Beauty Beyond Nature: The Glass Art of Paul Stankard

In a recent news article, Patti Smith responded to suggestions that her memoir, Just Kids, showed “hero worship” in her fondness for poets like Bob Dylan and Walt Whitman. “I feel magnified by these people,” she said. Paul Stankard, considered to be the father of modern glass paperweights, feels a similar kinship with Whitman. “I have internalized his works with my feelings to recapitulate and rework those feelings in glass,” he writes. The artists’ subjects are identical—“birth and decay.” For Stankard, this manifests in referentially botanical scenes suspended in orbs. His microcosms of bees after pollen, lily pads, root systems and clusters of flowers will inspire your next walk in the woods.