Karen LaMonte
born United States, 1967; lives in Czech Republic
Karen LaMonte has earned international acclaim for her striking cast-glass sculptures. She went to Prague in 1999 on a Fulbright scholarship to expand her skills at making large-scale cast glass in one of the world’s top glass studios. The forms she developed are life-size glass dresses that seem to float like ghosts or embodiments of memories. They are also shells that signify the absent figure and the dress from which the translucent glass gains its form.
Chado is part of a series of cast kimonos that LaMonte created in glass, bronze, and ceramic as a result of a seven-month research fellowship spent in Kyoto, Japan, in 2007. LaMonte spent four years making the kimono sculptures—working in four countries and on three continents. She studied kimonos in every possible way, from formal uses in tea ceremony and theater, to making one and wearing it herself.
Chado draws its name from the Japanese tea ceremony, and the sculpture portrays a kneeling Geisha in the act of offering tea. The artist wanted to convey the sensitivity of a Buddhist society to all that is ephemeral, creating an almost melancholic sense of beauty.
The kimono was cast by melting glass in a kiln heated to nearly 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The glass flowed into a mold taken from a wax model. After the molten glass solidified, the kimono had to be left to rest in the kiln for three months as the material gradually cooled and stabilized.