Claire Kelly

Bio

Claire graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University in 1996.  She spent her early career working for fellow glass artists and learning specialty techniques, especially in the creation of colorful patterns in blown glass. In 2004, she was granted the EnergyXchange fellowship in Burnsville, North Carolina. In 2008, Claire moved to Providence, RI to work with acclaimed glass artist Toots Zynsky until 2019. She has been an instructor at Penland School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the Centro Fundacion del Vidrio in Spain. She has been a resident artist at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Salem State, and the Tacoma Museum of Glass. In 2017 she was an Artist in Residence at the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass where she created a new body of work using specialty glass from Effetre, a glass company based in Murano, Italy. Claire was selected to be a demonstrating artist at the Glass Art Society Conference in Venice, Italy. Claire’s work is on exhibition at major institutions and galleries in the United States and internationally including a collaborative public sculpture commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the conclusion of the liberation of Kuwait. 

After years of traveling between Rhode Island and Corning, NY she made the easy decision to relocate to Corning, NY in 2020. Claire was featured as a contestant on the Netflix series Blown Away season 3. In 2024 she was awarded New York State Council for the Arts Artist support grant to create new work in cast glass and in 2026 she was awarded a Statewide Community Regrant, a program of the New York State Council on the Arts administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes to create new glass sculpture as a community project. Claire continues to create her unique sculptures at the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and works to grow and nurture the glass community in Corning.