Elizabeth Miles Art

This work is a portion of the installation entitled Within The Spaces: The Spaces Within. The chair is cast glass, measures 26" x 18" x 18," and was created in 2017.  It is for sale as a separate piece for $5,000. The title comes from a Rogers and Hammerstein song in Cinderella (But I know of a spot in my house/ Where no one can stand in my way/ In my own little corner in my own little chair/ I can be whatever I want to be.../ Just as long as I stay in my own little corner/ All alone in my own little chair.)

2017

found metal bed frame, sand cast pate de verre, cast bronze

approximately 7’ x 5’ x 12 “

Dreaming of home…

$10,000

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

Number thirteen in the series, this is the final piece in the installation which is a visual response to Wallace Stevens’ poem of the same name. The piece is approximately 30" x 15" x 12" and was created in 2016. It is made of sand cast pate de verre, blown and etched glass, cast bronze, and wood. It is for sale as a separate piece for $3500.00. For more information about the series, see the 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird gallery page.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted glass

2017-2022

Ocean Flower VIII, 2022, 8”x5”x5” (Amber, Pine Green, Steel Blue, Lavender) $1450

Ocean Flower IV, 2020, 7”x8”x5” (Lavender, Steel Blue, Amber) $1350

Ocean Flower III, 2019, 6”x6”x7” (Steel Blue, Amber) $1000

Ocean Flower V, 2020, 5.5”x6”x3.75” (Garnet, Turquoise, Carnelian) $750

Ocean Flower VII, 2020, 5”x6”x6” (Turquoise, Garnet, Amber, Aquamarine, Burnt Orange) $1500

Ocean Flower VI, 2020, 8”x8”x5” (Coral, Turquoise, Garnet, Carnelian) $1300

Ocean Flower I, 2017, 10”x7”x4.5” (Steel Blue, White) $1200

2020

These pate de verre glass pieces can be displayed as sculptures or used as votives or vases. They can be made in one color or combinations of colors, so if you’d like a different combination than you see here, please contact me for a custom order.

Each piece is different and they vary a bit in shape and size, but each is approximately 4” tall and 3” wide. The larger ‘vases’ are about 8” tall and 5” wide at the top.

One color votives are $35, two colors $45, and three colors $55.

The large ‘vases’ are $95, $115, and $125 depending on the number of colors used.

The pieces themselves are not water tight so I include a glass insert and flower insert with each piece.

Dining has been quite different this year - mostly at home, often alone.

This piece includes a plate, bowl, cup, bag, two take out containers, two votives an envelope, and fortune cookies, all made of glass.

$2020

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

Number three in the series, this is one piece of the installation which is a visual response to Wallace Stevens’ poem of the same name. The piece is approximately 30" x 15" x 12" and was created in 2016. It is made of sand cast pate de verre, blown and etched glass, cast bronze, and wood. It is for sale as a separate piece for $2750.00. For more information about the series, see the 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird gallery page.

7" x 5" x 5"

2017

cast glass, found shell

$1500

3.5" x 3.5" x 4"

Sand cast pate de verre

2017 -2020

$45.00 each

The cup and other similar pieces have evolved from my experimentation with using paper molds for pate de verre.  It is not a traditional vessel in that you cannot drink from it.  However, it works well with a candle inside, as a vase (if you use a clear glass insert), a planter, or simple as an object of art.  The light shining through is lovely.

I will do custom orders, so please contact me about possible color combinations.

2020

What a wonderful way to present a special invitation!

These envelopes can be cast from any size existing envelope, so I can make one that matches wedding or birth announcements. They can also be cast in a color of your choice, so please contact me for a custom order.

$125

2020

These glass bags are made with white glass, but they can be made in any color, so please contact me about a custom order. The smaller bag measures approximately 7” by 4” and is $125. The larger bag measures approximately 9” by 6” and is $150.

I would need to know if you wish for the bag to stand upright or to lie on its side.

