Therman Statom

In 1999 Statom produced five vitreographs at Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The prints will soon be on display at the Tampa Museum of Art as part of the exhibition "River Myths: A Multimedia Installation by Therman Statom."

Therman Statom's primary medium is plate glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found objects along the way - to create compelling sculptures. His artistic vocabulary includes simple but powerfully charged forms: houses, ladders, hearts, boats. These prints available at The Littleton Collection combine vitreography and digital transfer. The color, graphic strength and narrative quality of Statom's sculpture in glass are also the hallmarks of these commanding fine art prints.

A resident of California, Statom was born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1953. He began his study of glass as an art medium at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington in 1971. He was awarded the BFA in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 1974 and the MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute of Art and Design in 1978. his twenty-five year professional career includes exhibitions at major museums across the united States. Recent one-person exhibitions include those at the Lowe Museum of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida; Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia and Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. Internationally Statom has exhibited in Stockholm, Sweden; Paris, France; Hokkaido, Japan and Ensenada, Mexico.

Among Statom's public commissions are those in California at Los Angeles Central Public Library and the Los Angeles International Airport, Tom Bradley Terminal and at the Ice Center in San Jose. They can also be found in Las Vegas at Harrah's Casino, in Arizona at the Scottsdale museum of Contemporary Art and in New York at the New York State Arts Commission.

Statom's work is included in collections, among them, the Afro-American Museum, Los Angeles; Detroit Institute of Arts; Toledo Museum of Art; Oakland Museum, California; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Los Angeles County Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida.

EXTENDED BIO

Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific installations in which his glass structures dwarf the visitor. Sound and projected digital imagery are also features of the environmental works. The son of a physician, Therman Statom was born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1953 and raised in Washington, DC. There he developed a friendship with Cady Nolan, the daughter of abstract painter Kenneth Noland. In childhood Statom is reported to have told the elder Noland (who was working on his target series at the time), “I can paint like that too.”[1] Statom attributes his early desire to be an artist to Kenneth Noland. He began his study of glass as an art medium at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington in 1971, going on to study sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. He received the Bachelor of Art from that institution in 1974 and the Master of Art from Pratt Institute School of Art and Design in 1978.[2] At Pratt he made his first works with sheet glass (which, in the glass industry, is called float glass) because the school was not equipped for hot glass working. In the early 1980s Statom received an invitation from Richard Marquis to visit the hot glass program that he directed at the University of California in Los Angeles. When Marquis left the program in 1983 Statom headed it until its closure in 1985.[3] In the United States, public collections holding Therman Statom’s work include: the Metropolitan Community College-Elkhorn Valley Campus, Omaha, Nebraska; the California African-American Museum, Los Angeles, California; Cincinnati Art Museum; City of Seattle, Seattle, Washington; Corning Inc., Corning, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Milwaukee Art Museum; Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina; National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Columbus, Ohio; Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; and Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California. Overseas Statom’s work can be found in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland; and in Moscow, Russia and Maputo, Mozambique through the Art in Embassies program of the U.S. Department of State.[5]

REFERENCES

Chrysler Museum of Art website, “Art of Glass About the Artists: Therman Statom”, [1] Accessed 8/31/2005

Jump up ^ Therman Statom resume found at [2] Accessed 9/25/09

Jump up ^ Strauss, Cindi, “Pioneers of Contemporary Glass: Highlights from the Barbara and Dennis DuBois Collection”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2009. Page 65

Jump up ^ [3] Accessed 9/25/09

Jump up ^ [4] Accessed 9/25/09