Fuller Craft Museum Presents Amber Cowan Exhibition

From Fuller Craft Museum: You could say that Philadelphia glass artist, Amber Cowan takes shards of nostalgia and reanimates them into intricate, weighty, abstract sculptures. She looks for raw materials in old glass scrapyards, warehouses, thrift shops, and antique stores. She collects recycled vintage pressed glassware like candy dishes, dotted vases, and cups--the kind you used to see in your grandma’s house on the curio table or dresser or in the kitchen. Cowan collects these once familiar and cherished, now discarded and forgotten objects that hold stories all their own. Using flame work and other hot-sculpting methods, she creates thousands of new opulent shapes and arranges them into ornate sculptures with new meaning and new stories. The glass comes from various old American glass factories that are now defunct, but she is drawn to remnants of those companies, sometimes searching for specific companies or colors like rose, sherbert, and mint.

Amber Cowan: Re/Collection exhibition will feature old and new flame worked glass creations. Cowan’s intricate vessels and sculptures are comprised of a multitude of recycled vintage glass specimens, all fused together into spectacular one-of-a-kind art objects. Her ongoing practice involving American pressed glass explores the history of U.S. glassware manufacturing while giving new life to reclaimed material.

Amber Cowan: Re/CollectionJune 24 – October 8, 2017 Reception on Saturday, June 24 from 2:00 – 5:00 pm with a 3:00 pm gallery talk by the artist. Reception included with admission fee. Gallery talk is free.

Amber Cowan is an artist and educator living in Philadelphia. She is a faculty member of the glass department of Tyler School of Art, where she received her MFA in 2011 in Glass/Ceramics. She has taught at schools around the country including The Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts and The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass. Cowan was the recipient of the 2014 Rakow Commission from The Corning Museum of Glass and her work is in the collections of The RISD Museum and The Shanghai Museum of Glass. She has had solo exhibitions at Heller Gallery in New York and The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.

• Circular Abstractions: Bull’s Eye Quilts
• May 13 – October 22, 2017

• Future Retrieval: Permanent Spectacle
• April 15 – October 1, 2017

• Ellen Schiffman: The 52 Box Project
• March 25 – July 30, 2017

• Living Traditions: The Handwork of PlymouthCRAFT
• March 18 – June 25, 2017

• Playa Made: The Jewelry of Burning Man
• February 11 – June 4, 2017

• What Remains: Wooden Quilt Sculptures of Laura Petrovich-Cheney
• October 29, 2016 – November 12, 2017

• Cary Wolinsky: Fiber of Life
• October 8, 2016 – June 25, 2017

• Upcoming Exhibitions:

• Amber Cowan: Re/Collection
• June 24 – October 8, 2017

• Brockton Youth Creates Biennial
• July 15 – September 10, 2017

• Parts and Labor: Print and Collage Works by Steven Ford
• August 5 – December 31, 2017

• SHIFTS: Approaching Encaustic from All Angles
• September 30 – November 26, 2017

• Gender Bend: Women in Wood, Men at the Loom
• October 21, 2017 – March 11, 2018

• Mindful: Exploring Mental Health Through Art
• November 18, 2017 – April 22, 2018

• Threads of Resistance
• December 9, 2017 – February 18, 2018

• Revolution in the Making: The Pussyhat Project
• January 21 – May 20, 2018

• Brother Thomas: Seeking the Sublime
• February 3 – May 13, 2018

• Playtime in the Making
• May 19 – September 16, 2018

Image Courtesy of Fuller Museum