ARTIST INFO

GRANITE CALIMPONG
Seattle, WA

GLASS | Multi-media sculptor

Penland Affiliation | Penland Instructor 2024, 2019, 2015

Artist Information | Studio artist; education: MFA University of Washington (WA), BFA University of California, San Dieg (CA); teaching: Penland (NC), Pottery Northwest (WA), Pilchuck Glass School (WA), University of Washington (WA), Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (ME), Schack Art Center (WA), Pittsburgh Glass Center (PA); exhibitions: Traver Gallery (WA), Pottery Northwest (WA), Capital One Headquarters (VA), Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington (WA), Morgan Contemporary (PA), Schack Arts Center (WA), Museo Gallery (WA), Bainbridge Museum of Arts and Crafts (WA), Hodge Gallery (PA), Morris Graves Museum of Art (CA), Muskegon Museum of Art (MI), Bellevue Art Museum (WA); residencies: Pilchuck Glass School (WA), Pottery Northwest (WA), Museum of Glass (WA), North Lands Creative Glass (Scotland), Pittsburgh Glass Center (PA), Public Glass (CA)

Artist Bio | Granite Calimpong is a multi-media sculptor working in glass, ceramics, wood, metal, light and photography. He is heavily invested in material exploration and has spent years learning to work with these materials in order to obtain the technical information necessary to realize his ideas.

Artist Statement | I often deal with issues of perception in an attempt to expose blind spots within the way I experience the world. What can an optical illusion tell me about how my perceptive system can “misinterpret” the information before me? How can color make me feel one way in a given context, and totally different in another? And what do these facts expose about the limits of my attention and perceptive faculties?

The human experience is a varied and complicated one. I strive to create work that interrogates these complexities while exhibiting my love for materials, my interests in the emotional impact of color, and my individual sense of balance and form.