Ed Carpenter is an

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

specializing in large-scale public

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

s made of glass. His work can be found in conference centers, libraries, and airports.

Early life and education

Carpenter studied architecture at the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

, where he studied with

Dale Chihuly Dale Chihuly () (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is best known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture". Early life Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20 ...

. He attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

from 1968-1971.

Glass technique

Carpenter specializes in large-scale installations in glass. He is known for his technical innovation using cold-bent tempered glass, encapsulated glass elements, and programmed lighting elements. His work is often described as "architectural".

Works

While working with Dale Chihuly they created lead glass doors that are in the collections of the

Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass obje ...

and the

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

. In 2019 he installed the first phase of a

dichroic glass Dichroic glass is glass which can display multiple different colors depending on lighting conditions. One dichroic material is a modern composite non-translucent glass that is produced by stacking layers of metal oxides which give the glass shift ...

sculpture in the

Portland Public Library Portland Public Library is the main library of the public library system in Portland, Maine, USA. It is located at 5 Monument Square on Congress Street in the Old Port of Portland, Maine. The library has three neighborhood branches, Burban ...

, called "Mollie's Garden". The piece honored his mother, a library volunteer named Mollie Starbuck, who died in her 80's. His work "Aloft" is a 360 foot glass sculpture in the

Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport is a commercial airport west of downtown Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is the largest and busiest airport in the state of Kansas. Located south of US-54 in southwest Wichita, it covers 3,24 ...

lobby and was featured as an event by the Wichita Art Museum on November 18, 2021. He created a lobby sculpture for the Meydenbauer Convention Center in Bellevue, Washington; a large (17 meters x 18 meters x 6.5 meters) work for the Morgan Library at Colorado State University (commissioned by the Colorado Council on the Arts); and glass windows for the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. Other works include the Flying Bridge between buildings at Central Washington University, an installation at the Hokkaido Sports Center, and a large sphere for the atrium of Carlson school. He also created an outdoor sculpture for the Broadway pumphouse.

Personal life

Carpenter lives and has his studio in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Writings

References

External links

Ed Carpenter's official web site
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Artists from Portland, Oregon Glass architecture American glass artists Rhode Island School of Design alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni {{US-artist-stub