STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.- Schantz Galleries is now representing commissioned architectural installations and gallery scale works by artist and designer James Carpenter. Carpenter brings over 40 years of experience and a rare synthesis of skills at the intersection of art, engineering, and the built environment. Through this partnership with Schantz Galleries, Carpenter will bring his design concepts (known for large-scale projects such as the exterior envelope and lobby of 7 World Trade Center Tower, the renewed campus of the Israel Museum, and the Gucci Asia Headquarters in Tokyo), to smaller scale residencies and spaces. In a private home, gallery, or small-scale public pavilion, Carpenter’s work allows for the play of light with the gathered image of the view out the windows, creating a unique awareness of the site’s surroundings. Carpenter says they offer a “playfulness and optical concentration of the view beyond. Essentially they offer a new way to read our world in an intimate and tactile way.”
Carpenter has also noted that “designing buildings is not the normal terrain for a sculptor, but sculpture establishes a more human connection by engaging the phenomenological qualities of its environment. And here light is what I use, deploying my knowledge of materials to create a profound experience of place.” Carpenter believes that natural light and glass are the primary components of the built environment; transformation of the urban environment and public realm occurs as Carpenter carefully considers each site to exploit the performative aspects of light through glass. A dialogue is created between interior and exterior space, merging the beauty of the natural environment with the aesthetics of the structured world.
Born in Washington D.C. and raised in New England, Carpenter graduated with a degree in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 1972. He was also a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He planned to study architecture at RISD but discovered the sculpture studio and the work of glass artist Dale Chihuly, then a teacher there. Chihuly and Carpenter collaborated on a series of neon-light sculptures, and Carpenter also went on to teach at RISD. Carpenter continued making light-based installations while also serving as a consultant at Corning Glass, where he developed new glass materials including photo-responsive glasses and glass ceramics for architectural applications. In 1979, Carpenter established James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA), as cross-disciplinary firm working on large-scale art, architecture, and engineering projects.
