Daniel Clayman

Daniel has been involved in the visual and performing arts since the mid-1970s. His first formal training was as a theater and modern dance lighting designer. He began sculpting with light as a lighting design student and then as a visiting Lighting Designer for the Dance Department at Connecticut College in 1977. The year 1983 proved pivotal in his artistic career. After six years of working with numerous touring theater and dance companies, he enrolled in the Glass Program at the Rhode Island School of Design. Graduating with a BFA in Glass in June of 1986, Daniel made his home in the Providence, RI area where he has maintained a studio ever since.

I am in contact with my work every day. Most days I come to the studio as the "working artist." Other days I come as an observer, to see what the "artist" is doing. The work is a continual, always evolving exploration of simple forms.

Using a vocabulary of extremely simple forms whose scale ranges from three to nine feet, these objects describe volumes in space. Some of the pieces are easily identifiable as vessels and may allude to holding volumes of water. Others are pure abstraction holding only quantities of air and space. By taking away any real solid mass, I am left with just the skins of glass, bronze or graphite that define a measure of capacity. Other objects are identifiable as a ramp ("PLANE") that divides space with a simple line or as a wheel ("CIRCULAR OBJECT ONE") that makes the center volume of air as important as the white structure itself.

-Daniel Clayman 2007