Artistry
Clear Intentions Making art from glass has been Adam Waimon’s calling since childhood, and today the twenty-something wunderkind is breaking new ground crafting pieces that surprise and intrigue. ///////////
By Kris Wilton / Photography by Mark Johnston
A Top: Saffron Acorns (2009), blown and carved glass, 10″H × 11″W × 7″D. Above: Clear Cut Vessel No. 5 (2006), blown and carved glass, 15″H × 8″W × 6″D.
dam Waimon’s path to becoming an artist was, well, as clear and smooth as glass. With an artist mother— Connecticut printmaker Deborah Weiss— and grandmother, he grew up in an art-focused environment. A family trip to Italy the summer before he started high school clarified his vision. On a tour of Murano’s legendary glassmaking factories, he watched as an artisan crafted a glass horse in a matter of seconds. “He whipped it out of nowhere,” Waimon says. “And it wasn’t just a basic horse; it was a beautiful, elegant horse raised up on hind legs as if it were bucking. That image really never left me.” Waimon went on to earn a degree in
glass at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and establish himself as a working glassmaker and artist. His work has been shown in several Connecticut galleries as well as in juried group shows such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ summer auction and the annual “Red Hot Glass” show at the Tacoma Museum of Glass in Washington. Perhaps owing to his childhood exposure to working artists, Waimon exhibits a steadfastness of purpose uncommon so early in an artist’s career. Still only in his twenties, he works as an assistant to glassmakers Elizabeth Pannell and James Watkins, helping produce their commercial glassware line, Peàn Doubulyu, by day and using their Providence studio to
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