Amber Cowan’s sculptural glass work is based around the use of recycled, upcycled, and second-life American pressed glass and industrial scrap. She uses the process of flameworking, hot-sculpting and glassblowing to create sculptures that overwhelm the viewer with ornate abstraction and viral accrual. Her work incorporates collected antique glass elements that are used to activate and animate the material into a visual story of historic objects through a contemporary lens.
Cowan lives and works in Philadelphia where she received an MFA in Glass from Tyler School of Art and Architecture of Temple University. She has been a faculty member of the Tyler Glass Department since 2011. Cowan was awarded the 2023 Delphi Award from The Smithsonian Women’s Committee, a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship in Crafts and was the recipient of the 2014 Rakow Commission from The Corning Museum of Glass. Her September 2023 show at Heller Gallery was reviewed in The New York Times. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of over a dozen museums in the US and worldwide including The Museum of Art and Design, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Shanghai Museum of Glass.