Daniel has been involved in the visual and performing arts since the mid 1970’s. His first formal training was as a theater and modern dance lighting designer. He began “sculpting with light” as a lighting design student and then as a visiting Lighting Designer for the Dance Department at Connecticut College in 1977. The year 1983 proved pivotal in his artistic career. After six years of working with numerous touring theater and dance companies, he enrolled in the Glass Program at the Rhode Island School of Design. Graduating with a BFA in Glass in June of 1986, Daniel made his home in the Providence, RI area where he has maintained a studio ever since.

Artist Statement
I am in contact with my work everyday. Most days I come to the studio as the “working artist.” Other days I come as an observer, to see what the “artist” is doing. The work is a continual, always evolving exploration of simple forms.

Using a vocabulary of extremely simple forms whose scale ranges from three to nine feet, these objects describe volumes in space. Some of the pieces are easily identifiable as vessels and may allude to holding volumes of water. Others are pure abstraction holding only quantities of air and space. By taking away any real solid mass, I am left with just the skins of glass, bronze or graphite that define a measure of capacity. Other objects are identifiable as a ramp (”PLANE”) that divides space with a simple line or as a wheel (”CIRCULAR OBJECT ONE”) that makes the center volume of air as important as the white structure itself.

White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman, an exhibition that defies the stereotype of contemporary glass, will open at the Museum of Glass on September 14, 2008. Seven large-scale, dense, opaque sculptures comprise the exhibition and challenge viewers’ perceptions of glass art.

Clayman began his career as a theatrical lighting designer. Tired of the late nights and extended travel periods, he left the theater and enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) glass program in 1983. At RISD, Clayman studied under Bruce Chao who encouraged him to pursue sculpture with a basis in critical thought. The evolution of his work progressed from early architectonic studies, to his signature organic glass pods nested in bronze shells, to his more recent studies of light and shadow. By the 1990s, he had moved toward the large-scale glass pieces that characterize his work today. He simplified the designs and gradually his sculptures evolved into studies of pure form and light, creating an aesthetic defined by spare elegance within an environment of solace and grace.

“White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman includes some of the artist’s most technically ambitious sculptures,” states Museum of Glass curator Melissa G. Post. “The seven monumental works engage viewers on several levels, illuminating the ethereal nature of light and subtly revealing the movement in glass within highly formal structures.”

Created using the cire perdu (lost wax casting) technique, the forms appear extremely simple, yet Clayman describes his process as intensely difficult. In them, Clayman embraces the Minimalist discipline, masterfully combining it with the dynamism of the Studio Glass movement and his own fascination with the nature of light. The result is light made manifest as a seemingly tangible object. “The work in this exhibition is the culmination of three years of thought, rumination and fabrication,” Clayman says in this exhibition statement. “Of utmost importance is an economy of line, a reduction of color and the behavior of light. By paring away almost everything, I am left with objects that exist in space in the simplest manner. While the forms themselves are of primary interest, the space surrounding the pieces and the spaces that the pieces surround carry equal weight.”

A collection of related working drawings will be displayed with the sculptures and a catalog accompanies the exhibition. White Light will remain on view until June 14, 2009.

RELATED PROGRAMMING
A Conversation with the Artist: Daniel Clayman
Sunday, September 14, 2 p.m.
Museum of Glass Theater

Hot Shop Visiting Artist Residency
May, 2009