Dancing Pear Bottle

Kari Russell-Pool and her husband, Marc Petrovic, work together to create sculptures that combine their love of nature with traditional glass forms such as bottles, vases, and bowls. In this piece, Russell-Pool heated thin glass canes with a torch, then twisted and joined them to form a latticework in the shape of a bottle. The intricate flowers and leaves appear part of the vine, as if they grew naturally from the glass as the artist worked. But the large blown-glass pears stand out from the bottle form, balancing precariously on the slender stems like cartoon fruits that sprouted unexpectedly from a tiny plant.