Clare Sullivan Adams

American, b. 1962 Neptune, NJ, based in Grafton, VT

About Clare Sullivan Adams

Artist’s Statement

On “Stained Glass”

My most recent work has been in Stained Glass. In the mist of the pandemic, I felt compelled to reach back. Back centuries to the classic spiritual art of religious glass painting as well as back in my own life to my experiments in stained glass during high school (1980). 

This work is made using recycled window glass. It is reverse painted with enamel and fired in a kiln multiple times at 1200 degrees. The glass pieces are then joined together using copper foil tape and  soldered together with a lead and tin solder and then framed with zinc edging. My patterns have been inspired by American quilts. I have been looking at traditional styles as well as the stunning asymmetrical styles of African American quilts. 

This new work has been satisfying to me as it combines my interests in painting, glass, color, craft, light and nature. To me each piece feels like a prayer. An earth prayer collecting light energy for healing and renewal.

On “Reverse Painted & Fused Glass”

I have been a painter and printmaker for most of my career and have recently been exploring painting on glass. I have always been interested in light and color, and glass painting adds an extra and exciting dimension both visually and technically. On these pieces I have used a grisaille technique in which the black paint is scratched away and the color is applied on top. The pieces are then fired, fused and slumped with the reverse side up so the painting is behind glass.

On “Monoprinting”

“I’ve always loved the view around each corner and the dramatic change of seasons here.  Monoprinting has become a passion. It is painterly printmaking. I love the transparency of color you can create as the layers are built up.”

-Clare Sullivan Adams

Biography

Clare Sullivan Adams works in the mediums of monotype printmaking, painting, reverse glass painting, and most recently fused glass.  Adams’s influence from Asian arts as well as her interest in reviving old techniques and continually pushing her work through the use of multiple mediums, all serve to inform her observational landscape prints and her abstract designs. 

The artist’s complementary and tonal palette abstracts her landscapes, while her fluidity of brushstrokes and layers of pigment show her painterly printing style.  In Adams’s reverse glass painting we see biomorphic shapes, and the application of gold and silver leaf in antique mirroring techniques used in a way which speaks to her printmaking work.  

Adams’s work with the technique of fused glass brings the use of applied pigments as with a monotype print along with the addition of metal inclusions to works created with sheets of glass cut and fused into moulds within a kiln.