brent kee young: lampworking genius

Chuck and I love to stop in to art galleries and just browse around...  So what better weekend to do so than this long Labor Day weekend???  We had lunch for the first time at Michael Symon's B-Spot (ummmmm, holy crikey, New School fried bologna sandwich with Lola Fries!?!?) in Eton Collection (for all you Cleveland peeps), and decided to take a stroll to burn off the 1,537 just-consumed calories.  We've never been in the mall portion of Eton (for all you non-Cleveland peeps, Eton is mostly an outdoor mall) and came upon Riley Galleries, which I highly recommend checking out sometime.  They have some stunning pieces of artwork that really caught our eye, especially the work of Brent Kee Young who is a third-generation American Chinese artist who moved to Cleveland (from LA) to head up the newly formed Glass Department of the Cleveland Institute of Art.  He uses a technique called lampworking, in which he bends and curves heated quarter-inch rods of clear Pyrex glass into intricate forms.

Here are the pieces that are on display at Riley Galleries - these are from his "Matrix" series:

A close-up of his intricate work:

The man of the hour: