Aaron Tate Works

Biography

After a youthful epiphany in the Sonoran desert revealed a life of glassmaking, Aaron Thane Tate eschewed formal training and rapidly displayed an unusual facility with techniques in his personal compositions. However, he did not ignore the ascending influences of prominent American glassblowers of the 1970’s.

During his early and professional years, Tate produced volumes of prevailing fashionable and popular decorative art pieces, interior design fixtures, and functional ware with notable versatility, all of which contributed to his success as a sculptor in solid worked and blown and cast glass.

Aaron Tate forms his sculptures in recognizable images of humans and animals, including natural subjects, made objects, and landscapes. He has developed a style in which the juxtaposition of images is often jarring, beautiful or classic and yet enigmatic. By the use of a repetitive light and dark technique superimposed on the surface color, he is able to effect an atmospheric quality to sculptures already suffused with symbolic purport and historic connections. The return of the overall structure and intricate detail is the viewer’s interpretation of the work and to link the art, the artist, and the viewer’s self.

Artist's Statement

Aaron said in part, “Some of my pieces are happy and uplifting and others make one pensive and thoughtful. That is what the artist strives for, a personal response to a sculpture, an object, that evokes something from one’s personal experiences in this space-time. It’s so…personal – the viewing.”

The underlying precept of my sculptural work is spiritual symbolism. I aspire for the pieces to have a personal connection with the viewer, evoking a sense of thought about our development as individuals and as a collective people. I hope for my pieces to spark dreams of where we are going and who we are in the grand sense. Some of my pieces are happy and uplifting and others make one pensive and thoughtful. That is what I strive for, a personal response to a sculpture, an object, that evokes something from one's experiences in this space-time. It's so personal, the viewing. I hope to be skillful in my execution of powerful, unique sculpture. The wall pieces are a new series of work for me that I call Tessuto, which is Italian for "fabric". For me it is a sense of thought and action, roots and growth, cause and effect. In a spiritual sense it shows the connectivity between our true selves and our experiences coupled with thoughts. Vases that have sculptural lids are something I have done for a long while. Using a traditional form, the vase, becomes the platform for the lid which is the sculpture. This piece speaks of multiple parts to a whole. Of many lives within Time. The conflict between our nature and the rule of Desire.