Howard Ben Tré was an Americanglass artist. He worked with poured glass, creating small sculptures and large scale public artworks. Glass magazine has called Ben Tré a pioneer in the technique of using hot glass casting in fine art.
Personal life and education
Howard Ben Tré was born May 13, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. In the 1960s he attended Brooklyn College for two years and was a political activist. In the 1970s he left New York with his wife, Gay, for Oregon. At Portland State University he learned about the university's well-known glass-blowing shop and began studying the creation process, finding influence in religious objects. He would obtain his bachelor's degree at Portland. Dale Chihuly recruited Ben Tré to the Rhode Island School of Design from Portland, Oregon where he would graduate from RISD with a Masters of Fine Arts in 1980. His wife Gay Ben Tré was actively involved in planning and siting the installation of his art. They divorced amicably and remained friends for the rest of his life. He married Wendy MacGaw in 2004. He lived and worked in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Howard Ben Tré died June 20, 2000 in hospice care at his home in Pawtucket, RI.
Artistic career
He started by blowing glass, struggling to succeed at the skill. Through his education at Portland State University, he would discover the process of pouring glass. Pulling inspiration from African and Japanese religious icons and figures, he uses his artwork to explore connections between the two. Ben Tré utilized his training as an industrial manufacturing master technician to create glass artworks based on traditional methods. His studio space, located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is a former glass product manufacturing plant. He created fine art castings by pouring molten glass into sand molds, applying heat and then cooling them for months. The form is then dug out from the sand mold, sand blasted, cut, ground, and polished. Many of Ben Tré's works involve the use of gold leaf; by way of wrapping portions of works or installing lead bars within the pieces covered with gold leaf. The glass sculptures are often symmetrical. His wife, Gay, assisted in the designing and planning of his large scale works, including the installation of his public art.
Reception
In lieu of Ben Tré's 2001 exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art, critic Roberta Carasso described his work as being "part of the glass revolution". The Christian Science Monitor described his poured glass works as timeless, monumental and "hulking, architectural forms he creates...existed before the dawn of recorded history." Arthur Danto stated in 2000 that Ben Tré's glass works were redefining and powerful, and that he creates "a kind of pleasure that we don't usually associate with art."
