Existing comment:
Debora Moore
born St. Louis, MO, 1960; resides Seattle, WA
Debora Moore has explored the expressive potential of flora through glass since the late 1980s. She has focused largely on orchids, which are informed by her deep engagement with nature. Moore's field study has taken her around the globe to observe and sketch specimens, including trips to India, Antarctica, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Moore's work belongs to a long history of representing plants in glass that ranges from ancient renderings to the botanical studies of nineteenth-century Bohemian craftsmen Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
Even with her intensive study, Moore is interested less in realism than in how, through glass, she can capture and transport a personal experience with the beauty, wonder, and resilience of the natural world. Her ability to achieve this goal is a result of mastery cultivated across years as an integral figure in the storied glass community of the Pacific Northwest, home to the Pilchuck School of Glass. Moore began her study there in the 1990s and worked as a member of founder Dale Chihuly's glassblowing team. A trailblazer in many ways, Moore was the first female and first African American resident at the storied Abate Zanetti on Murano, the Italian island that became a glass powerhouse starting in the thirteenth century. |