There is something fascinating about obsession. About searching for a form of perfection that proves so elusive, it’s the journey itself that becomes sustaining and gratifying, if maybe only to you.
The Specialty Glass Residency, a collaboration between Corning Incorporated and The Corning Museum of Glass, creates an environment where that pursuit is not only welcomed but encouraged.
I interviewed Mark Peiser, the 2019 recipient, shortly before he began his year-long residency in Corning, and what struck me most was his passion to develop a glass that might so closely resemble mist in a bottle, or “the haze on the Blue Ridge Mountains” as he described it, that you could be forgiven for thinking yourself lost in those Appalachian hills whenever you peer into the depths of his glass creations.
Peiser thought then that he might find a glass at Corning that would bring him closer to that goal. When I caught up with him more recently, that discovery was forefront in my thoughts, and it didn’t take long to get to the heart of the matter. “This residency is an extension of a body of work I started years ago,” he confirms. “Which is essentially an investigation into opal glasses and new forms of opal.” Here is his connection back to the mountains and valleys of home and the beautiful opal-blue aura to which his surroundings surrender themselves.
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