Posted by Megadeath, July 29, 2007

Porltand-based artist Andy Paiko recently showed his glass sculptures and vessels at the Guardino Gallery on Alberta Street. I heard tell of the stunningly beautiful Absinthe Fountain and other glass and bone creations so I sought him out. The work strikes me as unique, intriguing and quite gothic and dark.

Andy purposefully creates sculptures with a specific function in mind for them, be it practical or imagined. Glass chairs with animal bones trapped inside pockets of air, a fully functional spinning wheel, seismograph, balance, syringe and more… these objects conjure up the act of using them for practical purposes in some kind of Victorian fairytale dream world.

After scouring through Andy’s website, www.andypaikoglass.com, I was left a little dumbfounded and in complete awe. It’s just really nice to be struck once in a while by objects outside of the realm of my current everyday world… computers, phones, cars, bikes, furniture … and to think about a world where each day I would awake to go work on my glass spinning wheel, twisting fibers into yarn…

This image was part of the "Gothic Splendor" story produced by Mr Douglas Little of D.L.& Co. for House and Garden. (Take a minute to check out the other "Gothic Splendor" images by Douglas Little - they're also quite amazing.)

This glass chair contains a rhesus monkey skull in the top section, and in the legs: an awesome piece of octopus coral, a murex spiny trumpet shell, a rat, and a mountain lion skull...

This is a fully functioning spinning wheel.

This is a functional glass seismograph for measuring earthquakes.

All photos copyright Andy Paiko