ARTISTIC STATEMENT

My name is JDC Roman, and I was born in the summer of 1969. I currently live in Eddyville, Oregon where I spend most of my time creating. Glass has chosen me to be her apprentice, and I have been her loving student. I have been blowing glass for a third of my life now, honing my skills with solid and hollow shapes. Over the years, I've learned many different techniques that add to my palette of creativity. One of them being what I call "the dance of the elements": Utilizing the way heat rises and gravity falls, combined with marvering and carving, adding and removing, hot and cold points, centrifugal force, fire polishing, and axis shifts. Some of these techniques need to be executed simultaneously in a 1-2 second margin. That makes for quite the dance to behold. You might find yourself dreaming about blowing glass if you watched it being done once or twice. It's completely mesmerizing how it forms from nothing into something. Second by second taking on different shapes, like evolution itself happening before your eyes. You really see the similarities between the shapes of nature, morphing from one into another with a flick of the wrist, like a magic wand. And to think, it all came from sand. Limitless are its creative potentials. I've dedicated my life to unlocking some of its mysteries, knowing that I certainly couldn't unlock all of them in several lifetimes. This may be unappealing to some, but for me it's absolutely intriguing. I am very passionate about what I do. It can be quite infectious, and I don't mind sharing. I do most of my sculpting in the flame with graphite knives and paddles. A lot of the shapes I choose are my way of honoring Mother Earth and how she relates with me. My central focus is to inspire minds through my work, combining abstract and representational forms which leads for an invitation to question.