Amber Cowan

Amber Cowan (born 1981) is an American artist and educator living and working in Philadelphia. Cowan creates fused and flameworked glass sculptures from cullet and recycled industrial glass.

Career Cowan received her BFA in 3-Dimensional Design with an emphasis in Hot Glass from Salisbury University in 2004. She was the first woman to graduate from Salisbury University with this specific degree. She received her MFA in Glass/Ceramics from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2011.

She is currently a faculty member of the glass department at the Tyler School of Art, where she graduated with her MFA in Glass/Ceramics in 2011.

Awards In 2012, Cowan was the recipient of The Stephen Procter Fellowship from the Australian National University. Because of this fellowship, Cowan was able to undertake a two-month residency in an esteemed glass workshop at the Australian National University in Canberra. The Commission is traditionally awarded to professional artists, from the United States and abroad, whose work is not currently represented in The Corning Museum of Glass' permanent collection.

Selected works Basket (2012), New Glass Review 33 Whole Milk Wash Basin in Colony Harvest (2013), Rhode Island School of Design Museum 3 Rosaline (2) (2013), Shanghai Museum of Glass Garden of the Forgotten and Extinct (2014), Corning Museum of Glass Wedding Compote in Colony Harvest and Rosette in Milk and Ivory (2014), New Glass Review 35 Garden of the Forgotten and Extinct (2015), New Glass Review 36 The Fine Tint (2017), O: The Oprah Magazine Grotto of the Chocolate Nymph (2018), Toledo Museum of Art

Selected exhibitions

2019 – Burke Prize Exhibition, Museum of Arts and Design, New York City. 2019 – Salacia – a solo exhibition, Heller Gallery, New York City. 2018 – A New State of Matter: Contemporary Glass, Boise Art Museum. 2018 – The Bleak and The Burgeoning, Walton Arts Center. 2017 – Re|Collection, Fuller Craft Museum. 2016 – Hush, Philadelphia Art Alliance. 2015 – COLOURS, Group ExhibitionThe Hempel Glass Museum in Denmark. 2015 – Chroma Revival, Heller Gallery. This was a solo exhibition. A technique that is essential to her is flame-working, which is the manipulation of various rods and tubes of glass that will become malleable when heated to high temperatures. Cowan also participates in glass blowing and hot-sculpting. She often explores woman's experience as a central theme through fantastical landscape and other allegorical collage installations.