Kit Paulson

Bio

Kit Paulson started working with glass in 2001 while completing a BFA at Alfred University. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University in 2018. She has taught across the United States and internationally at schools including Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, Corning Museum of Glass, Bildwerk Frauenau, Germany, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland, and Canberra Glassworks in Canberra, Australia. Kit has completed residencies including the S12 Gallery in Bergen, Norway, the Tacoma Museum of Glass and a three-year residency at Penland School of Craft. Her work has been published in New Glass Review editions 36, 37, 38 and 41 and is in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum. She currently maintains an independent studio practice in Penland, North Carolina, USA.

artist Statement

I work with glass as a sculptural medium because it allows me to make detailed, precious, fragile objects. I value glass both for its inherent aesthetic properties (it can be transparent, translucent, shiny, hard, easily broken, etc.) and for the way it has historically been used (to make containers, vessels, lenses, mirrors, etc.). I find constant inspiration in both of the attributes of the material.

Much of the process of making my work involves using hot, liquid glass as a sculptural material. For me, the manipulation of hot glass is a joyous exercise of muscle memory, material understanding, and instantaneous reaction to the peculiarities of the substance. 

In my current body of work, I explore the line between highly decorative and downright bizarre. These pieces are heavily influenced by the Victorian aesthetic of using natural elements to construct quasi-scientific, wholly unnatural scenes that could not exist in the natural world. I want my viewer to look closer and be visually rewarded for that closer look. I want to communicate my own fascination with the incredible detail of the natural world and with the incredible detail that can be produced by the human hand.

exhibitions