I am really fascinated by glass, because of the tremendous energy when glass melts inside a furnace. It is a totally different world out there. When I open the door of the furnace and try to gather glass, I feel with my whole body. I am watching a whole different world through that little hole of the glass furnace. It is tremendous heat, sound, and light. It almost scares you. And so I try to bring their world into our world. When the glass comes out towards our world, I let the subject around me, I let them meet...and see what happens. Glass throws lots of heat and starts freezing and becomes unmovable stuff. It was fully liquid, but it changes form and structure immediately and freezes and keeps that shape forever, which is like a recording machine; but molten glass coming towards our world lets some material meet together, and glass records whole event and situation and concern for a long time. So that is what interests me about glass. So I started using glass as a recording machine. I was dumping hot molten glass onto almost any kind of material you can imagine: food, object, or equipment, furniture, or even road kills. And it was pretty intense experiments in using glass as a recording machine.
Also, glass is also one of the most difficult materials to handle, almost refuses to be controlled. Therefore, when I work with glass, the studio becomes lots of mess. Glass leaves me lots of mess and also unfinished work, almost endless journey to control it and then to finish the work. Just like having a life, you know, pushing your life, go for it, and just let it go and see what happens, and that’s going to stay with you. That is to me all about glass. And I, still looking for what is glass about.
Daisuke Shintani. Sculptor. Born: Hiroshima, Japan. Lives, Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Mr. Shintani attended the Tokyo Glass Art School, Japan. Canada, Japan, USA, Sweden, Italy, France, Russia are among the countries where his work is exhibited and collected.
