Dan Alexander grew up in a small farming town in NorthEast Ohio. He has always been interested in art, history, nature, and creating. After seeing glass being made for the first time heknew this was a trade he had to master.He decided to further his education by attending Kent State University where he received a BFA-Glass Concentration. In college he was able to explore glass as an artistic medium while being introduced to working with other materials, history, color theory, and composition.Post graduation, he has studied with some of the top glass artists in the field today and even worked in Murano italy where he worked with Maestro Davide Salvadore creating large scale blown glass art. He also worked for the Corning Museum of Glass where he held the Lead Gaffer position where he spent 6 years  traveling the world and educating the public about the science and history of glass art.

After working for Corning he decided to take on a new role as the Studio Director of a large glass factory. He was producing higher volume work, working on site specific installations, and overseeing studio operations and glass production. 

Since 2016 Dan began to branch out and create a name for himself as an independent artist. In recent years he was awarded an emerging artist residency at Duncan McClellan’s Gallery in St Petersburg Florida, the AACG professional artist residency at Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading Pennsylvania, Empire of Glass exhibition/residency in Vienna Austria, he was nominated for the Glass Art Sociecty’s Saxe Emerging Artist Award, and received an international exhibiting artist award from the Effect, Dream, Transform exhibition in Uskudar,Turkiye.

Artist Statement

The work I am currently exploring is inspired by nature, textiles, travel, and architecture. More specifically patterns. Being an artist and world traveler, I look at the world around me and how it could be translated to glass. Much of my inspiration comes from photographs I have taken or my travels. I tend to look at one micro aspect of an object and see how that small piece could be used in repetition to create an overall pattern. An example would be looking at one single coral in the ocean. I would begin by repeating its colors and shape over and over again to make a large glass tile. This tile will later be rolled up hot around a glass bubble or collar to make a large vessel. I fabricate my own glass cane and murrine from colored glass rods. Then combine these components using a blown glass process to create a 3 dimensional canvas for my patterns to be displayed.