Cal Breed
Orbix Hot Glass
Cal Breed's parents were an artist and an engineer, and he has spent his artistic life trying to bridge the dual inheritance. He works to combine the creative with the mechanical, the expressive with the critical.
In 1994 Breed was moved to work with his hands, and he began to venture into the world of glass. He spent months as an apprentice to Cam Langley, one of the South's very few hot-glass artists. He became entranced by the medium of glass and the process by which it is made. As he progressed in his explorations, Breed studied with a variety of glass masters from around the U.S., working to develop his skills as a designer and as a craftsman. Once again, he searched for ways to combine technical proficiency with unique design.
Breed built glass-making equipment and today designs his glass lines - A Studio Series and a Signature Series - in his own Orbix Hot Glass studio. All of his designs pay close attention to proportion, color, purity and form. Each is chosen with specific intention to accentuate details particularly innate to glass. The Studio Designs use simple overlapping techniques to create optical distortions, and highlight contrasts of rich and vague color. The Signature Designs, mainly defined by multiple transparent incalmo bands, employ color gradients and optical density to express breathtaking arrangements.
