JEREMY LEPISTO

I have just recently completed a handful of new work from two different series of work.

The first couple of works are from the Barrel series and are entitled "Production Level 1" and Production Level 2". Each contain a set of seven mold blown barrel shapes with hand blown glass inserts and fabricated float glass lids. The number of the barrels relate to the number of available productive days in a week and address the realistic oscillation in the quality and completeness of effective effort.

The second set of works are related to my current PhD research on shipping containers. This work is from a new series entitled the Container Series. These works both highlight the historical utilization of glass as a container as well as make transparent the impact of the normally obscured use of the modern shipping container.

My hope is that each of these works lead to inquiries into the contents of containers, their relationship to their destination and origin and the necessity vs. the ability to utilize our modern globalized network of shipping.

For instance, the work The Full Extent, contains a form that is at the full linear capacity of what the interior void can accommodate. The work is a reflection upon my own personal experience of using a shipping container to move between countries and at the question of whether I employed its use to its fullest advantage and whether its contents were all that I required in making the transition.

Pursuant to my PhD thesis, I am currently working to get some sketches off the page and into form.

I am working in a couple different directions to stagger the stops and starts of making and to circumvent ideas of transfer.

One of the directions is in pursuit of creating little glass barrels (9"h x 6"dia). Each barrel can reveal the level of their interior contents. These works are allowing me to work on the the concepts of what is needed, supplied and used. Here are some images:

As well as the Barrels, I am working on some Containers. the Containers are moving in two different directions, but each look to address the ability to affect and connect the destination and origins that they service.

The first direction is making these forms out of glass. I am working towards making hollow transparent glass container forms to hold/provide constructed scenes of their origin/destination. I have currently finalized the making of the glass exteriors. Here are process shots of these works thus far:

The second direction is to create larger steel containers to stack, stand on end and illustrate upon to explore the concept of their relationship to the health and development of the places they service and float between. Here is the developments so far: