Cam Langley: Glass

Birmingham artist Cam Langley creates hand-blown objects both functional and formally inventive. Langley, trained as a civil engineer at Virginia Tech, transitioned to a career as an artist after a visit with Harvey Littleton, the dean of the American Studio Glass movement. After learning the techniques of glass blowing at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, he set up his hot glass studio in Birmingham.

This exhibition will feature 22 glass objects that are now a part of the MMFA’s permanent collection—a miniature survey of the artist’s career in glass blowing. His most utilized forms are represented: single flowers, floral bouquets, goblets, stemware and flower bowls. Langley draws inspiration from the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Over the course of his career, Langley has created a rich body of work comprising stunning floral arrangements and functional stemware and bowls. He achieves radiating colors by combining rod-form glass sticks with molten clear glass. To add the smallest of details, he then applies powder colors, made from finely ground glass, as the piece is being blown.

Langley enjoys creating bouquets of bursting flowers and stalks of leaves—all perfectly balanced in their vase—and has a deceptively simple-sounding creative philosophy: “With the bouquets I try to change both the forms of the flowers and the mix of flowers. I like to select different floral forms for each bouquet so that each composition is an individual, unique sculpture. A number of possibilities exist, depending on the selection of the flower, its colors, and the number of flowers and stems grouped together. Most of my work is totally experimental.”