Willi Haye Cast Glass Sculpture
Exploring Light, Color and Form through Kiln Cast Glass
Artist Statement
Inspiration
My cast glass sculptures investigate the relationship between mass, light, and internal space. Through flowing forms interrupted by redirected voids, dissolving passages, and shifting asymmetries, the work explores tension between containment and release, stability and erosion, precision and transformation.Glass functions not only as a transparent material, but as a medium capable of holding compression, movement, and spatial ambiguity simultaneously. Internal channels and fractured openings guide light through the sculpture while also disrupting the viewer’s sense of solidity and balance. The forms often appear suspended between states — emerging, collapsing, or gradually dissolving as they move through space.Each sculpture develops through an intensive process of carving, mold-making, casting, and coldworking. The physical demands of the material are central to the work. Surfaces are refined through grinding and polishing while internal spaces remain partially obscured, allowing transparency and opacity to coexist within the same form. This tension between clarity and resistance becomes an essential part of the viewing experience.Influenced by natural erosion, geological formation, and the shifting behavior of light within depth and mass, Haye’s sculptures investigate how internal space can alter the emotional and physical presence of an object. Rather than functioning as static forms, the works are intended to shift continuously through movement, reflection, shadow, and changing perspective.By combining rigorous process with sculptural investigation, Haye creates cast glass forms that exist between structure and instability — objects that simultaneously suggest growth, pressure, fracture, and release.
My art comes from within, but it is also the result of a variety of life experiences and outside influences. Although some of my glass castings are representational, they are more about exploration of color, form, and design. Creating my glass castings and exploring the visual dimension of glass has been an endless series of ongoing discoveries that fill my life with joy.
