CHRISTOPHER KERR-AYER •   Burnsville, NC

Christopher Kerr-Ayer is a multi-disciplinary artist, primarily working with glass. He owns and operates The Pool Glassworks, which emphasizes a design forward, contemporary craft approach to making. Kerr-Ayer utilizes antique and contemporary aesthetics and techniques, and combines found objects with handmade components, exploring the space between conceptual sculptures and housewares through the lens of functionality. From mold blown to free form, and readymade to handmade, each component serves to utilize the material, while subverting the craft.

Kerr-Ayer’s objective is to make glass objects that push the limits of contemporary craft by investigating outside the canonical methods of making. His recent work explores the intersection between the act of play and small-scale architecture. Kerr-Ayer learned to make glass in production studios, which requires focus and an active engagement with a multiplicity of approaches to the material. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture. Kerr-Ayer has attended workshops and residencies, exposing him to a wide breadth of design and aesthetics from across the globe. He has helped facilitate workshops across the United States, and has taught classes at the Penland School of Craft (NC) and Urban Glass (NYC). 

"Glass culture reveres virtuosic technique, and fetichizes the forms created within the limitations of manipulating glass with heat. By shifting focus to the cooled state, this body of work is slow, technical and intuitive- escaping the constraints of time, heat, and the round format. This subversion is a means to explore and develop a new, contemporary language that centers material curiosity. These works evolve naturally, expanding their visual vocabulary and technical complexity; referencing other materials, both natural and manufactured, using synthetic and observational abstraction to blend geometric and organic forms. This architectural work combines traditional Slavic, Scandinavian, and Italian glass-making practices. The individual components, their shapes and color patterns, are produced using hot glass techniques. Once cooled, I compose hot sculpted parts on a flat surface; moving and exchanging individual components until I reach the final arrangement. Each piece is then rough-cut and sized, and the connections refined by grinding and polishing. Flush fitting joints and an archival, glass adhesive hold the structure together. The work is constructed incrementally from the base up in a series of balanced glue-ups."