About the Artist

Thaddeus Wolfe (b.1979) studied art and design with a focus in glass at the The Cleveland Institute of Art where he received a BFA in 2002.  He has held artist residencies at Pilchuck Glass School, The Creative Glass Center of America in New Jersey and the Tacoma Glass Museum.  His work has been exhibited in New York at E.R. Butler and Co., Heller Gallery, Matter, and The South Street Seaport Museum, and in Chicago with Volume Gallery. Thaddeus lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

About the Assemblages

The Assemblages are a series of objects that are inspired by the rough angular forms of minerals and observing their resemblance to the forms in early modernist architecture and sculpture. In making these pieces, I have devised my own systems for generating forms which do not simply copy nature, but remain informed by it. These pieces are attempts to make objects that have the dual appearance of being built up, as they also appear fractured and coming apart. The forms are brutalist and dystopic, but have an elegance enhanced by the variety of surface finishes, from very rough to smoothly polished, creating a range of reflectivity and tactility.

The process of blowing each piece is similar to a lost wax casting process. The form is built in foam and invested in plaster and silica powder to form the mold. The foam is dug out of the mold leaving a cavity into which the glass will be blown. Each mold is heated in a kiln to 1100 F, before blowing the glass into it. This heating of the mold allows the glass to take on all the details- angles, edges and textures of the piece, during the blowing process. After blowing, when the mold and the glass have been cooled slowly to room temperature, the mold is cut away from the piece and discarded. The glass is then cleaned, cut and and certain surfaces polished, using diamond grinding tools.