A feeling for glass
- Anna’s practice reflects an interest in spiritual objects and iconography from diverse cultures
- She won the International Perfume Bottle Association’s competition in 2021
- She has held leadership roles with the Glass Art Society and National Liberty Museum
Anna Boothe creates avant-garde cast glass sculpture pieces in her studio, a converted 1860s barn in rural Pennsylvania. She began exploring glass at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1980s and later received an MFA in glass at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. Anna primarily uses the pâte de verre technique in her work, a late 19th-century French glass casting process. "This technique confers a translucency that holds light rather than reflecting it, which allows me to convey ideas with more depth and nuance,” she says. As a former pastry chef, Anna likens carving wax to shaping chocolate, and layering glass powders to using icing. Pieces emerge from the kiln firing process like finely crafted pâtisserie. “Glass can be arrestingly beautiful, yet the discipline is lengthy, and subject to both failure and surprise. My craft continues to humble me,” she says.
INTERVIEW
The anatomical symbols in my pieces draw on spiritual objects from world cultures. This fascination was instilled in me by my father’s interest in ancient Egypt and deepened when I encountered temples, reliquaries and sacred objects in my own travels. I often feel a visceral connection to what they express and to the objects made in their honour.
Anatomical forms are familiar in all cultures and act as threads that link us, creating subtle pathways to acceptance between disparate peoples. Hand iconography, for instance, is found everywhere in sacred and daily objects across cultures. They signify connection and unity.
Gardening, yoga and baking are activities I lose myself in. Each of them, especially yoga, demands deep focus. These practices sharpen my concentration in the studio and help me enter that liminal space between reality and a dream state from which my art comes.
My pieces are in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Museum of American Glass, Racine Art Museum, Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass and Tacoma Museum of Art.
