Location: United States
Miles Van Rensselaer has been exhibiting professionally since 1999; his first solo show was at Heller Gallery in 2005 in NYC. His glass works are well-conceived juxtapositions of material and concept that lock the two together into unique sculptural form. Miles received a B.A with a double-major in Sculpture and English from Kenyon College while studying the Indonesian language, mask making and woodcarving with Javanese and Balinese masters. He went on to work with glass and bronze at, amongst others, Steve Tobin Studios, WheatonArts, Penland School of Craft, Corning, Tyler, Urban Glass and Alfred University.
Having studied and worked with many professional artists, Miles now works out of (and lives above) the bronze foundry and glass studio he built in an abandoned marble quarry along the Delaware River in northwest NJ (60 miles west NYC and north of Philadelphia.) Some if his largest works include monumental (4 x 6’) slumped and carved glass heads from his “Maori Moko” series which he exhibited 16’ from the ground in Navy Pier for SOFO Chicago 2009 and emerging from the floor of the “grand entrance” of Art Palm Beach 2010 (both with Habatat Michigan.)
Miles was more recently (the only American) invited to Japan’s 2013 International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa, touring The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in 2013 and The Notojima Glass Art Museum earlier this year (work from that show is currently up for acquisition by the new Shanghai Museum of Glass in China.)
Most recently, Miles was invited as a demonstrating artist to the Glass Art Society’s 43rd Conference in Chicago, IL, where he went through a variety of his more immediate and experimental glass / metal working techniques.