I’m not gonna lie; when I meet talented artists whose work I admire, I tend to try to become friends with them.

In fact many of the artists I’ve written about here–Jason Levesque, Matt Sesow, Amanda Page Stephens, and many more–are people who I became close with after having met them as artists. What can I say–I love nothing more than to surround myself with people who inspire me.

The artist's work table in his studio.

With Avery Shaffer, though, things were the other way around. I met him first as a friend, completely ignorant of the astounding art that he creates in glass. Regardless, I immediately was into his easy sense of humor, Southern charm and humble sensibility, and we became fast friends. To be honest, it’s pretty hard not to like Avery.

His laid-back confidence, I came to find out, is part of what makes him such a great artist. When I saw the work, I was astounded by its striking combination of strength and elegance, and even more so by the fact that I hadn’t known about it before. In many ways his work was such a surprise. Though the medium is a rarer one, more fragile and technical and focused on craft than others, Avery brings to it a painterly sensibility.

“As a contemporary warm glass artist,” he says in his artist statement, “my works are surrendered to the kiln in a process of rebirth and reconstitution. Within the search for perspective, the recycled, the rough, and the jagged combine under heat and technology forcing accidental discovery, and resulting in works that are newly old, freshly primitive and cleanly unearthed.”

At the opening of Studio 11.

Last night, Avery celebrated the opening of his new Norfolk space, Studio 11 (located at 2501 Fawn Street, next to Five Points Farm Market), with an open house. The move was one he made following his heart (and “a strong desire to be near the ocean”), but is also fraught with the uncertainty that all artists now working in Virginia have to face. Yesterday was also the day that the House of Delegates voted in a budget plan that eliminates the Virginia Commission for the Arts, essentially crippling creative communities throughout the state.

“I am about the creation of more from less. Taking mostly discarded raw materials, reordering them with heat and presenting them renewed. It is in the process of this creation that I feel my connection to something greater and where I understand true value. These are interesting times that have challenged my understanding of value. I think we are all reassessing what is truly worth a damn. I believe art in all of its forms puts us in contact with our inherent worth; our humanity.”

Click to view a gallery of more works by Avery Shaffer. >>