{"id":325319,"date":"2018-12-06T18:29:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T23:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/?p=325319"},"modified":"2021-12-15T07:03:39","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T12:03:39","slug":"jeff-zimmerman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/jeff-zimmerman\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Zimmerman’s Glimmering Glass Creations Are Getting Even Wilder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sculptural crumpled-glass vessels in Jeff Zimmerman’s latest exhibition at R & Company gallery in New York. Photo courtesy of R & Company<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt looks like a bomb went off in my studio,\u201d says Jeff Zimmerman<\/a> in the wake of preparations for his exhibition at R & Company<\/a>. The show (on view through December 21) fills the lower Manhattan gallery with Zimmerman\u2019s blown-glass creations. Some are suspended from the ceiling; others hang on walls; still others rest on pedestals. They range from 12-inch candlesticks to more-than-six-foot-tall towers of mirrored-glass \u201criver rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou think it\u2019s going to fall over, which makes it intriguing, but it doesn\u2019t,\u201d Zesty Meyers notes of one such tower. Meyers, a partner with Evan Snyderman in R & Company, has been showing Zimmerman for 18 years. \u201cJeff is a superstar,\u201d he states. \u201cHe fills a void in people\u2019s homes and offices that the architecture, interior design or art collection have not filled. His work completes the picture.\u201d
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\"Unique
Vine<\/em> illuminated sculpture with 30 hand-blown glass globes. Photo courtesy of R & Company<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Zimmerman\u2019s pieces explore ideas he has been developing since he took up glassblowing, at age 19. As an apprentice to Venetian masters, he sought to absorb classical methods. And then, like a painter who learns to draw the human figure before graduating to abstraction, he began modifying the perfect forms he had been trained to make. Zimmerman says his collaborators are heat, gravity and centrifugal force; he lets them have their way with his blown works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surrendering to nature, he explains, \u201cis not new in art \u2014 think of paint being allowed to drip on canvases.\u201d Asked to name his favorite artists, Zimmerman (who grew up at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center<\/a>, in Colorado, where his mother was a painter and his stepfather a sculptor) <\/strong>points not to other glassblowers but to Matthew Barney<\/a>, for his ability to create quirky, \u201cnot easily definable\u201d objects; to James Turrell<\/a>, \u201cwho uses light in incredible ways\u201d; and to David Lynch, for his surreal effects.
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\"Jeff
Zimmerman working in his Red Hook, Brooklyn, studio. Photo by Evan Snyderman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn exhibition of Jeff\u2019s work is important, so people can see how effective and how sensual it is,\u201d Meyers says. \u201cBut we take it for granted that pieces will end up being customized for particular spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each design, he adds, \u201cis talked about and drawn, samples are made. There are a lot of steps to executing a commission. But it\u2019s not how quickly you can get a piece to a client \u2014 it\u2019s about getting the right piece to a client.\u201d
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Before checking out Zimmerman\u2019s latest creations at R & Company\u2019s new White Street space<\/a>, or commissioning a unique piece of your own, take a look at a few seminal pieces from throughout his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking Points<\/h2>\n\n\n
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