I enjoy cooking for friends and family and also enjoy figuring out what ingredients are in other people’s foods. Always Prepared is my humorous response to always needing to be ready to prepare food for whoever happens to drop in and, of course, to be ready to eat whenever and wherever the urge strikes. 

The nickel of the bracelet is acid etched and the blown glass bowl attached like a cabochon.  The spoon is hand carved and the whisk handmade from copper rod and wire.

3.5" x 2.5" x 6"

Nickel, copper, glass, wood

2017

$500.00

Ocean Bell grew out of my experience in a beach community on the East Coast as it prepared for Hurricane Matthew.  The only real protection for the homes is provided by dunes that are held in place by a now sparse population of sea oats.  It struck me that the oats made such a small “sound” standing against the force of the storm. 10” x 7.5” x 3.5”

This piece was cast in three parts using the lost wax process and then assembled using tap and die and soldered elements.

Cast silver, cast bronze, driftwood

2016

$1000

Memory is an elusive thing- there, then not; changeable; sometimes more real than what is present.

This work, Memory, is made of cast glass, toile, a distressed antique mirror, and glass fragments.  It has gone through several versions with this final one created in 2016.  The work measures 37" x 24" x 8" and hangs on the wall. 

Sold January 2019.

18" x 12" x 12"

cast glass, wood, leather, rafia

2015

$575

Lavinia,/ What stern, ungentle hands/ have lopp'd and hew'd and/ made thy body bare  of/ her two branches?/ Why dost not speak?

Why do those who are assaulted not speak out?  More importantly, why do we not speak for them? Before the MeToo movement, there were those who managed to speak out about the violence done to them, despite impossible odds.  Lavinia in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus 'speaks' hauntingly and eloquently to us about rape, trauma,  and the will to survive.

$750.00

Mixed media

2014

Those moments when Grace enters our lives can be terrifying as well as comforting.

20' x 16" x 13"

Cast glass, found silver tray, sardine can

2016

$850

Silver, shimmering ribbons of fluid light - sardines spool through the ocean, moving as one.  They are essential to the survival of numerous larger sea creatures - of whales, sea lions, sharks, and sea birds, and for centuries, sardines have been a staple food of humans, especially the poor.

The development of mass production canning facilities, largely to supply the military during WWI and II, led to a burgeoning sardine canning industry in coastal California.  The canneries came to a screeching halt in the late 1940’s due to a steep decline in sardine populations.  Overfishing was deemed the primary cause of the mid century population crash. Slowly, sardine numbers have increased, but this year there was another collapse, prompting a ban of commercial sardine fishing for the 2015 season.  Overfishing and climate change are considered the major reasons for the most recent decline. The prospects for population recovery are bleak; some experts say that the harm we have done to the ecosystem this time is“irreparable.” Ironically, most sardines are currently used as bait for more expensive fish.  It’s not the poor who have overfished the sardine population, but the wealthy.  

In The Gloaming, I focused on the cans rather than sardines, both because of the can’s iconic shape and because the can represents the mechanization and depersonalization of industry.  Cast glass suggests to me an after-image: the water as it closes over the place where sardines have passed by, the silvery flash of fish scales that used to be,the plentiful cans of sardines that used to fill the shelves, the way humans used to tread lightly on the world that sustains them.  This piece is a kind of prayer, a hope that after this twilight, there will be another dawn.

When I was listening to accounts of the Sandy Hook School shootings, one doctor commented that each victim had between 3 and 11 wounds. I started thinking then about the 'arithmetic' of the event: the number of victims, of minutes, of bullets fired. Though the numbers felt, abstract, I sought to make them specific. I selected a pair of shoes for each, individual victim. I distressed each shoe 3-11 times; they stopped being shoes. The circle reminds me of elementary school, sitting in circles, while when shoes are removed, they are set neatly side by side. Adult shoes and children's shoes are interspersed, as they were that day. There is one snowflake for each victim; we all remember cutting snowflakes in school before the winter holidays. There are 154 shell casings, the number of shots fired in about four and a half minutes. The soundtrack for the installation is a 4 1/2 minute piece incorporating playground sounds, played backward, flute, and 26 chimes. Creating Sandy Hook Arithmetic served as a kind of prayer for me; a hoping that this would never happen again.

