Jacob Shumaker: Potential History
Presented at Palm Springs Modernism Week
Jacob Shumaker's work bears the hallmarks of early Modernist approaches to modeling the human figure. It was my pleasure to work with Jacob and Sheila Strobel to debut his works in the context of Modernism Week.
About the Exhibition
Potential History presents works by Jacob Shumaker, whose active practice in glass gives him firsthand insight into the medium's most promising emerging artists. Debuted during the Palm Springs Modernism Week Show and Sale, this introduction underscores the Modernist principles in Shumaker’s work at a pivotal moment in the artist’s trajectory.
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Shumaker embodies the central tenets of Modernist sculpture in his work and approach, creating glass totems that harness luminosity to render the human form as a sacred geometry. He masterfully accentuates the singular ability of cast glass to portray mass through light by favoring a geometric interpretation of the figure and focusing on volume rather than surface.
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Shumaker’s longstanding fascination with glass has deepened through inspiration from his mentors at Seattle’s Pratt Fine Arts Center and enacting principles of Modernist sculpture. Often directed by process-based decisions, he moves fluidly between drawing, clay modeling, and digital prototypes. Working primarily through sand and lost-wax casting techniques has created a meticulous and responsive approach to sculpting with glass that produces works with considerable visual and conceptual weight.
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The deliberate anonymity of Shumaker's figures and universal ritualistic symbols allows his sculptures to function as archetypes rather than individuals. His pairing of angular and curved forms suggests the interplay of opposing forces: masculine and feminine, earthly and transcendent, mortal and eternal. Presented during Palm Springs Modernism Week, Potential History suggests what American Modernist glass sculpture might have been: Shumaker's geometric abstraction and luminescent cast glass would have been exemplary, had our Studio Glass Movement not arrived several decades too late.
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Strobel Gallery is pleased to participate in this presentation as part of its commitment to supporting new models of collaboration, including the championing of independent curators and artist-led introductions that expand how contemporary work enters the public sphere.
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Role: Organizing curator, exhibition design, interpretive writing, artist representative, installation
