home>collection>glass>american glass>Thompson Search the Collection

Back | Next

Catherine "Cappy" Thompson
I Was Dreaming of Spirit Animals, 1997
Blown glass and enamel, 11 1/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Purchase, Gift of the Peninsula Glass Guild and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Endowment Fund
© Cappy Thompson

This bowl, with its highly personal narrative imagery, commemorates a series of vivid dreams that the artist recorded in her journal while she was in her twenties. She is the dreamer floating in the night sky, her blanket decorated with her trademark lotus held by mermaids. The buildings below represent Olympia, the capital of Washington State. In her dreams, Cappy Thompson was kissed by a great celestial bear (she sees bears as symbols of healing), met the moon (personified by an Eskimo woman), and saw white owls in fir trees.

This object is a tour de force on transparent enameling. Wokring with a colorless glass bowl (made to her specifications byt the glassblower Benjamin Moore), the artist forst painted the black outlines of the design on the inside of the bowl and then fired them on. The succeeding colors were tested in water-base paint before the final application and firing of the enamel colors.

• glass >

• american glass >