Larry Bell

Biography

When I was nineteen, I had a job at a picture framing shop where I learned how to cut glass for custom frames. I fell in love with the material. I grew up looking out and into windows, but never gave much thought to the membrane that I was looking through.

Glass is cut by scoring the surface and then breaking the membrane so it follows the score in the surface.

One of the most important moments of my studio activities was when I was trying to cut a piece of glass for a specific wooden shadow box. The glass was to fit into a rabbet in the maple box which was roughly 12 inches by 16 inches. I cut the glass accurately and dropped it into the wooden maple rabbet, but it broke almost in half. I was disappointed.

I was disappointed in the skill I thought I had in handling the material. I decided to go on with the completion of the shadow box with a piece of blue paper, such as is used in the back of picture frames to seal the back side.

When I turned the box upright the light that was flooding the table I was working at made the broken piece of glass create three lines. The reflection of the break, the break itself, and shadow of the break were all visible against the blue paper backing. I found myself not being disappointed but thrilled with the serendipitous activity of the broken piece of glass, the light presenting the symmetry of the three lines contained on the blue paper. It was an epiphany.

For 66 years, I have celebrated the above epiphany by working with glass and hoping for the same spontaneous, improvisational, and intuitive response from the glass materials I work with now.

Everything is about feeling. I am searching for the feeling of an epiphany. —Larry Bell

Larry Bell (b. 1939) is a pioneer of the Light and Space movement whose practice is defined by a lifelong investigation of light, surface, and perception. Bell uses a high-vacuum coating system to deposit thin metallic and non-metallic films onto glass, creating surfaces that transmit, absorb, and reflect light simultaneously. Color and light fluctuate from subtle shifts in perspective and environment making the works as much about experience as about form.

Regarded as one of the most renowned artists to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s, Larry Bell has been awarded prestigious awards, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient. Bell has exhibited internationally, including at the San Antonio Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He has a long-term installation at Dia Beacon in Beacon, NY. Born in Chicago, Bell lives and works in Taos, NM.

Press Release
2025 Larry Bell and Wes Mills at Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM