Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Gray.
Hi Katherine, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’m a glassblower, artist and educator. I moved to Los Angeles from Seattle almost 20 years ago because of the great art scene here (and the weather, I’m not going to lie!) Since then, I have been able to develop my art practice to incorporate large (and small) scale sculptures and installations, as well as to make forays into the design world with some of my more functional pieces. Most recently, I was invited to be the ‘resident evaluator’ on the Netflix streaming series “Blown Away”, a competitive reality show, which has turned out to be a surprise hit.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Working in a craft field is often considered more of a ‘woman’s’ arena but glassblowing has been a male-dominated field for centuries, so it still somewhat unusual to see female practitioners. Thankfully, we are getting more and more plentiful!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work with glass for its myriad and often contradictory properties: strong yet fragile, transparent but reflective, liquid and solid at the same time. Most of my blown glass sculptures make reference to the material’s history for use in the functional or domestic sphere, again an area often considered the domain of the female. Lately, I’ve also been developing a body of work that plays with iridescence, an acknowledgment to how glass degrades as it ages. The reflected and refracted colors are never the same, making it hard to know what you are looking at exactly.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Glass is a material that has fundamentally changed so much about our civilization, from the advent of lenses that allowed scientists to make discoveries at both the micro and macro levels to the invention of mirrors which shifted our culture’s priorities from the collective to that of the individual; and most recently, as the driving force behind the technology that enables our smartphones and other devices that allow access to the internet and social media. We interact with this material daily but probably don’t think about it too much. I am trying to change that.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.katherine-gray.com
- Instagram: @boobooandfifihijinx
Image Credits:
Top photo: Fredrik Nilsen Bottom photo: Echard Wheeler courtesy of Chrysler Museum of Art
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