Floral Garden Marbles with Stand by Shawn Messenger
  • Shawn Messenger

  • Title:

    Floral Garden Marbles with Stand

  • Inventory#:ME000003
  • Medium:

  • SOLD
  • Shawn has created these large flower marbles with a special type of murrini flowers referred to as millefiore. The various flowers and green leaves and stems stretch from one side of the piece to the other. Se... READ MORE
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Shawn Messenger

"My work has been greatly influenced by my love of nature and the wonders it has to offer us. I have tried to incorporate my fondness for flowers and gardens with glass to create an impressionistic vision of the landscape. For me, the flowers are small worlds filled with colors and shapes that produce incredible beauty. The glass murrinis in my work represent the flower. These flowers together become a field of color floating between grasses and stones. This is much like a millefiore, a million flowers. My intention is to evoke a feeling of serenity and solitude, an homage to nature."  Shawn Messenger 

Glass artist Shawn Messenger describes her work as "gardens of glass, where you do not have to weed or water, and everything grows perfectly. If you get tired of the view, just turn the piece to find something new!" Messenger creates her pieces in her urban studio, but her inspiration comes from the flower and vegetable gardens at her home. The details and colors of flowers have always intrigued her, along with the amazement of watching something grow.

Messenger starts her work by creating colorful glass cane with an interior shaped like a flower. The cane is then sliced into small cross sections known as murrini. The murrini are arranged into floral compositions, heated, and then picked up with the blow pipe on a background of layered glass powders and chips. After the murrini are fused to the surface, a layer of clear glass is added and the piece is blown into its final shape.

Shawn Messenger graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a BFA in glass. She was among the first wave of women to receive a degree in glass from the Institute. Messenger attended the Pilchuck Glass School and studied with Dale Chihuly and Italo Scanga. She also attended Penland School of Crafts, studying with Richard and Jan Ritter and Dinah Hulet, concentrating on murrini.

Floral Garden Marbles with Stand
Shawn Messenger
$65
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