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Rock Cottage Glassworks Biography

A little more about the artist...

Dierk Van Keppel
Rock Cottage Glassworks

"Glass art causes me to wonder at great possibilities. It allows me to communicate the unspoken language we all relate to: beauty, form, color, clarity, opacity and depth."

For Dierk van Keppel, there is great joy in knowing the ancient art of glassblowing. As a traditional glass artisan, he uses blowpipes, hand tools and heat to produce all of his work. Liquid glass pushing 2000 degrees is gathered on steel blowpipes and controlled with wooden blocks and wet newspapers.

Keppel blows his glass into objects with the help of centrifugal force and gravity. After his artwork is satisfactorily formed, he breaks it off the blowpipe, opens the lip, and adds hot bits of colored glass. The piece is finished in the flames of a furnace and slowly annealed in a kiln, gradually making its way to room temperature in a span of 15 hours.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS
American Craft Council, Baltimore, MD, 2001
Halls, Kansas City, MO, 2000
Katie Gingrass Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, 2000
Miller Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 2000
Kittrell Rifkind, Dallas, TX, 1999