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Artist Statement for Jim Slaughter
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Glass has been in my blood my entire life. I grew up in Crystal City, Missouri, a glass factory town. My father was a ceramic engineer, applying a scientific approach to glass. While I also entered the sciences, becoming a cardiologist, I have always carried a fascination for the magical effects that glass has on light.
I began making stained glass windows in the early 70’s while apprenticing with a medieval-style glass artist. In the late 80’s I moved to making lamps, starting with a Tiffany design, but quickly moving to my own designs. By that time I had accumulated a collection of over 400 colors of glass dating from as early as the 1940’s. I soon was collaborating with Steve Meikle, an artist who made original lamps with cloth and mica shades. The partnership of his bases and my shades resulted in many unique lamps that we sold via galleries and commissions for many years. Unfortunately, Steve died a few years ago, but not before teaching me many of his metalworking-for-lamps secrets. I’ve subsequently retired from my cardiology practice allowing me to devote more time to this quest.
I now have a studio connected to a plating shop where I can exercise all my glass and metalworking skills. Recently, this has expanded to include electroforming (metal over glass) and enameling (glass over metal), allowing me to blur the boundaries between the materials and moving my works more toward what I call “light sculptures”.
Through the evolution of my work over the last 35 years, I have never lost my original vision of the magical effects of glass on light. Working with lamps, where the light originates from within the object, I feel I am tapping into humanity’s ancient and abiding fascination with the dancing light and color from a campfire. By utilizing some old metalworking and glassworking techniques, plus some more recent technology, I’m hoping to bring that magic into people’s homes.
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