DANIEL CLAYMAN
Posted in Notes from Kenn Holsten on January 23rd, 2010 by Kenn HolstenDaniel Clayman has long been one of my favorite glass sculptors. When I use the term glass sculptor or glass sculpture, I am not, of course, referring to the classical reductive mode of sculpture used in carving stone, for example. In Clayman’s case, the real sculpting is done in creating the mold to receive the molten glass which then becomes the glass sculpture once the mold is removed. Daniel Clayman tends to work in large scale and his pieces are both subtle and yet also quite dramatic. Dramatic in their forms, dramatic in their soft colors and dramatic in the sense of having a lot of what I would call “presence.” Yes, presence is what I feel most when standing in front of one of Daniel Clayman’s works.
"Preinte"

We recently received a great “new” piece by Marvin Lipofsky. I use quotation marks because this beautiful sculpture is not newly made, just new to Holsten Galleries. The piece was actually blown in 1995 and finished in 1996 and I have no idea where Marvin has been hiding it. My guess is that it has not been availalbe previously since it seems much too fine a piece not to have sold earlier otherwise. Many of you know that Marvin was in the first glass masters program taught by Harvey Littleton way back in the 1960’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He went on from there to be an art professor at UC-Berkeley and to found the glass program at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Many of the well known glass artists from the West Coast were students of Lipofsky in the 1970’s. This piece to me has all of the ingredients of a great classic Lipofsky work: great organic form, sophisticated used of negative space, gorgeous colors. Thank you, Marvin, for saving this piece for us!
