Anna Boothe

Anna Boothe is a glass artist in Brooklyn, NY. She works in pate de verre and glass casting, hand-carving wax elements and fusing lead crystal particles in a kiln to create vessels, goblets, and sculptural objects over her 35-year career.

Anna Boothe works in glass casting and pate de verre, a 19th-century French technique, with 35 years of experience. She views the frit and pate de verre casting process as a type of permanent baking, hand-carving elements in wax or casting them from botanicals, then fusing lead crystal particles in a kiln. The parts are combined to create multicolored jewel-like objects that include goblets, vessels, flacons and stoppers, as well as sculptural constructions she refers to as talismans. Each object carries a reference to historical artifact, a sense of preciousness and collaged memory, often influenced by Buddhist iconography and featuring plant and human forms, including the hand motif as it represents a ubiquitous cross-cultural human tool of expression. The pieces function as icons or pseudo-mirrors that aid in self-comprehension; her multi-part objects provide objectivity to issues or feelings that are often difficult to articulate.