Stephen Glassman

About the Artist
Stephen Glassman and his eponymous Stephen Glassman Studio creates large-scale, conscious, site-specific artworks around the world. His work is an inquiry of gesture, scale, and social impact – generating the intuitive human gesture on both an intimate and civic scale. Born from the relationship of hand and brush, his work meets the most exacting standards and constraints of the world’s best builders. Some works of note include Flows Two Ways, the 8-story-entrance for Bjarke Ingels’  “court scraper” at VIA 57 West in NYC, and the recently completed Resistance. And Then . . . a floating 45-foot stainless steel feather marking the creation of a 5-mile re-wilded greenway in California’s state capitol. 

Deaf and unable to speak as a child, Glassman seized on art as a means of communication and self-expression. He attracted international attention creating large-scale bamboo installations in sites devastated in the wake of the Rodney King riots, the Malibu fires, and Northridge earthquake. These works became local symbols of resiliency and a springboard for the permanent, large-scale public works he creates today.

An avid multidisciplinary collaborator, Glassman has worked with artists and organizations ranging from Paris Opera, The Moscow Circus, Bread and Puppet Theatre, Jonathan Borofsky, Robert Irwin, Phillipe Petite, Robert Wilson, Gemini Gel, Nels Cline, Eric Owen Moss, Bjarke Ingels, Arup, SOM, Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenberg, Marc DiSuvero, Louise Nevelson, and choreographer Sarah Elgart.

He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Nathan Cummings Foundation, NEA, London International Creativity Award, TEDx, and a 2000 Chrysler Design Award nomination, his work has been featured in Art in America, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times. Glassman’s visionary piece Urban Air—turning billboards into floating bamboo gardens—was widely acclaimed and sparked conversations worldwide.