Optical Crystal Glass Baseball Bat (2009) Sculpture by Michael Bokrosh

In 1986, glass artist Greg Engelsby brought a piece of bright, clear, optical glass into the studio. This beautiful glass was being produced in the United States and readily available as an art medium. This exposure had a dramatic affect on Bokrosh. He ordered the raw material, and new fountains of creativity were unleased as he began to unlock hidden figures inside crystal blocks of optical art glass. He intuited, visualized, and sketched out sculpture designs; and before the end of the year he had completed his first full production line of optical art glass paperweights. Bokrosh received a scholarship to attend Pilchuck glass school in 1988 and underwent glass artistry training by the famous Italian glass art masters, Loredano and Dino Rosin. The Rosin brothers specialized in the combination of solid hot- and cold-worked sculptural glass art. Working with these masters heavily influenced Bokrosh’s next career move: the creation of fine sculptural art glass. Bokrosh shifted his artistic focus in 1990 towards fine art and spent months creating a series of large, optical art glass sculptures. He reached out to specific fine art galleries with color slides of his new glass art sculptures and letters of introduction and received positive responses. The period from 1990 to 1995 saw the artist’s work shown in more than 12 established and respected art galleries nationwide, including four solo exhibitions of Bokrosh’s optical glass art sculpture. In early 1996, Bokrosh began to dream of creating optical art sculptures on a grand scale. He design and constructed a machine to cut and polish optical art glass on a scale not previously seen. Recall the famous line from the movie Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” Bokrosh built his huge glass-grinding machine and purchased, from Pilkington Glass of England, one very large piece of transparent gold optical glass that weighed over 3,500 pounds! This enormous piece of optical glass gave Bokrosh the opportunity to fully engage his vision, and he proceeded with sculpting the optical art glass with intricately cut facets. Bokrosh’s first sculpture in the Monumental Glass Series was completed in the year 2000 and is titled Mergingold. Since then Bokrosh has added several works to the Monumental Glass Series plus other interesting and creative monumental glass art sculptures.

• Nationality: UNITED STATES
• Date of birth : 1953
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary American Artists