"Wanganui 2 Vessel (Red-Orange)"

Brian Russell

"I grew up working in my dad's garage woodshop."

Accomplished artist Brian Russell is fluent in many media and techniques: photography, wood and stone carving, direct metal sculpture, and furniture making. Driven to incorporate color into his work, Russell began experimenting with fused glass and pate de verre. Mastering new techniques and materials stimulates his creative vision, and each new work allows a synthesis of ideas. His visual vocabulary derives from his travels, nature and the human form.

On a visit to New Zealand in 1999, Russell discovered a lost wax glass casting technique that produced exciting results. Two more years of hard work and research resulted in the current direction of Russell's art: a fusion of forged metals and cast glass. The transparency of the colored glass has an inherently emotional effect that enables the artist to speak quietly, yet powerfully, about his ideas on the nature of reality and purity of form. Dramatic forged metal, synergized with the images presented by the vivid glass castings, adds energy to his sculptures.