Nic McGuire

“I have dreamed of being an artist since when I was a kid. The act of conveying the world through visual images and materials intrigued my senses. I cultivated these new found skills throughout childhood and built upon them with new techniques I was taught in school. In college I had my first experience with hot glass. On the first day of class there were huge glowing orange ovens with radiant heat from the fire inside. Mesmerized by the immense heat and energy it took to control the molten glass, it caught my attention. From that day forward I began the long trek of learning to harness and utilize this amazing and exotic material. During my college years I incorporated glass elements into my sculptures for class projects. While at UCSD, I was awarded a scholarship to attend the Pilchuck Glass School up in Washington, which introduced me to a great community of fellow artists working in the same materials. I graduated with a B.A. in Visual Arts from UC San Diego in 2004.

Since graduating from college, I have been producing original artworks from my local glass studio. I had the opportunity to gain experience maintaining and managing a glass studio in my hometown of Encinitas, CA for many years. From there I was able to learn more about the properties of glass, working with glass on a regular basis, not just during my time to make art from it, but to tend to it as if it were a child. The glass is alive when it is hot, it has a mind of its own and a memory. It has a mysteriousness about it that captures our curiosity. Hard like a rock, yet as transparent as the air we look through. The molten glass has exotic properties compared to other materials you come into contact with on a day to day basis. It glows with a brilliance of color and emits an enormous amount of heat that challenge me as a sculptor to find a way to control these extreme properties in order to end up with a finished piece of art.

I make my sculptures according to what I perceive to be meaningful objects to live with. Through my experiences on this earth and what I have witnessed, what I have been shown by others and that which I have learned all influence my art. The sculptures you see are the ideas which I have attempted to bring forth from my imagination into this reality. Inspired by intriguing patterns found in nature and the amazing relationships shared by all living things I make art to share the beauty of life with others.

Most ideas start from some epiphany I have outside the studio then go through an intense brainstorming phase in my mind before the first prototypes are constructed. My team and I must undergo several trials and attempts before the really nice work begins to come to fruition. From this point of refinement the work takes on a distinctive identity in each individual one we construct.

My work incorporates complex Italian Venetian sculpture techniques combined with my own color palettes to produce the current series. Utilizing a skilled team of glass artists to build a single sculpture consisting of multiple parts, we work together as a seamless machine, moving about in the hot shop in what is described as a well-choreographed dance. Together we share the workload, adding new parts at just the right moment, so as to keep the rhythm and tempo of the dance progressing along. We move as the glass moves, and the glass is always flowing. The intricate patterns and skillfully crafted forms make each piece of art a unique one of a kind sculpture.

I’m currently working on multiple series’ of feathers and modern abstract design at my studio in San Diego. I enjoy spending my time making high quality original glass sculptures.”