URANIUM YELLOW INTERIOR FOLD (1999), BY BENJAMIN MOORE
ACQUIRED FROM FOSTER/WHITE GALLERY, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 2000
HAND-BLOWN GLASS, 13" IN DIAMETER BY 3 1/2" HIGH, SIGNATURE ENGRAVED BY THE ARTIST
I actually saw Benjamin Moore's work for the first time during the Microsoft Office 2000 Beta, when I worked in Seattle for five months. From the beginning, I really liked the geometric simplicity of works like this one, which are named interior folds because of their shape... a central bowl shape surrounded by a prominent, perfectly level ring.

These works are made in a number of colors, including cobalt blue, strontium red, and uranium yellow... each color is named for the element which produces it. Although I usually gravitate toward blue glass, my initial inclination when selecting an interior fold was the uranium yellow... it seemed more distinctive to me. When I asked my Mom, my Aunt Marion, and my brother Ward what they thought (I showed them images of interior folds on Ben's web site), they all concurred that yellow was the way to go. So, I contacted Foster/White and arranged to acquire this work during Ben's October 2000 show at the gallery.

I really like the yellow color of this work... also, the spiral wrap of black glass on the ring is very cool, and casts a really neat shadow when lit properly. (The wrap is created by spinning the fold on the pipe while a black thread of glass is slowly moved outward from the center.) This is one of the smallest interior folds, but I think it's an excellent example of Ben's work.

Click here to return to the Collection.