CAST Contributor Feature: Marlene Rose, Part 1 of 4
This is the first installment in a four-part series covering Marlene Rose and in the following three installments, her newest piece, Fountain Buddha. This first installment gives some background on Marlene and her work.
Marlene Rose is a glass artist who lives and works in Clearwater, Florida. She works with iconic images, reimagining them in a variety of configurations for private and corporate clients around the world. Her pieces have found homes in permanent collections as far flung as the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong and The National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria and as close as The Leepa-Rattner Museum of the Arts, St. Petersburg, FL.
It takes a pretty tough lady to work with hot glass in a little black dress!
The quality of Marlene's work was clear to us immediately and since our first interaction with her, she has shown herself to be not only a consummate professional, but responsive, thoughtful, friendly, and has come through for us time after time as we requested more images for the book. One of the great joys in writing CAST has been getting to know so many gifted artists - the best is when they're also lovely people like Marlene.
One of the images she works with is the head of the Buddha. Her piece, Buddha Wall, is featured in CAST. She has used the head of Buddha as a single element, a repeated element, in combination with found objects, and countless other configurations. See her collection of Buddhas HERE.
Marlene Rose, Buddha Wall, 2011. Glass, steel, and copper, 4'6" × 3'2" × 9". Photo: David A. Monroe.
We love what Marlene has to say about including relics of modern life in her castings:
In the end, the work has a quality of timelessness, reflecting both ancient and modern. They celebrate the unique properties of glass, of transparency, and shine and reflection. And because these are cast objects, they hold in their form the memory of the shapes and textures of the materials that formed them; they are fine-grained, rugged or smooth, transparent or translucent, colored or clear.
When I cast the sculptures I include in them relics of modern life, interesting objects that have been cast away, industrial waste items that seem to unite present and past. In the end, the completed piece transcends the sensibility of mere time.”
- Marlene Rose
Marlene Rose, Celadon Swirl Buddha 34" x 24" x 12"
This is a terrific spot from Daytime on NBC about Marlene and her studio practice.
Marlene's new piece, Fountain Buddha, is her largest piece to date. The Buddha head alone is 3' tall. Stay tuned for Part 2 in our four-part series on Marlene Rose and her new piece, Fountain Buddha!
Check out Marlene's website HERE
