COVER STORY
M
arlene Rose ’86 plunges a metal ladle into the flames and scoops out a giant spoonful of molten glass. The kiln is a toasty 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the “lava” emerges from the oven, it emits a deep, almost spectral glow. Carefully and deliberately, she pours the yellow-orange liquid into a nearby mold. Beads of sweat cling to her forehead. The work is hard, dirty, and dangerous — fine art born from an industrial process. At 52, Rose is considered the foremost sand-cast glass artist in America. “I love the texture of the sand on the glass,” she says. “I love the fact that the glass remembers the sand.” Her stunningly original works are sought after by glass connoisseurs, fine-art collectors, and Hollywood celebrities, and she can be found in more than a dozen art galleries and museums across the US and Europe. She is one of only a handful of artists making glass this way. “There’s a raw, rugged beauty to Marlene Rose’s work,” writes Florida-based journalist Bill DeYoung. “It’s entirely without the clean, polished fullness of most art glass... It’s earthy, as if it were belched up from the ground alongside minerals and precious stones — something crude and colored, tough and translucent. But with form.”
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POMFRET WINTER 2020
