Hank Murta Adams
American, born 1956Icee, 2006
Not on view
Cast glass, copper
Dimensions29 × 26 1/2 × 22 in. (73.7 × 67.3 × 55.9 cm)
Courtesy of the Isabel Foundation, L2017.4
Hank Adams creates figurative busts that are not individual portraits, nor are they as refined as marble sculptures of the past. Instead, they are whimsically expressive, generalized characters that explore the human experience. As a student at Rhode Island School of Design, Adams painted portraits before he met his teacher Dale Chihuly, who inspired him to consider glass as a medium for his figures. Adams’s work abandons the conventional function of glass to transmit light. Instead, his artwork captures light from within. Each heavy bust is cast slowly in a mold and embedded with wire and other fragments of material found in and around his studio.
