Steffen Plistermann Steffen is largely self-taught. Born in Berlin, Germany, he moved to the US in 1987. After 25 years as an established painter and sculptor in the Pacific Northwest, he started working with glass as an assistant to Evan Schauss in 2015 while living on Maui, Hawaii. He quickly realized that glass was the next step in his artistic career and in 2017 moved to Santa Fe, NM to pursue his own work in glass full-time. In Santa Fe, he blows glass at Prairie Dog Glass, often being assisted by his wife, Manju. Steffen’s work is in private and corporate and museum collections nationwide and internationally. -----------------------------------------------------Artist's StatementAfter more than 25 years as a painter and sculptor, I now find myself blowing and sculpting glass. While I never expected to work in glass, it has been the next step in a natural evolution. My fascination with organic colors, textures and shapes has finally found the perfect outlet and my past experiences allow me to create work that transcends my new medium. In my past career, I realized early on that, in order to arrive at an organic result, I must go through an organic process. I found glass to be the ideal material for this approach. Between heat, gravity, andcentrifugal force, glass takes on a life of its own and as the artist, I end upcollaborating with the material, rather than trying to dictate an outcome. When I am working with glass, I am approaching color from a painter’s viewpoint. However, colored glass does not blend and mix in the way that oils or acrylics do. Through a lot of experimentation, I developed a process based on colored glass that has been ground to a powder size. Layering these powders and heating and cooling them in specific ways allows me to create these unique, distinctive finishes. I frequently don’t know what the final shape of the piece will be until allthe color patterns have been established; only then can I see the corresponding shape. As a result, all my pieces are originals in the truest form of the term, there is no way to copy what I have done before. All of my work continues to evolve, and I find that as I progress as a glassblower, I’m able to incorporate more and more techniques from my experience as a painter and sculptor. This is also why I foremost think of myself not as a glassblower, but as an artist currently working in glass. Most of my pieces begin in the same way. After gathering one or more layers of clear glass, I apply several layers of colored glass. This will eventually become the inside color. I’ll add one more gather of clear glass and then start working on the outside colors, predominantly using colored glass ground to a powder size, which makes for very thin layers. Additional color might be applied in the form of wraps or through the insertion of prefabricated, multi-colored medallions. On average, there are between 15 to 20 layers of colors on the outside of my pieces. After the pieces have cooled down, I’ll sandblast the outside, which creates a matt finish and exposes the textures created by the color application to the touch. As a result, the outside of my pieces feels more like stone.