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A Man on a Mission

Artist Joe Cariati opens up to Culture on glass and more
 

Glass is an amazing material, whether it is the cup that we drink our morning coffee out of or the windows that protect us from the cold nights. Glass is one material that refuses to be categorized, transitioning seamlessly from art object to utilitarian item. It provokes our interest and intrigue with its malleable natur

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Artist Joe Cariati opens up to Culture on glass and more

 

Glass is an amazing material, whether it is the cup that we drink our morning coffee out of or the windows that protect us from the cold nights. Glass is one material that refuses to be categorized, transitioning seamlessly from art object to utilitarian item. It provokes our interest and intrigue with its malleable nature, allowing our creativity to determine what we can do with it. In contemporary glass art, one of the most intriguing artists is a hot young designer by the name of Joe Cariati. Just as with his primary material of choice, Cariati refuses to be categorized.

You may not instantly link Los Angeles based artist and designer Joe Cariati to his glass creations, but if you begin to look around, it is hard to miss Cariati’s designs. This amazingly hip and charismatic young artist is sought after for creating functional glass art that is clean, beautiful, contemporary and classic all rolled into one. Have you stumbled across a small website called apple.com recently? Cariati is currently the poster-boy for the new iCloud campaign, showing the same screen shot of his gorgeous glasswork across a Macbook, iPad, and iPhone. His glass can be seen on screen in the set of movies such as Sex and the City 2, and has been featured in magazines such as Dwell, People Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, O Magazine, and US Weekly. I could go on and on about all the places you can find Cariati’s glass, but that is simply the point—it is everywhere!

Cariati’s glass designs are graceful, elegant and simple. They are uber-refined versions of classic glass objects: bottles, decanters, pastry domes, etc. These objects are crafted to exacting standards and are made in a minimal design that allows their inherent beauty to show through, clear as day.

Walking into 141 Penn Studios—Cariati’s new state-of-the-art 4500 sq. foot hot glass shop, studio, and gallery —something become quickly evident…there is an unmistakable energy in the air. There is the bustle of excitement and growth in this space, positivity and confidence. Simply put, this is a man on a mission.

A quick tour around the studio shows three glassblowers working at different stages of completion for Cariati’s “Angelic Bottles Collection” heading to a Neiman Marcus near you and a studio assistant packing up a box heading across the ocean to one of Cariati’s clients overseas.

While speaking of his initial exposure to glass Cariati says “Every since I was a small child, my reality has been in three dimensions; I just leapt into the art department [in college] on blind faith.” Outside of the university system Cariati focused on street art, but inside the system he was traditionally trained in classical painting, drawing, sculpture, as well as his notorious glassblowing. “Before glass, the thing that I was probably linked to the most was graffiti,” says Cariati. “There wasn’t a “beautiful losers” movement—we were the movement…Barry Mcgee, Margaret Kilgallen, Craig Costello, myself and others.” Through experimentation and hard work, everything else dropped away, and glass moved to the forefront as his sole medium of choice.

Cariati also guest lectures at some of the top tier art and design schools in the country, letting him train dozens of glass-blowers the innovative techniques and styles, all while growing his infamy within the glass world. Some of those schools include Rhode Island School of Art and Design, Rochester Institute of Technology, California College of the Arts, Creative Glass in Switzerland and Niijima Glass Art Center in Japan. It is hard to know if Joe’s cool demeanor and hip style is a product of a California upbringing, the years spent in the outsider art environment, or just something inherent to his being.

So what’s in store for Cariati in the future? Cariati’s functional glass lines will always continue to be expanded and refined, but he feels that his time will be spent more in expanding his brand identity and taking on different avenues. Cariati hopes to involve various materials such as wood, ceramic and metal in future design projects. This seems to be a logical transition for Cariati, as what makes his current glass line so successful is his simple, clean, timeless aesthetic. Joe Cariati is definitely a name to watch for.

“[MMJ activism] is definitely helping to reverse the demonization of marijuana, and is also raising awareness on all of the [medical] benefits that are inherently contained in Nature. I get so disturbed at the pharmaceutical companies where these things are not of natural origin, all so engineered—really scary stuff.”

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