10' x 10' x variable height

shoes, iron circle, shell casings, paper snowflakes, nylon line

2013

$2,600.00

11” x 13” x 7”

Sand cast pate de verre, blown glass

$1100

2017

Sand cast pate de verre, wire

2017-2020

3" x 5" x 6"

$125.00 each

The finish varies depending on whether the glass is applied on the interior or the exterior of the container.

They can be cast in any color, so contact me for a custom order.

18" x 8" x 45"

Found skull and shovel, paper, wire, paint

2013

Can be wall mounted or free standing

$750.00

24” x 20” x 7

Cast and hot sculpted glass, found phone

2015

$1,200.00

5" x 7"

Mixed media

2010

In a private collection

Mixed media

2012

In a private collection

A varying installation

2017

$36,000.00

”But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep.  We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.” 

   Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton

“The web of our life is a tangled yarn;

 good and ill together.” 

                                               Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, act IV, scene iii

”An idea is salvation by imagination.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

It will be the past
and we'll live there together.

Not as it was to live
but as it is remembered.

It will be the past.
We'll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,
and lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.
And it will last forever.

Patrick Phillips, “Heaven”

”On her small canvas, she recreated a section of the Crazy Mountains…that is to say, she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to see them, for a person has not only perceptions but a will to perceive, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it - which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world itself.”

 Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“But I know of a spot in my house

where no one can stand in my way.

In my own little corner in my own little chair

I can be whatever I want to be…

Just as long as I stay in my own little corner

All alone in my own little chair.”

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cinderella,

”…the image in the mirror is like the image in a dream: only fools and infants mistake it for the true likeness of the world, but likewise it is foolish to ignore what it shows us. Therein lies the danger. Do we look upon these reflections without delusion…? Or…do we see only what we wish to see? How can we be certain? With love in our hearts, we creep toward each shining surface, but we are all haunted, always, by ourselves.”                   Martin Seay, The Mirror Thief

5" x 5" x 3"

Sand cast pate de verre, found Monarch wing

2017

$335

3"  x 4.25" x 4.25"

Sand cast pate de verre

2017-2020

$50.00

These can be cast in any color, so please contact me for a custom order.

36" x 12" x 14"

Cast and hot sculpted glass, found trap, metal, plastic, seashells

2017

$1500

2016

This piece is a part of the installation Within The Spaces: The Spaces Within but can be purchased separately.  It attempts speak to the destructive nature of keeping secrets and the power of speaking the truth.

22" x 16" x 9" 

Cast bronze, hot sculpted glass, found wood chest, paint

2017

$4250.00

cast in bronze with hot sculpted glass eyes

approximately 4" x 3" x 2"

can be wall mounted or displayed on a flat surface

2017

$750 each (two available)

When I first work with a new material, I try to make the material do things that it doesn’t naturally do.  With glass, that thing would be to square it up, to make hot glass cubed shaped.  As I was considering a rectangular shape for glass, I remembered a set of stone architectural blocks that I had played with as a child.  I loved their muted, earthy colors and their texture.  Their worn exteriors speak of my affection for them.  The contrast between the opacity of stone and the translucence of glass struck me, and I decided to combine the two, to make glass blocks.

I often explore memory in my work; I’m intrigued by the layers of experience that memories hold, the way in which they loop back on themselves like “old beginnings, new endings.”  Instead of singular moments, fixed in time, memories are moments seen through the filters of all successive experience.  I see the reflective aspects of glass, the way that glass absorbs and gives off light, as a visual metaphor for the liminal nature of memory.  I wanted to juxtapose the way light worked on the differing surfaces of stone and glass, but it wasn’t until I began playing with the blocks, actually building, that I understood what I was doing.  A memory is in many ways a portrait of the one who is remembering. I was playing blocks with my little girl self, playing with the memory of myself, playing with ghosts.

I invite you to do the same.

