ArtSEA: Seattle loses a glass-art legend

A guiding force in American glassblowing, Moore taught at Pilchuck for a lot of many years, brought in Italian master glassmakers to broaden the program, and influenced legions of artists (including nearby glass stars Preston Singletary and Dante Marioni) by way of his have studio.

I interviewed him just after, for a story I wrote in Seattle journal practically 10 yrs back, “How Seattle Turned the Epicenter of Glass Artwork.”

I bear in mind becoming nervous about calling this large of glass — Moore loomed in my mind as a VIP, who together with Dale Chihuly (his mentor) assisted shape the U.S. studio glass movement. His inventive fashion is geometrically flawless — all spheres, rings and cylinders, with good shades suspended as if in water, or in orbit. But on the phone, he straight away put me at relieve with his kindness and a amusing remark I no longer remember, nevertheless I do remember the relief of laughing.

ArtSEA: Notes on Northwest Culture is Crosscut’s weekly arts & culture newsletter.

When I interviewed Debora Moore, his wife and fellow glass artist, for a 2019 Crosscut story about her personal beautiful do the job, I thought perhaps I would at last fulfill Benjamin (“Benny,” as his local community realized him) in individual, at the studio and warm store the two shared for a long time in the Chinatown-Global District. Turned out he was not all around that day, but his work on display screen spoke for by itself, its peaceful purity of sort a form of buzzing meditation.