Howard Ben Tré, an artist who redefined the scale possible in glass sculpture with monumental glass totems often accented with metallic foil surfaces, will have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Glass, in Tacoma, Washington. Entitled “Lightness of Being,” the show opens September 14, and has been described as an indoor forest of vertical shapes, featuring towering sculptures cast in glass and bronze, some as much as 8-feet tall. The show seems to reprise work shown in 2012 at the Dennos Sculpture Center in Traverse City, Michigan.
Since the 1970s, when Ben Tré was first introduced to glass while studying at Portland State University in Oregon, he has been classified as an outlier in the field of glass art, where the scale of much of the work in the 1990s often stopped at table-top scale. It was at RISD that Ben Tré perfected his signature style, pushing the envelope for glass in terms of scale and form, employing industrial processes to realize his vision of primordial objects that seem to exist outside of time. His hulking monuments manage to be both modern and anachronistic, and enjoyed wide acclaim in frequent exhibitions at the now-defunct Charles Cowles Gallery. Though Ben Tré employed relatively simple structures, their imposing scale and utterly confident stance challenged preconceptions about glass art.
His process begins on paper, with 2D drawings that are transformed into templates. The templates are used to make styrofoam patterns that are encased in a concrete-like sand mixture in order to make a mold. Molten glass is then poured into those molds at large-scale glass factories and left to cool for about six weeks. Once removed from the mold, the glass is sandblasted, cut, and fit with bronze or granite additions that are also created with molds. The finished sculptures are so durable that many have been made into outdoor installations, such as the fountains and cast glass benches in Post Office Square Park in Boston. Others include sculptures for BankBoston’s headquarters and the Rhode Island Convention Center, both in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Brooklyn native currently lives.
Ben Tré’s work has also been displayed in indoor venues, both nationally and abroad, such as Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, France.
“Lightness of Being” will run through January 4, 2015.
IF YOU GO: "Lightness of Being" Howard Ben Tré September 13, 2014 —January 4, 2015 Museum of Glass 1801 Dock Street Tacoma, Washington 98402 Tel: 866.468.7386 Website