Pamina Traylor - Glass Sculptor

about the artist

Pamina Traylor is an artist and educator, currently Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts where she was Interim Chair of the Glass Program 1999-2000. She will be a visiting faculty member of the Osaka University of Art in the fall of 2007. She has also served as a member of the Glass Art Society's board of directors since 2003. She received her M.F.A. from the Rochester Institute of Technology and her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, with additional studies at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, and San Francisco State University. The Creative Glass Center of America awarded her a fellowship in both 2003 and 1995 and she received a CCAC Faculty Development Grant in 1998. She has lectured and demonstrated at schools in Australia and Japan and has taught workshops throughout world, including The Glass Furnace, Istanbul, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, and Urban Glass. Her work is exhibited internationally. She was recently featured on KQED public television's SPARK program, "By Hand" (see video).

Her work is exhibited by Sculpturesite Gallery, San Francisco; Snyderman Gallery, Philadelphia; and Luniverre, Paris, France. She is in the permanent collection of the Museum of American Glass, NJ; The Speed Art Museum, KY; Tittot Glass Art Museum, Taiwan; and Cam Ocagi, Istanbul.

"Pamina Traylor's series of organic, vaginal-like images in "Cadence" remind us of the erotic potential of glass. Glass is at once a fragile yet strong material, suggesting that Traylor's evocative female forms have the same strength -- as their forthrightness suggests -- as well as fragility, indicated by their "self-divided" character. There is an understated excitement to Traylor's installation, confirmed by her exquisite handling. Subtly conceptual and starkly subtle at once, Traylor's postminimalist serial sculptures speak to contemporary social as well as aesthetic concerns." Donald Kuspit

"Pamina Traylor's sculpture is based on pairs. But rather than pursuing uniformity or similarity, her work explores oppositions through form, material, structure, and finish. Traylor, who is the Acting Glass Program Chair at the California College of Arts and Crafts, tends to work with glass and metal. The majority of her pieces are solid glass forms juxtaposed with metal or wood structures that articulate the glass through a context of form. The relationships between the elements are overarchingly sensual, regardless of complexity. Traylor's work is about dichotomies: strength/vulnerability, confinement/sanctuary, public/private, and the performance of gender difference. Traylor is keenly aware of how language and its subtexts affect the perceptions of the viewer and she highlights this strength in her work: an accompanying text may not describe a work, but, rather, alter its apparent context, dissolving any obvious meaning along the way. Traylor wants the viewer to notice the interaction of an object with its shadows. By making us look in between things, Traylor reminds us there is no singular truth inherent in any object. This approach makes her use of gloriously sexual imagery poignant through sexuality's constant desire for an Other. Traylor's masterful craftsmanship ensures these statements and conversations are particularly articulate, witty and beautiful." Daniel Kany