Nature Transfigured: Steffen Dam

Traver Gallery, Seattle, Washington 2 July–1 August 2010

 Works by Danish glass artist Steffen Dam, inspired by animal and plant morphology, will be on show next month in Seattle, Washington. Rows of cylindrical jars seem to imprison jellyfish whose tentacles swirl in slipstreams of frozen air bubbles, while translucent panels appear to house various sections of botanical or zoological specimens. Yet Dam's evocative productions are inanimate works of chemistry, entirely crafted using clever glass-making techniques.

Dam's artworks reflect a childhood spent poring over colour illustrations in his grandfather's natural history books. He still consults such visual resources when developing ideas, but puts them aside before entering his studio. Gathering molten glass from the furnace at 1,100 °C, he first rolls it in aluminium powder, which melts at 660 °C, forming globules that make up the innards of his faux jellyfish (pictured). After adding another layer of molten glass he rolls it in bicarbonate of soda. The alkali burns and releases carbon dioxide, which is caught within the cooling glass to create the fine bubbles that suggest propulsion through water. Dam casts some objects as a cylinder, the curvature of which magnifies his trapped marine species.

The internal structures of his pseudo plants and animals are etched in a palette of greys and browns, achieved using combinations of commercial glass containing arsenic, lead and cadmium salts and exploiting the effects of oxidizing or reducing atmospheres in the kiln. Dam painstakingly assembles these works by slicing sections from the annealed shapes and trimming them into perfect rectangles; the 'slides' are then aligned and fixed onto a single sheet of plate glass. With tremendous skill and a fine eye, Dam creates harmonious designs for his contemporary cabinets of natural curiosities, which evoke those of nineteenth-century museums.

Credit: JELLYFISH GROUP (2010). COURTESY S. DAM