Caleb Nichols

Caleb Nichols is at an exciting stage: after some 20 years of working in glass, he has reached the point where his ideas, not his technical virtuosity, comes first. As a result, his work has increased in size to over 30” high pieces and his imagery has expanded as well. He is still inspired by the moods and vastness of the ocean. “It’s interesting”, he explains “the wilder and more colorful I make these pieces, the more they invoke a sense of calm. A funny kind of inverse effect”.

Nichols was influenced greatly by Japanese art. Like all glass addicts, he has done his share of obsessing on technique. In his quest to “build a better vocabulary”, he has mastered such standards as blowing, casting annealing and fusing. He has even devised one of his own: SMASHING. “I blow these forms and then hit them with a hammer.” Essentially he blows a big vessel and allows it to cool. He then breaks up the vessel into pieces with a hammer followed by heating up the broken pieces and assembling them while the glass is hot into a one-of-a-kind sculpture.

Nichols enrolled in studio arts in 1979 at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana to draw live models. There he stumbled into glass and got hooked. He finished his education there in 1981.He also attended Franklin College in Lugano Switzerland from 1977-1979.