Daniel Cutrone

Bio

Daniel Cutrone is an artist and educator living and working in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. He has received a number of prestigious awards and grants and his work is in private and public collections. His work is featured in the permanent collection at The Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia and the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. He was a Fellowship recipient from the Creative Glass Center of America at Wheaton Arts as well as an Artist Grant Recipient from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, among others. His most recent solo exhibition was at The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

Artist Statement

I am working on mountains, very big mountains made very small, and digital birds, and tree branches, and the act of looking. I have been interested in how the worlds of art, craft, and design overlap. For the last few years, I have been learning how to use computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided machining (CAM) with the desire to explore how these new technologies, which have their own new language of form-making, can be used with traditional glassmaking.

I am interested in the “What ifs?” not about certainty. I believe that the most fertile ground is one littered with the inquiry. It is from this point of view that I tug and pull at the languages of art, craft, and design. What if I rub these things together? What new discourse can be had from the exchange of exciting new vocabulary provided by 3D technologies and those of traditional glass and art-making? I believe that relevance and meaning are derived from questions and not from declarative statements. An aim of my work is to engender a state of inquiry. In particular, my new work investigates the relationship between the natural world and a digitally designed one, the hand-made and the manufactured.

Initially, I was drawn to exploring digital technologies in order to use specific data sets, in particular spatial data sets, like those of real mountains. As I worked through my initial investigations, I discovered CAD to be more than a workspace. It became a new type of think space. I am very interested in the residue of process, and in the digital world, there are a few of these features that I employ in my work.  I machine graphite to create molds that I then use in the glass studio. I use the tool-paths in CNC machining as evidence of this process. My digital world then expanded where I then began to investigate more directly digital sculpting. The birds in my work are digitally sculpted and then 3D printed. These 3D prints are done in such a way that they expose and embrace the residue of this type of printing process.

I am also interested in creating intimacy. It is an inquiry, curiosity, and a desire for understanding that moves us to intimacy. Strategically, I want my work to breathe. I want the viewer to be drawn into it. I want the work to invite the viewer to consider it from a new point of view and from these changing points of view we develop meaning. I believe that we can achieve intimacy through inquiry and experience even if knowledge or understanding remains incomplete.