For artist Alison Berger, past is prologue. While she’s been an esteemed glass artist for decades (her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt in New York, and is in the permanent collection at the Corning Museum of Glass), she started out studying cultural anthropology, then architecture and art, and worked in architecture before becoming a glass artist. Berger learned glassblowing at the young age of 15. Her fascination with “studying different cultures, and their rites and rituals,” her knowledge of building and construction, how to work with the alchemical properties of glass, and her artistic imagination all come together in her intricate glassworks and illuminating art.
Berger develops new lighting and glasswork in a light-filled studio within a 1920s building that once housed actors on the old Paramount Studios lot.
Joshua White
Berger’s desk with an astrolabe, drawings, and objects for a candle optical study.
Joshua White
A pendulum model with drawings and photographs of works in development on the wall.
Joshua White“My process is that I look to the past in terms of objects, cultures, and rituals, and then I reinterpret them. I don’t want to create a replica, it has to have a new form,” she explains. Her captivating Aura pendant light, for example, was inspired by a Victorian locket, while the recent Beckon collection takes cues from Italian glass from the 1920s and 1960s while layering undulating orbs in a way that’s completely Berger’s own.
All of her glass pieces are handblown, hand-carved, or hand-cast. “There’s so much diversity in how glass can be worked,” notes Berger. “We do preparation drawings to get the ideal balance of composition, but the reality is that the glass is so fluid, I can try to make it a certain dimension, but it wants to be what it wants to be. I follow its lead.”
Late afternoon sunlight in the studio casts shadows on working drawings for new designs and is refracted by the Aura and Medallion Pendants.
DOMINIQUE VORILLON
Berger sketches on a chalkboard in her studio. Studies for floor lamps and a glass-seat stool of her design in the foreground.
Martyn Thompson
A detail of the glass vitrine with handblown and carved glass forms.
Dominique VorillonBerger lives and works in Los Angeles, ricocheting between her home; the rough, hot intensity of the industrial glass shop; and a pristine studio in Hollywood where she makes studies and develops her artwork. The Spanish-style building dates from the 1920s and was part of the old Paramount Studios property with living quarters for contract actors, including, legendarily, Clark Gable. The beautiful light filtering in from a large, floor-to-ceiling arched window makes it ideal for displaying her glasswork.
“The space is like a working file of everything I’m thinking about,” says Berger, pointing to the drawings and reference materials that cover the walls. Studies and pieces in development are suspended from the ceiling, displayed in a glass vitrine, and on a carpenter’s bench of Berger’s own design. “I prefer glass cabinets so I can see everything I’m working on, and study the way it reflects the light. The sun will strike the cabinet and it becomes like a glistening diamond,” says Berger.
Study models for Berger’s Full Bloom and Bloom designs.
Joshua White
The Offering collection incorporates different components, including a vase, a crystal, engraved pendant shade, and “Firefly.”
Joshua White
On the studio wall are form studies for the Dusk Sconce, along with a table lamp sketch on tracing paper. On the table are handblown and solid-formed Pulley Pendant components.
Joshua WhiteBerger’s latest collection, Offering, perfectly encapsulates all these strands: The collection is a loose interpretation of an altar, suspended in space. Through an anthropological lens, she examined “the ancient tradition of creating altars, expressing the wonderment of the world, and creating offerings and totems.” Each element represents “something bigger and sublime that surrounds us. Water means purification; flowers represent abundance; light means opening up spiritually.” The collection includes a small glass vase to hold water and flowers; one glass pendant is engraved with imagery, like a tapestry; and a glass crystal symbolizes healing. The smallest piece is called the Firefly, something Berger remembers fondly from growing up, with “light almost falling off it, like a drop of water.” The pieces can be chosen and suspended individually, so that each creation can be unique to its owner.
Though Berger’s glass artworks are almost always a form of lighting, they’re less about illuminating a room and more about radiant sculpture. The pieces are meant to be “contemplative, restorative, atmospheric, and meditative,” she says. “The radiance of light” allows us “to feel centered and take in the quietness for a moment.”
The entrance to the studio, with the Lyra Chandelier and various lighting designs and prototypes.
Joshua White
