In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, Paul Stankard has become the acknowledged master of flame-working. See the stunning Paul J. Stankard · The Art of the Flame exhibition spanning his illustrious career at WMODA. Stankard melts thin rods of colored glass with a flame-worker’s gas-fueled torch in his New Jersey studio.
Perfect petals, pistils, stamens and stems are created with the blue flame and arranged with tweezers into complex clusters of blossoms, berries, and roots. Paul encapsulates these visions of nature into molten glass forms, which are cut and polished to form paperweights, orbs, columns and cubes. His tiny glass flowers and insects are executed so perfectly that they almost seem real. However, his miniature works of art are often fantasies, integrating his interest in botanical realism with spiritual mysticism and the cycle of life.
Paul J. Stankard · The Art of the Flame opens at the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts on November 11.