese-inspired Twentieth century western Studio Ceramics.

Glass like Desmett's retains and projects an immediacy and expressiveness that is often lost in the firing and refiring of clay.

Bio

Ron Desmett, a Masters of Fine Arts Graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in 1979, lives and works in Oakdale, PA with his wife and partner, Kathleen Mulcahy. For the past 15 years they have worked as independent artists on projects for installation in private glass collections, homes, corporate offices, public art projects and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. Ron, a glass artist, is also a painter and his past history includes ceramics, mixed-media sculptures and blown black glass Lidded Trunk Vessels. Ron has the unique strength needed to be the lead builder of all of their works in glass and mixed media.

Both Ron and Kathleen have won many awards including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Fulbright Foundation. In 1980, just after graduation, Ron rebuilt the entire Hot Glass Studio at Carnegie Mellon University, volunteering to do this after graduation and in the process learning to do everything in a hot studio facility from electrical, to plumbing, to furnace design. This was instrumental in his success in his own studio and in the development of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, another volunteer project.

Ron and Kathleen imagined, developed and helped to build the Pittsburgh Glass Center, an internationally recognized public access glass institution where they remain a vital part of the Artistic Leadership Team. They have been named Permanent Artists in Residence at the PGC in honor of their outstanding achievements and dedication to the arts. This year, their collaborative work, Crossings 1982, was acquired by the Renwick Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C.