Ron Desmett
Ron Desmett's reliquaries speak to everyman through dark, biomorphic sculptural forms. Blown into hollowed cores of rotting tree trunks, the works echo the process of their manufacture. Their dull sheen and lumpen shapes resemble snow piled next to the curb after the snowplows have passed.
Pocked by rain and the elements, the pieces seem frozen in a glacial state. Yet they have endured a trial by fire, like lava beds slowly cooling, buckling and heaving, slowly transforming under the pressure of their own weight.
Great art isn't always pretty.
Few would call Heironymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1504) beautiful in the traditional sense of the word, but no one denies its status as a masterpiece. It is a breath of fresh air to encounter a glass blower who marches to his own drummer. Desmett was certainly such an artist.