Jack Storms' Cold-Worked Glass Sculptures

Archive feature, first published 2018-10-01.

Jack Storms combines lead crystal and dichroic glass in a labor-intensive cold-working process. The 2018 profile placed his studio practice in Los Angeles and emphasized its specialized nature without establishing a count of practitioners.

"What I do is I don’t use any heat at all, I grind and grind and grind, and then I polish, that’s what separates me from everybody else. It’s much more difficult, and it takes a lot more time. But for me, the effects are just brilliant."

The account reports eight to eighteen weeks for an individual piece, depending on the work involved.

The feature also connected Storms’ geometric designs with Fibonacci proportions, drawing comparisons with the spirals seen in plants such as pineapples and flowers. That is a discussion of patterns and artistic inspiration, not a basis for the 2018 claim that Fibonacci numbers govern the growth of every living thing. In the sculptures, a more useful question is how repetition and proportion organize the color and light you see.

The polished surface opens onto an inner structure

The outer form contains another visual structure. Through the polished surface, layers and repeated shapes create an impression of depth that changes between views. A photograph from one angle may make the pattern clear, while another emphasizes the distance between its parts. That is why several views are especially useful for these works: the sculpture offers more than one arrangement to the eye.

A closer look

Geometry provides a design vocabulary rather than a universal explanation of nature. Within the object, the useful relationship is between repetition, proportion and the light passing through the finished structure.

Further reading: Jack Storms: cold-working process

Storms describes cutting, grinding, polishing and laminating as parts of the process. The repeated physical work connects the finished clarity with decisions made across many stages, rather than a single moment of shaping.

The object has a physical outside and an apparent inside that the viewer can explore without opening it. That relationship gives polishing more than a finishing role: clarity determines access to the internal pattern. The time spent on repeated surfaces becomes part of how depth and color are finally encountered.