Found wood table and chair, stone blocks, hot sculpted blocks

variable  size, but approximately 36" x 24" x 38"

2015

$1,000.00

pendant

3.5" x 2" x.5"

Bronze

2017

$275 with chain

Sold February 2019

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

This is the first in the thirteen piece series created as a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem of the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, blown and etched glass, cast bronze, wood

approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

This is the second in the thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted glass, oil paint, cast bronze, wood

approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

This is the fourth in a series of thirteen sculptures that are a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem of the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted glass, oil paint, cast bronze, wood

approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

This is the fifth in a series of thirteen sculptures that are a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem of the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, blown and etched glass, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

This is the sixth in the thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallce Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, Blown glass, cast bronze, wood

approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

This piece is the seventh in the thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted glass, blown glass, oil paint, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

A movable installation

lifesize

foam, fiberglass mesh, stucco, paint

Donated in June, 2019

13" x 6" x 5.5"

2013

cast bronze

In a private collection

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

This is the eighth in the thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, blown and etched glass, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 34" x 10' x 10"

2016

$2750

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

This is the ninth piece in a thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem of the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted and etched glass, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

This is the tenth in a series of thirteen pieces that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's Poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted and etched glass, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

This is the eleventh in a series of thirteen pieces that are a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, blown and chiseled glass, cast bronze, wood

approximately 30" x 15" x 10"

2016

$2750

The river is moving.  

The blackbird must be flying.  

This is the twelfth in a thirteen part series that is a visual response to Wallace Steven's poem by the same name.

Sand cast pate de verre, hot sculpted and blown glass, cast bronze, wood

Approximately 30" x 15' x 10"

2017

$2750

In this body of work, I explore the use of literature as inspiration for sculpture by responding to Wallace Steven’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”  Rather than illustrating the poem, I react to it by expressing its themes in glass, bronze, raw wood, and space as visual references. Through the layering of materials, I am interested in combining the different ‘languages’ that glass can communicate when traditional processes are cross-pollinated. 

As the poem’ references the four basic elements, it moves through the different seasons of the year, using past, present, and future verb tenses.   At its core, the poem stresses the symbiotic relationship between humans and Nature and the often-unnoticed beauty of the simplest and most common of Nature’s creatures – the blackbird.  

In my work, I explore the passage of time by distressing the surfaces of each object.  The cyclical arrangement of the thirteen pieces in the gallery implies the ongoing cycles of time.  The glass seeds, eggs and husks suggest Nature’s links between the past and future, between birth and death.

Sand cast pate de verre; blown hot sculpted, etched, and chiseled glass; cast bronze; wood

2016

$30,000.00 for all 13 sculptures

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

BY WALLACE STEVENS

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,  

The only moving thing  

Was the eye of the blackbird.  

II

I was of three minds,  

Like a tree  

In which there are three blackbirds.  

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.  

It was a small part of the pantomime.  

IV

A man and a woman  

Are one.  

A man and a woman and a blackbird  

Are one.  

V

I do not know which to prefer,  

The beauty of inflections  

Or the beauty of innuendoes,  

The blackbird whistling  

Or just after.  

VI

Icicles filled the long window  

With barbaric glass.  

The shadow of the blackbird  

Crossed it, to and fro.  

The mood  

Traced in the shadow  

An indecipherable cause.  

VII

O thin men of Haddam,  

Why do you imagine golden birds?  

Do you not see how the blackbird  

Walks around the feet  

Of the women about you?  

VIII

I know noble accents  

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;  

But I know, too,  

That the blackbird is involved  

In what I know.  

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,  

It marked the edge  

Of one of many circles.  

X

At the sight of blackbirds  

Flying in a green light,  

Even the bawds of euphony  

Would cry out sharply.  

XI

He rode over Connecticut  

In a glass coach.  

Once, a fear pierced him,  

In that he mistook  

The shadow of his equipage  

For blackbirds.  

XII

The river is moving.  

The blackbird must be flying.  

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.  

It was snowing  

And it was going to snow.  

The blackbird sat  

In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.