Art on Fire 2026

HONORARY ARTIST
Amber Cowan

Amber Cowan's sculptural glasswork is based around the use of recycled, upcycled, and second-life American pressed glass. She uses the process of flameworking, hot-sculpting and glassblowing to create large-scale sculptures that overwhelm the viewer with ornate abstraction and viral accrual. With an instinctive nature towards horror vacui, her pieces reference memory, domesticity and the loss of an industry through the re-use of common items from the aesthetic dustbin of American design. The primary material used for her work is glass cullet sourced from scrap yards supplied by now defunct pressed glass factories as well as flea-markets, antique-stores and donations of broken antiques from households across the country.

Her recent diorama-style pieces tell stories of self-discovery, escapism and the power of the feminine by utilizing figurines and animals found in collected antique glass pieces. These figurines become recurring symbols in the evolving narrative and simultaneously pay homage to the history of US glassmaking.

Cowan lives and works in Philadelphia where she received an MFA in Ceramics/Glass from Tyler School of Art and Architecture of Temple University. She was the recipient of the 2014 Rakow Commission from The Corning Museum of Glass and her work can be found in the permanent collection of The Museum of Art and Design in New York, The Toledo Museum of Art, and The RISD Museum.

www.ambercowan.com / @amber.cowan