Word: stankard
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...Stankard, 44, is an artist in glass. His nimble fingers can fashion fragile slivers into wild flowers with a captivating attention to detail; leaves have been munched by insects; petals show the wilt of age; and beneath the plant a tangle of roots seeks nourishment from the earth. True, they are not exact replicas of woodland plants, but neither are they prettified curios. Each spiderwort, evening primrose or wood lily is a stylized representation of growth and decay. The complexity of the design, Stankard says, must not be obvious. "It must reveal itself...
...struggling craftsman to an artist whose crystal-encased wild flowers are in demand by collectors around the world and represented in museums from the Smithsonian Institution to London's Victoria and Albert. Dwight P. Lanmon, director of the Corning Museum of Glass, which also collects his work, sees in Stankard's flowers a spontaneity and freshness that "capture the quality of living plants...
That assessment is light-years from 1970, when, Stankard recalls, a local antiques dealer bought his first glass-flower paperweights for $10. Then he was in the midst of "figuring out the secrets of how to do this -- at first I didn't have the vaguest idea. But as I met each new challenge, it became a narcotic." The effort has paid off handsomely: recently, at Manhattan's prestigious Heller Gallery, collectors were snapping up his crystal sculptures for as much...
...Stankard, a gregarious man, has his Irish ancestors' love of talking, particularly about his success in life, which he views with incredulity. Is it possible, he asks, that a former glassblower can find himself feted by gallery owners and collectors? "I keep thinking I will wake up and it will all be over," he says. "I worry that people will say, 'O.K., you've been goofing off long enough...
...truth, though, sculpting in glass is exacting, sensitive work. By 6 a.m. Stankard is in his studio, twirling thin rods of colored glass over the gas- oxygen burner, similar to a large welding torch. The centuries-old process is lampworking, so named because the glass was once worked over an oil lamp. "Lampworking was trivialized as a street craft and dismissed as an art form," says Stankard. "I think I've brought it far enough along that in a hundred years people will say, 'Holy smoke, how did he do that?' " As if to puncture such pretensions, he grins...