Amber Cowan | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Amber Cowan | |
| Born | 1981 (age 42–43) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Salisbury University, Tyler School of Art |
| Known for | Glass |
| Awards | International Procter Fellowship 2012 The Toledo Workshop Revisited – Australian National University Rakow Commission 2014 Garden of the Forgotten and Extinct – Corning Museum of Glass |
| Website | ambercowan |
Amber Cowan (born 1981) is an American artist[1] and educator living and working in Philadelphia. Cowan creates fused and flameworked glass sculptures from cullet and recycled industrial glass.[2]
Cowan received her BFA in 3-Dimensional Design with an emphasis in Hot Glass from Salisbury University in 2004.[3] She was the first woman to graduate from Salisbury University with this specific degree.[4] She received her MFA in Glass/Ceramics from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2011.[5]
She is currently a faculty member of the glass department at the Tyler School of Art, where she graduated with her MFA in Glass/Ceramics in 2011.[3]
Cowan's work is included in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the Shanghai Museum of Glass. She has been featured many times at the Heller Gallery in New York City, and the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.[6]
In 2012, Cowan was the recipient of The Stephen Procter Fellowship from the Australian National University.[7] This fellowship was created to help Australian, and international, artists broaden the scope of their education in working with glass by presenting opportunities to these recipients to study abroad.[7] Because of this fellowship, Cowan was able to undertake a two-month residency in an esteemed glass workshop at the Australian National University in Canberra.[7] Also in 2012 Cowan received The Tyler Alumni Award of Excellence during The Philadelphia Fibers Biennial.[4]
In 2014, Cowan was awarded the 29th Rakow Commission for her work, Garden of the Forgotten and Extinct.[8] The Commission is traditionally awarded to professional artists, from the United States and abroad, whose work is not currently represented in The Corning Museum of Glass' permanent collection.[9]
Along with the growing number of exhibitions Amber Cowan has been a part of, she has also been given opportunities to install some of her sculpture pieces in public spaces.
In 2014, Cowan was invited on two separate occasions to install her sculpture work in The Philadelphia International Airport.[4]
Amber Cowan mainly works with discarded glass pieces, repurposing the vintage glass left behind from multiple 19th and 20th century American Glass Factories who shut their doors and left many remnants of production behind.[24][25] A technique that is essential to her is flame-working, which is the manipulation of various rods and tubes of glass that will become malleable when heated to high temperatures.[25][26] Cowan also participates in glass blowing, and hot-sculpting.[25]
Cowan states, "The material that I use is more 'found' then necessarily recycled. Most of the glass I use is 'cullet' that comes from an old factory that has now closed. Cullet is the factory scraps that get tossed into a pile after a production run of a particular colored piece they are creating. I take the scraps, re-melt them (usually) one at a time and create my own shape from them. So, in general I am not re-melting pieces that are already in a salable form. I do however incorporate pieces into my work that I have collected to tell a story, add volume, depth or pattern into the sculptures. I collect pieces that are the same color as the cullet that I am using. I get very excited if I find an unusual character piece in a particular color that I am working with at the time. People also send me boxes of old glass on a regular basis that I incorporate into my work."[27] She often explores woman's experience as a central theme through fantastical landscape and other allegorical collage installations.[28]
