On view at the Mulberry Street Library are two glass works by Brooklyn-based artist Evan Chamberlain.

Tell us about yourself.

Born in 1987 in Seattle and raised in Bainbridge Island, WA by an environmental engineer and a glass blower, I was privileged to grow up in an environment where both art and the spirit of invention were of the upmost importance. One of my first memories is watching my mother blowing glass at the Pilchuck School in Mt. Vernon, WA. I was filled with fear and awe as she effortlessly maneuvered a glowing bubble of glass in the oppressive heat of the studio. A little more than a decade later I began working with glass myself. Since then I have strived to master the material and to push its physical and conceptual boundaries, in order to be able to truly lose myself in my work. I have made New York my home since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. I continue to refine my work as a goblet maker, while using the city’s space limitations as an opportunity to explore lamp working as well. Handmaps is a series of sculptures that I started as a means of documenting the intricate details of peoples’ hands, from the whirls of their fingerprints to the scars and abrasions that have left their permanent mark on skin. Our hands contain our life story, as written in the ridges and lines that are a combination of our DNA and the experiences that we’ve endured. I started this project with the desire to magnify these individual details while remaining true to the basic anatomy of the hand. In essence, what is left is an abstraction that portrays what makes each of us different and strange. Through this project I am attempting to create portraits of a person’s experiences, while exploring what it means to be human.

Whose hands are they?

These hands are my own and are the beginning of a series of pieces that I’m doing based on the condition of people’s hands and how they show age and ware. I’m most interested in exploring the line-work that our skin develops and the gradual wear that is the result of living and aging. I think hands are a fascinating subject because they reveal so much about what we do with ourselves and how we spend our lives. Hands evolve and change as we age and making sculptures out of them is a way to create still frames of people’s lives. The fact that they are transparent glass comes from my own desire to only depict the surface and contours of a hand, resulting in what could be seen as a shell.

How did you get into glassblowing?

Due to the prevalence of glassblowing in the northwest, I was exposed to the craft at a young age and was able to apprentice and work for a few great glass artists. I’ve lived on the east coast for the last 8 years and the only major part of my art that’s changed is its scale. I’ve noticed that New York often makes people shrink their work to be able to cope with the lack of space in their lives and I definitely fit into that category.

Who are some of your artistic inspirations?

Artists who are important to me at the moment— John Cage, Urs Fischer, Bas Jan Adder, Paul Thek, Paul Etienne Lincoln and Tavares Strachan.

Why glass?

Almost every thing I make is very easily breakable and I love how fleeting a piece can become while I’m working it. There’s not only building but a great amount of destruction that occurs during the time that I take to finish a piece. I find that I’m only happy with a finished piece if it is refined to the point where it approaches destruction, and so extreme fragility is something I constantly confront in my work. I believe that a library is an appropriate place for delicate art because it is a quite and subdued environment. Quiet places work well for displaying fragile things.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood at the moment.

Join us for an opening for Evan Chamberlain on Saturday December 13, 2014 from 2-4:30 pm.

You can visit Evan's website at www.evanchamberlain.com.