BIOGRAPHY
Carrie Gustafson's joyful aesthetic is a quest for lightness and luminosity radiating through her colorful, bold modernist glass. Her intricate patterns are inspired by kimono designs, nature and baskets.

Experiments in glassblowing while a printmaking major at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) ignited her signature style of intricate patterns on vibrantly colored, hand-blown glass.

Technique: on the surface, Gustafson applies an intricate web of stencils on the top layer of 'flash glass'. Next, sandblasting through to a second, translucent under-layer reveals a matrix of light.

Commissioned works, by Gustafson, are found in restaurants, private homes and in her new glass installations and sculptures.

Collections: Corning Museum of Glass. Private acquisitions include artists Chris Rifkin and Magdalena Campos Pons.

In 2006, Gustafson's career was launched by an international museum show 'Studio Glass – Decorative and Functional Objects' at The Bellevue Arts Museum (WA)

In 2008, a solo exhibit of glass tapestries and sculptures at Ursa Gallery (NM) coincides with her fourth year exhibiting at The Smithsonian Craft Show (D.C.).

Numerous craft shows in Philadelphia, D.C. and Boston include The Society of Arts and Crafts and The Fuller Museum of Craft (MA)

Galleries include: SOFA (NY); Chappell Gallery (NY); The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (WI); Cervini Haas Gallery Materia (AZ); The Wayne Art Center (PA); Philabaum Gallery (AZ); and, Martha's Vineyard Glassworks (MA).

After RISD, Gustafson's BFA in printmaking was followed by studying glass at the Pilchuck Glass School (WA); Penland School of Crafts (NC); The Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass (NY) and at Rosin Studio, on Murano, Venice's historic 'glass island' in Italy.

STATEMENT
After a decade of making classic vessels with a Venetian-trained glass blower, my palette of colors and pattern language developed. I arrived at the inner light of the vessel by way of breath's imprint - blowing glass - and from sandblasting through the surface of multiple layers of colored "flash glass". This translucent "skin" couldn't have been thinner. Next, slicing vessels in half, I discovered sculptural forms and a new way of working: wall tapestries and sculptures built from interconnected and patterned shards. This direction, built upon a career of making vessels and lighting, returned me to my student days when I used translucent flower petals as if they were stained glass.

My work seeks to honor this lineage; to use the magic and radiance inherent in glass, to create a visual journal rooted in the spiritual undercurrent, which flows through all matter.