David Bennett
(b. 1941)
Born: Oregon
David Bennett is an American glass artist best known for his blown figurative glass sculptures which are created employing an ancient and little known technique which involves blowing hot glass into a metal mold. Born in 1941, he studied the art of blown glass at Pratt Art School in Seattle, the Pilchuck School in Stanwood, Washington, and in Murano with Maestro Pino Signoretto. Bennett’s technique was first mentioned almost 2000 years ago by Pliny the Elder, who wrote of Hebraic glassblowers blowing glass into metal forms. An example of this ancient Roman glass is a perforated silver chalice with cobalt glass in the British Museum in London.
From 1966-70 he was a Captain in the United States Army. From there he became a lawyer from 1970-95. Then in 1991, Bennett established the glass studio Bennett Glass, Inc. and, since 1994, has served on the Board of Trustees, Pilchuck Glass School. Additionally, from 1998-99, he was President of Pilchuck Glass School. Since 2000 Bennett has been included in the following publications: Southwest Art Magazine “Artists to Watch”; Vetro Glass Magazine “Glass at SOFA New York”; Craft Arts International “The Spirit of Equus”; Vetro Magazine (cover) “Left Brain Right Brain”; Chicago Tribune, #1 of the “Top Ten Reasons to Visit SOFA”. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Daiichi Museum in Nagoya, Japan, and the Museo del Vidrio in Monterrey, Mexico.
In more recent years, Bennett has concentrated on large scale outdoor sculptures, combining blown and cast glass with aluminum. His large scale installations fall into the category of architectural glass and are in many private homes and public spaces. When speaking on his technique and the history of his medium, Bennett stated:
“Artisans have been blowing glass into metal forms for two thousand years. We are pushing the technique. We can make complex forms in glass and bronze that we could not do in either medium alone. As we’ve stretched the technical processes of blowing glass into metal, I’ve had more and more artistic freedom. Our figures can be lighter and wilder in their motions, and we’ve become able to manipulate the glass around its armatures in increasingly playful ways.
As this happened a new quality arose in my work: it has become more fluid. I think these new figures have the effect of not only capturing the dancers’ motion, but of infusing them with the motion of the glass. It is liquid and shimmering. The metal structures—rigid and formal in a way that glass alone can’t be—literally allow us to build a cage that holds glass shooting through the air. And the glass animates these formal structures with its fluidity: It’s like a photograph of water frozen for a second in the air. It’s an effect that I don’t think one could capture with any other medium.” [1]