Art and Architecture, the Natural and the Made:Richard Parrish’s “Strata”
Richard Parrish, an architect turned glass artist, is intrigued by both fabricated and natural structures. His kilnformed glass panels are created with glass layers formed through multiple firings and finished with cold-working techniques.
“These panels signal both a new direction and a continuing investigation into place and place making,” explains the artist. “The thick panels are comprised of multiple layers of transparent and opaque glass that are kilnformed to create surface relief and texture. The surfaces are ground and cold-worked to expose layers in much the same way as the surface of the earth is eroded, graded and cut to expose materials below the surface. The resultant panels evoke images of maps, topography and geology. Some of the pieces are two-sided, challenging the viewer’s perception of front and back, surface and subsurface.”
Parrish’s work meshes the weathered surfaces of a geological artifact with the designed forms of a fabricated object. “As an artist and an architect, I find inspiration in both the human-made environment and in the vast landscape of the American west where I grew up,” says Parrish. “I am fascinated by the constructed and the natural, which I often express in my work.”
Parrish currently owns StudioPOIESIS, an architectural consulting firm in Bozeman, Montana, and Fusio Studio, a kilnformed glass artwork studio creating objects and architectural installations. His work was selected for the Corning Museum of Glass’s New Glass Review 27, and he was awarded the American Craft Council Award of Achievement in 2003.
Download: Richard Parrish April 19, 2006