Carmen Vetter

Elaborate surfaces based upon pattern, geometry, and mapping characterize the works of Carmen Vetter. She employs glass powders as a medium, layering and removing material to achieve highly textural compositions, and utilizes printmaking and photography as components in her process. “I like the big picture.

“My work is, at its most basic, a study of surface, texture, and pattern. I have always been drawn to repeating pattern, perhaps because of its universality. I am looking for connectivity, commonness, and relationship. The finished work could be observed as eroded stone, cellular structure, and lichen; or on a macro level as aerial views of cities, land formations, glaciers, and coastlines. The relationship between these surfaces and the things that underlay them–their unique histories, the unseen events that preceded them and created them, the mystery of what they are becoming–is what truly interests me. I seek the intrinsic. Much of my work in glass has been about surface. It infers touch, the seen, the exposed, and inversely the depths beneath. It is exposes and reveals, considering the relationship and similarities in things both colossal and infinitesimal. The removal of unanimated material discloses both the intimate and the unfamiliar, joining concept and process. I like the big picture. My work is a way of connecting the dots. I am inspired by the patterns of life, cycles of destruction and renewal, and the interrelation of everything. Surface is what we see, but only the indicator of what cannot be seen…Surface is the effect of the cause.”