Art Glass by Gary Beecham & Mary Lynn White

Glassworks

Click to view sculptural pieces by Gary Beecham.

Artist Info:

In his first year at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a National Merit Scholar in geology, Gary Beecham discovered the glass blowing studio. Though he maintained a deep interest in natural sciences, he soon started to haunt the glass shop, picking up what skills he could and looking for opportunities to try his hand at blowing. His willingness to help around the studio soon broke through the older students' resistance to an underclassman's presence and shortly changed both his major and his life. Entire contents © Copyright NJM Gallery.

Much of Gary's work has been heavily influenced by ancient glass, both in form and in technique. The ancients treated glass as a plastic gem material, a substance that could be colored, stretched, melted and carved by the maker. Gary has experimented with countless ways of manipulating glass involving blowing, fusing and cutting. Over his twenty-five year career, he has become well-known for heavy, thick-walled vessels. For the imagery in these pieces, he first makes up a wide palette of colored overlay rods. Some pieces contain textile patterns that are then introduced into the crystal glass piece as it is being blown, creating the illusion of glass "fabric" floating in the bowl of the vessel, often with a second or third pattern appearing on one of the vessel's reflecting surfaces. Others, incorporating complex millifiori, are formed into mosaics of brilliant color. The imagery of these pieces has been suggested by influences as divergent as astronomical forms, undersea creatures and figures from a Persian rug.

Born	1955 in Ladysmith, WI
Education:
1973 - 1979	Bachelor of Science degree in Art, University of WI, Madison
·	Honor Student, University of WI, Madison
·	National Merit Scholar
Positions:
1985 - present	Independent artist
1980 - 1985	Assistant to Harvey K. Littleton, Spruce Pine, NC
1978	Visiting artist, J. & L. Lobmeyer Co., Vienna, Austria
Publications:
1992	"The Survey of Glass in the World, vol 6 Contemporary Glass," ed. by T.Yoshimizu, Kyuryudo Art Pub. Co., ltd., Tokyo, Japan, p. 10.
1992	"International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa '92," Kanazawa Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Kanazawa, Japan, p. 38.
1988	Glass Art Magazine, July/August 1988, pp. 10- 15
1988	Spinoff, NASA, 1988, p. 79
1988	Southern Magazine, August 1988, "South by Design," p. 54
1985	Insight, A Collector's Guide to Contemporary American Glass
1984	Ferdinand Hampson, Eliot Johnston Publishers. Glass, State of the Art 1984, Ferdinand Hampson, Eliot Johnston Publishers
1984	American Craft, April/May, 1984, portfolio section, p. 25
1983	Neues Glas, October/December, 1983, pp 195- 199

Permanent Collections:
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Musee de Verre, Liege, Belgium
Frauenau Glas Museum, Frauenau, Germany
Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany
North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, NC
J. & L. Lobmeyer Collection, Vienna, Austria
Capitol Bank Collection, Houston, TX
Southern Bell
Price Waterhouse
Northern Telecom
R. J. Reynolds
Glaxo, Inc.
Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA
Ebeltoft Glass Museum, Ebeltoft, Denmark
North Carolina Governor's Western Residence Collection, Asheville, NC
Guilford College, Greensboro, NC
Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC Bergstrom Mahler Museum, Neenah, WI
Galerie Internationale du Verre, Biot, France
Nations Bank, Charlotte, NC

If you like the work on this page, we think you'll also enjoy these artists:

Michael David & Kit Karbler, Scott Hegan, Jeffrey P'an.