The Timeshttp://www.nj.com/features/times/index.ssf?/features/times/09-14-EAQD1P_D.html
Glass sculptor's works reflect a full-blown talent
09/14/01By JANET PURCELL
Special to The Times
Lamp-worked glass sculptor Rex Cravat has lived and worked his art in Nevada, California, Arizona, Idaho and Minnesota. For the past three years he has been a resident artist at Brion Galleries in Lambertville, where he continues to create his unique glass creations.
The son of Sundance Cravat, a well-known glassblower, Rex Cravat developed his art not at his father's knee as one might expect. While he unknowingly retained a few basic techniques he learned by watching his father, it wasn't until several years later, when he found himself drawn to the art, that he built on those techniques and developed a style of his own.
It was when he was discharged from the military and he was given a torch and some glass by Harold Hacket, a famous paperweight maker, that he began to take glassblowing seriously.
"I started doing it in my kitchen, then hitting swap meets, opened a shop and just got better and better at it," Cravat says.
He got so good at it, in fact, that in 1997 he was honored by The Corning Museum of Glass, which each year selects the top 100 glass sculptors in the world. Competing with hundreds of entries of all types of glass sculpting from 40 countries, Cravat's sculpture, "The Sentinel," was selected and included in The Corning Museum of Glass New Glass Review 18.
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Cravat calls himself a "consummate outdoorsman" and it is his love of nature that inspires his flame-worked art glass. Wild animals leap over rocks and twigs, birds light on graceful tree branches, tall fir trees stand with a dusting of snow resting on their boughs.
In "Not The Point," a hunting dog is seen chasing two flying pheasants through weeds and grass rather than standing still and "pointing" as he should have been doing.
"I like to put action into my pieces as much as I can," Cravat says. "Sometimes I put wind in by having a horse's mane blowing back or branches blowing. I think if it tells some kind of a story, it's more interesting."
In "The Distraction," he created a bare tree with a broken branch lying nearby. A wolf is seen stalking a rabbit that is about to enter a hole. "When the branch broke, the wolf was distracted and the rabbit could get away," he explains.
But not all of Cravat's sculptures are as narrative. Some are enjoyed simply for their beauty, such as his long-stemmed pink roses, which combine clear glass and pure 24 karat gold or yellow roses that combine clear glass and pure silver. As the petals are fired in the kiln the gold turns pink and the silver turns a delicate yellow hue. He then fumes the clear glass leaves with pure silver.
Cravat often uses the fuming method to add highlights to a scene. In addition to the pink hue, fumed gold also produces a lavender glow. Silver produces blue as well as the shades of yellow. In one untitled piece, he has placed a sandblasted white dog in a forest setting where the bushes and fir trees are fumed with gold.
"When gold boils and vaporizes, instead of steam coming off, it's molecules of gold in the flame," he explains. He demonstrates holding the rod with the gold close to the mouth of the torch and the piece to be fumed farther down the flame.
Using that technique, he created "Bound Together," an elegant green and gold woodland scene complete with two graceful bounding deer. The sculpture was commissioned for placement on top of a wedding cake replacing the quintessential bride and groom figures.
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Cravat also occasionally creates abstract sculptures -- curved pedestal forms that hold small spheres and can be used singly or in groups that curve around each other much like twining tendrils.
And recently he has started fashioning marbles and little stands on which to place them. Some are intriguing swirls of color, others have elements inside such as moons, clouds and stars. The natural next step from marbles is paperweights and he says he just may start making some. He's also now started to work in soft glass, which he says is harder to work with but offers wonderful colors.
Cravat's method of glass sculpting is known as flame-working, torch-working or lamp-working. Only when creating marbles is any kind of mold employed, thus each of his signed pieces is a freehand work of art.
Sculptures by Rex Cravat can be seen at Brion Gallery, 1293 Route 179, Lambertville. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday-Thursday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday-Saturday; noon-6 p.m., Sunday. (609) 397-7030 or visit www.briongalleries.com.
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