The awesome cast glass sculptures of artist Karen La Monte will take your breath away.
Her vast collection of impressive artwork includes figurative cast glass impressions of gowns and busts, ceramic drapery studies, drawings, bas-reliefs, sartoriotypes and glass cast hand mirrors with photo-etched steel.
Today, I'm going to share with you many of her amazing life sized (approx 5 feet tall) figurative cast glass gowns. Willowy diaphanous gowns with subtle impressions of the female form stand or recline eerily on their own as they invite you to touch what looks like ghostly satin and silk drapery but is actual glass cast by the capable hands of this Czech republic artist.
above: Cast glass Semi-reclining dress impression by Karen LaMonte.
Her ability to craft such a hard material into sensuous folds, delicate wrinkles, fluid pleats and satin-like textures is truly remarkable.
above: details from the cast glass impressions of Karen LaMonte
LaMonte's anthropomorphosis of the dress is achieved with the hint of the female form beneath the folds. The essence of femininity and sensuality exudes from the sculptures despite the cold medium.
Reclining Dress Impression (front):
Reclining Dress Impression (back):
Dress Impression with Wrinkled Cowl:
Dress Impression with Wrinkled Cowl, detail:
Semi-reclining Dress Impression with Drapery:
Semi-reclining Dress Impression with Drapery, detail:
Dress Impression with Shawl:
Dress Impression with Shawl, detail:
Deco Dress Impression:
Deco Dress, details:
Reclining Drapery Impression Dress:
Reclining Drapery Impression Dress, detail:
Undine:
Undine, details:
Dress Impression with Train:
Pianist's Dress Impression:
Pianist's Dress Impression, details:
Dress Impression with Drapery:
Her work is so impressive that the reclining dress impression shown below is a recent acquisition by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
artist biography:
Karen LaMonte (above) started using clothing as a metaphor for identity and exploring the human in absentia in her early sculptures of blown glass puppets and marionettes shortly after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990.
As a young artist working and living in New York, she participated in many gallery and museum exhibitions. An excellent example of her early investigations is Bottle Clothesline (1995) that was part of the traveling museum exhibition ¡Cálido! Contemporary Warm Glass that toured from 1997 through 1998. The Tucson Museum of Art later acquisitioned it for their permanent collection.
She continued probing the disparity between our natural skin and our social skin, clothing which we use to obscure and conceal, to protect the individual and project a persona. It is a ‘vestmentary envelope’ which renders us as social beings.
She received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1999 to make her work in the Czech Republic. Further investigating the idea that clothing draws the body so that it can be culturally seen and articulates it in a socially meaningful form, she began working on sculptures of cast glass dresses. One of the earliest examples of this is Blue Dress now in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass. During the Fulbright year, she also completed her first large scale sculpture Vestige.
She expanded her inquiry by adding the impression of an absent body to her sculptures. This investigation of the clothing as a divider between public from private space and of transparency and transience, led to a new body of work for which she received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award in 2001.
Also in 2001, her interest in transparency led her to create monotype prints she called Sartoriotypes (sartorial of or relating to tailored clothing, plus type meaning image and impression). These works were installed with the cast glass sculptures in the 2002 exhibition at Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice, Italy.
In 2004, she began a new body of work using mirrors and photography. The Lark Mirrors and Sleeping Mirrors became an important part of her solo museum exhibitions Vanitas at the Czech Museum of Fine Art in Prague, Czech Republic and Absence Adorned at the Museum of Glass International Center for Contemporary Art in Tacoma, WA.
In 2006, she was awarded a seven month Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts during which she studied the kimono as an investigation into the Japanese use of clothing as social language.
LaMonte also began investigating the use of ceramic in her sculptures at the European Ceramic Work Centre and was the recipient of the Corning Museum of Glass/Kohler Arts Center Joint Residency for working with ceramic and glass.
Recently, her work was exhibited at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA and was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
She continues to live and work in the Czech Republic.
all images courtesy of the artist
See more of her amazing work at Karen LaMonte