August 2008 | BY Lee Lawrence | Issue 63, October 2008 |
- Paperweight artist Paul Stankard creates meticulous depictions of flora and fauna in glass. Photography by Gregory Benson
Seated at his worktable, eyes shielded by blue-tinted glasses, Paul Stankard is creating an illusion. In one hand, he holds a rod of clear glass; in the other, a dark one. Between them, fire shoots out of a gas-fueled torch, softening the glass. With smooth, steady gestures, Stankard layers clear glass onto the dark, then pulls. The rod stretches. Again, he coats and pulls until the dark glass is but a filament inside a clear rod that he can shape into minute petals, stamens, root filaments or the edge of a damselfly wing. Once Stankard has assembled countless components into a color-rich bouquet, he encases it in crystal. The clear glass enrobing the dark filaments “disappears,” leaving wisps of color so fragile it is impossible to fathom how Stankard could have manipulated them.
This is the “wow!” factor in the work of an artist who is, by many measures, an inspiring anomaly. He attended technical college, not art school, and even after tasting Manhattan, opted for South Jersey, his home since the age of 15. In 1972, the married father of four left a good job in scientific glass to devote himself to art. He chose lampworking, a technique then associated more with street fairs than with the burgeoning studio craft movement. In New Jersey, paperweight production had a rich history and was “a wonderfully respected category and also somewhat of a lost art,” Stankard explains.
“In the factory,” he elaborates, “being creative meant paperweights.”
No longer satisfied with “wow,” Stankard prefers to hear “aah … ,” as people experience his floral and plant vignettes with their intimations of fertility, decay and wondrous mystery. Although Stankard’s compositions are painstakingly detailed, they are not botanically accurate—the form may be slightly off, roots may take onhuman form, faces might emerge underground. Memento mori? Jungian archetypes? Spirits or sprites? These are the kinds of questions Stankard likes to hear. “The sex, death and God part of my work,” he says. “That’s what’s important.”
At his home in Mantua, N.J., where he and his wife, Pat, have lived for nearly 40 years, other surprises await. We think of artists as being more likely to read Sufi texts than attend Sunday services, yet Stankard is a practicing Catholic. We think of glass artists as relishing technique, yet Stankard prefers talking literature. And, at home, the man heralded as the undisputed master of floral sculpture surrounds himself with artworks ranging from his daughter Katherine’s figurative paintings to Jay Musler goblets and Mark Peiser sculptures. Aside from one or two of his own works and a paperweight by his daughter Christine, there are no depictions of flowers.
“I am in the studio duking it out with realism, banging myself up till I leave exhausted,” he says. “The last thing I want to do is walk into my house and look at a flower!” His cheeks color beneath his white beard as he laughs.
For more of “Miracle Worker,” pick up the October 2008 issue of AmericanStyle today.
