Scott Benefield has been a glassblower for over 35 years, founding glassblowing studios in New Orleans and Seattle, before moving to Ireland and settling near Ballintoy on the North Antrim coast.
All of Scott’s work is made by hand, using traditional ‘offhand’ glassblowing techniques, meaning each completed vessel is formed entirely at temperatures exceeding 700C. While the preparation for these pieces can take days (mixing and melting the colour, forming patterns, laying up compositions),each piece itself is made rather quickly, with the finished forms reflecting the immediacy of the hot-shop processes, where glass is still moving and can be affected by gravity, centrifugal force and hand tools.
The technique of embedding patterns directly into glass was invented by Venetian glassblowers on the island of Murano in the early 16thcentury. Scott learned this way of working from Lino Tagliapietra, a renowned Muranese master glassblower who represents an unbroken lineage of over 900 years of glassblowing in the Venetian lagoon.
His latest body of work, Tincture, employs these same techniques, while allowing the artist to work with a variety of lightly tinted coloured glass. These teardrop-shaped vessels embody a playful visual interaction between overlapping transparent colours and the patterns embedded in the glass, subtly building upon the unique relationship between the use of colour in glass and the viewers perception of transmitted light.
Scott’s work is exhibited internationally and he has given demonstrations and workshops throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. His work is held in numerous collections, including the Museum of American Glass, Millville, NJ, USA., the National Glass Centre, Sunderland, England., and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland collection.