Collection: Anna Boothe

With degrees in sculpture from RISD and glass from Tyler School of Art, Anna Boothe has worked with glass since 1980. Included in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Racine Art Museum and Tacoma Museum of Art, her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, recently at Philadelphia’s International Airport, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Fuller Craft Museum and in Vicenza, Italy with a major collaborative work scheduled for exhibition at the Racine Art Museum in 2021.

When exhibiting for the first time in each the Smithsonian, Philadelphia Museum of Art and ACC Baltimore craft shows, she received “Best of” awards.

Boothe taught in Tyler’s glass program for 16 years, helped develop Salem Community College’s (NJ) glass art program and has lectured internationally.

She served on the Board and as President of GAS from 1998-2006, and is a former Director of Glass at the National Liberty Museum.

Artist Statement:

The themes of my art-making parallel my daily focus on seeking integrity through awareness, conscientious interaction, and balance.

My sculptures are composed of elements inspired by research into and interpretation of Buddhist iconography as well as objects and symbols “of meaning” from different cultures. Individually and collectively, I believe we all search for referents that help us to understand our world and circumstances. The objects we create and/or gather, and how we arrange them, promote a semblance of an explanation for what we seek.

Relative to my work, imbued in each object or assemblage, is a reference to the historical artifact, a sense of preciousness, and the intangibility, yet familiarity that is associated with collaged memory. Often featured in my vocabulary are shapes derived from nature and the human form, including the hand motif as it represents a ubiquitous cross-cultural human tool of expression, through its symbolic gestures of friendship, generosity, holding, letting go, etc. I employ this symbol to denote a commonality between cultures and among peoples, i.e. camaraderie and the ability to communicate viscerally without a shared language.

With technical inspiration taken from a 19th C French glass-casting technique known as pate de verre, my glass pieces are created in a kiln by fusing sugary particles of lead crystal. The individual elements are first hand-carved in wax or cast directly from botanicals. Each of the parts is made separately using the lost-wax casting process, then ground, polished, and combined with other glass or material components.