Robert DuGrenier: Handle With Care

Glass artist Robert DuGrenier is best known for complex chandeliers and large architectural installations fashioned from exuberant, colorful organic forms. The work in this exhibit radically departs from his prior artistic trajectory. In these works he marries old farm implements with clear, colorless glass.

Coming to terms with the destruction by fire of a barn and the death of many animals, DuGrenier did what artists do—he made art. Handle With Care materially manifests a deeply personal, even therapeutic, exploration of grief. Each sculpture is a lot like a Vermont farmer—rugged, weathered, strong of spine and purpose, clear-eyed, and droll.

Although the tools’ sculptural handles have a rather stark geometry of form, an alchemy happens when the light passing through them is reflected and refracted. These elegant, elongated shapes gain volume and complexity, creating dynamic three-dimensional drawings in glass, light, and shadow.

— Mara Williams, Chief Curator

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.