Gappa’s Skeletal series are Paleontological explorations into the prehistoric forms of days past. The Skeletal Series has become a beautiful journey into the primitive forms of both object and negative space.
“After years of having this idea in the back of my head, I finally said to my team at the studio that we were going to dedicate an entire month to create a body of work that was outside our realm, was going to consume an enormous amount of time, and would be very costly. But I wanted to do this for my own edification and to push my limitations as an artist. What we created was something called the ‘Skeletal Series.’ It was a body of work in which we focused on mammoth skulls, T-Rex skulls, Triceratops, horseshoe crabs, Saber-tooth Tigers. These were extremely detailed, sculpted-glass pieces of artwork. Talk about a dedicated amount of time! Each one of these skulls took about seven or eight hours. When I say seven hours, that’s seven hours of sculpting glass in front of a 2400-degree furnace with three of your assistants there with you the entire time. I was the only one that didn’t get a break for those seven to eight hours. I was just powering down energy bars and water while I manipulated this glass one minute at a time for seven hours until that piece of work started to evolve.But this isn’t only about me. This is about any glass artist or any glass sculptor. True grit is the willingness to take that challenge head on, knowing that you’re going to invest seven hours and three assistants’ time with a 2400-degree machine burning the entire time and knowing that one mistake from any of those team members could mean that entire sculpture is lost. You always hope that if a mistake is made, that happens within the first two hours. If, six hours into it, something goes wrong, it’s all over.” – David Gappa
