Aaron Slater

"I am inspired by the natural world around me. I am often overcome by a feeling of awe during a walk in the woods or a dive on a reef. It is this feeling that I attempt to evoke with my work. Each glass sphere contains a surprise of wonder and discovery."

For Aaron Slater, craftsmanship means intense focus, care, forethought, and the willingness to risk the entire work for each increment of progress. He approaches the medium with a scientific method, but allows his intuition and his knowledge of the properties of glass to inform his decisions about the path the work should follow.

Slater works glass using the ancient technique of lampworking. Glass rods are melted in the flame of a torch and shaped into their final form while still hot. Slater incorporates both traditional Venetian techniques (such as murrini, filligrana, and latticino) and modern scientific glassworking techniques into his process. Surprisingly, almost every marble begins as a blown form.

Aaron Slater is a self-taught glass artist, meaning that he has learned in bits and pieces from hundreds of sources rather than from formal training. The most significant advances in Slater's techniques have come about through self-directed experimentation.

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Selected Exhibitions & Awards
Modern Marbles, Indigenous Gallery, Cincinatti, OH, 2013
League of NH Craftsmen, Sunapee, NH, Sunapee, NH, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Good Things Small Pachages, Public Glass, San Francisco, CA, 2006
Craft Boston, Cyclorama , Boston, MA, 2014
Paradise City, Northampton, Northampton, MA, 2015
Collections
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, 2013