Leon Applebaum’s glass work emerges as a synthesis both from the fire and ice of his creativity and from his hot and cold glass shops at his studio in New York’s finger lakes region. While Leon’s original passion for glassblowing began at the Toledo Museum of Art’s now famous garage of glory, Leon’s technical expertise was burned in on him during Sweden’s icy long winter at Kosta Boda/Orrefors. With techniques first started by the ancient Romans, all of Leon’s pieces both vessel and sculpture begin taking their life shape at the furnace. Leon has been blowing glass long enough to have the process shape the man. Like a man in meditation learning to be centered in the flow of life, creating clarity out of the fog of possibility; the glassblower creates a hard object out of molten glass, a reality out of possibility.
While the glassblower wears clothing to protect him from the heat, the glass coldworker wears rubber aprons and boots to keep off the often gritty water. Again cutting, grinding and polishing techniques have evolved from the very beginning of glass work since 2000 BC. Leon’s cold glass shop is a machinist’s noisy delight of 16 large pieces of equipment all designed to cut through hard glass while moving in a circular motion on one plane or another. With the tedious efforts of the cold glass worker, aggressive industrial teeth bite off slices and oval curves of unwanted blown glass that didn’t fit the artistic vision and get thrown onto a growing pile of glistening glass outside the barn between the burdock and the blackberries.
Throughout all of this collective effort, Leon keeps his vigil waiting and working out the final perfect identity of each and every piece with a loving attention to detail. The latest series of sculptures, the transformation series, seem to be the familial icons of whimsical dreams and of all the birthing processes; and are the final expressions of the man in the process.
