Home 5 ARTISTS 5 FINE ART 5 Category: Boothe, Anna

ANNA BOOTHE

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Boothe trained as a sculptor at the Rhode Island School of Design and has worked with glass since 1980. She holds a MFA from the Tyler School of Art, where she was a member of the Glass Program faculty for a total of 16 years. From 2003-2007, she coordinated and helped to institute the Glass Art Degree Program at Salem Community College in southern New Jersey, a program whose curriculum focused on kiln-forming, kiln-casting, and flameworking. She also chaired the annual International Flameworking Conference held at the school. She lectures and teaches workshops on frit and pate de verre casting regularly at numerous facilities, a few that have included the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, many university settings, and glass schools in Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, and Japan. Her kiln-cast figurative work is in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass and in numerous private collections. In recent years, she has participated in the Particle Theories and Celebrating Connections exhibits at the Museum of American Glass in Millville, NJ, Figures and Forms at Leo Kaplan Modern in New York City, World Glass Today at the Aptos Cruz Gallery in Adelaide, Australia and the Bullseye Connection Gallery’s 20/20 exhibit in Portland, OR. In the past several years, she has lectured at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Illinois State University, Illinois-Wesleyan University, Sheridan College in Toronto, Canada and the Everhart Museum in Scranton, PA. Anna served on the Glass Art Society’s Board of Directors from 1998-2006 and was President of the organization from 2004-2006.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My glasswork is comprised of one-of-a-kind sculptural vessels, flacons, goblets and other decorative objects. With technical inspiration taken from the late 19th C. French glass-casting technique known as pate de verre, a process that has its roots in antiquity and is defined by the heat fusing of small glass particles in molds, my objects are colorful assemblages of elements kiln-cast from lead crystal via the lost-wax casting process. Conceptually and visually, the works elicit a sense of history and ritual. The forms interpret symbols from ancient cultures and nature and are imbued with a sense of preciousness and the intangibility, yet familiarity that is associated with collaged memory. Prominently featured is the hand motif as it represents a ubiquitous cross-cultural human tool of communication through its emblematic gestures of friendship, generosity, holding, letting go, etc.