Joel Bloomberg Jellyfish Lamp Designs made in USA - page 2

Joel Bloomberg creates a wide variety of glass art, including his distinctive series of Jellyfish Lamps that are in actuality one-of-a-kind illuminated sculptures. Joel regards his sculptures as allegorical statements and explains that his "object and direction are two-fold: 1) to create pieces that have a 'precious quality' to them whether they are small and simple or large and involved and 2) to create designs, ideas and techniques that expand the vocabulary of art glass and use the materials in new and unexpected ways." Each Jellyfish Lamp is unique in color, shape, size and appearance. Each requires a complex combination of blowing, coldworking and lamination that Joel has perfected over many years. To make his raw materials, Joel formulates his own glass colors, as well as incorporating specialty glass powders and frits that are commercially available to glass artists. With a strong background in chemistry, Joel is successful in combining these different glasses in a molten state, along with oxides of silver and tin, to produce lustrous glass in a range of colors, hues and tones that are exclusive to his work. "Light plays an important part with all of my work, and especially in my illuminated sculptural lamps," he explains. "Colors and reflections can look very different depending on the time of day, direction of the light, or other factors affecting light." Largely self-taught in his glass designs, Joel earned degrees from two of California's most respected glass schools: Palomar College (Associate of Arts degree in Chemistry and Glass) and California State University, Chico (Bachelors degree in Glass and Sculpture). Among many glass workshops he has attended, he cites a two-week class with Richard Marquis and a two-day workshop with Gianii Toso as being very influential to his growth as a glass artist. Before establishing his own glass studio in 1980, Joel traveled throughout Europe to visit the famed glass factories of Sweden and Italy. Among the many site-specific glass sculptures he has created by commission include those for the City of West Hollywood, CA; the Great American Bank, San Diego; Shiflet, Sharp & Waters Law Firm, San Diego; and the Gesim Corporation, Calabasas, CA. Joel Bloomberg's work has been shown at more than 100 galleries and museums in the United States and Canada, including the Downey Museum of Art, CA; the Los Angeles Museum of Art; and the White House, Washington, DC. His work is included in major collections throughout North America, Japan, France and Germany.