BIO
Marjorie Anderson was born and grew up in Akron, Ohio. She developed an interest in the arts at a young age, studying piano, dance and baton twirling, She began her own quests in drawing and painting. After high school graduation, she became a drummer and with a band, spent 3 years touring the Midwest and East Coast. Coming off the road she settled in Northern Illinois. There, she co-founded a business restoring pianos, player pianos and pipe organs. She taught herself wood carving and learned to master most every type of finish that could be used on wood.
Yearning to see more of the world, she relocating to Northern California, opened a restoration business, expanding from musical instruments to furniture, objects d’art and interior design. By chance, she discovered the burgeoning Art Glass movement. This fueled her desire to return to visual art. She pursued glass studies first at the College of Marin, then did a did a two year apprenticeship with Narcissus Quagliata Studios in San Francisco. She then opened a studio in Sausalito, completing many commissions in both glass and fine art paintings.
She relocated to Denver in 2007, enlarged her studio and equipment and expanded her work in both glass and painting.
To learn more read my Artist CV
Artist Statement:
There are aspects in the making of art and the nature of being human that run a parallel course.
When I work with glass, there’s solidity, weight, and color. Its nature is to transmit and reflect light. When polished, it can mirror the physical reality that surrounds it. This same glass can also block light. Like a human, the untouched, undeveloped medium itself holds all the possibilities the artist can imbue in it.
Ever ethereal, glass appears too delicate for this world. Ever resilient, glass can be coaxed into forms that resemble not its origins.
Glass can be molded, sculpted, sandblasted, blown, etched, or polished. Under heat, different types of glass combine with or repel against other types. What was once hard and brittle becomes supple, white-hot and flowing. What was thick, becomes thin.
Or shattered.
Its state is always available for change, but not its essence. Unexpected energies are released, and one can observe that each piece truly has a Life of its own.
This unique essence is what I work with. It’s what I mold, cut, form, blast, join and bend.
Similarly, when I paint it is an out-picturing of my sensitivity to the seen and unseen facets of people and the natural world. Besides physical presence, both man and nature also contain the essence of an inner light or its absence. Visually, emotionally and spiritually there is a constant interpretation of both the seen and unseen. Descriptive words such as enlightened, sublime, shadowy, unholy etc. describe that other essence in what I see. Changed by pressures of time, wind, and water the natural world is altered. People are altered by time, emotions, and buffeted from their experiences of living.
This is what interests me. Whether cutting, heating, melting, bending, joining or parting glass or applying paint, pastels, inks, I wish to reflect both aspects of the world as best I can. Whether my work is abstract or representational, it is always a dance with this great mystery.