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Corning Museum of Glass Purchases Ron Desmett’s Lidded
Trunk Vessel #22 The King for Permanent Collection
May 17, 2010
Ron Desmett, artist and cofounder of the Pittsburgh Glass Center, MFA graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, BA from Akron University presented the work Lidded Trunk Vessel #22 The King, to Tina Oldknow of the Corning Museum of Glass. This is the first work of Desmett’s to be collected by the Corning Museum of Glass.
Ron has been working with this particular series for the past 9 years first presenting this work at the Pittsburgh Glass Center in a groundbreaking exhibition titled Artists Crossing Lines 2002. Desmett had previously concentrated on works in sculpture and painting. This exhibition introduced his work and his redirected focus primarily in glass. Using black glass from Fenton Glass in West Virginia, he crafts these monumental glass forms by blowing into the hollowed out trunks of ancient walnut trees. Desmett walks old forests looking for rotten trees, already fallen looking for the contours and forms that denote his glass work. His surfaces are lightly etched and sealed giving his surfaces a velvety cover.
He sees these forms as iconic figures, the top form also made from smaller trunks, that he builds and adheres together so there is no function other than aesthetic. They are intended as a vessel in the poetic sense as his shapes appear brooding, twisting, ancient remnants, petrified figures.
Watch a 4 minute video that shows the making of lidded trunk vessels.
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