Biography
Brooke Gardiner has been involved in glass for 64 years. After he retired from Exxon Chemical Company, he has been working to combine glass with other materials in sculptural forms. He felt that in his scientific work that he lacked balance in his life and decided to work on the more artistic and spiritual side to balance the intellectual side. He has worked in soft glass and scientific Pyrex glass under the tutelage of Dana Sampson, the President of the Southern Glassblowers Association. His work now covers the field of sculpture in floral, figures, abstract and contemporary style. He also is working in stone, wood and he hopes also metal. His goal is a focus in glass sculpture and in combination with the other materials.
Brooke has studied for more than two years at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop in Brooklyn [now Urban Glass] in traditional furnace glass blowing and neon art and taken many courses at Corning in their Corning Glass Museum Studio in advanced flameworking with Sally Prasch, Emilio Santini, Shane Fero and Fred Birkhill. Lately he has studied with Lucio Bubacco of Murano, Italy.
Brooke has been studying stone sculpture with Gladys Reimers for 15 years.
Brooke is also involved in art associations: he was treasurer for the Westfield Art Association, member of the Somerset Art Association, Millburn-Short Hills Art Center, The New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts and the Rahway Art Association. He is now treasurer for the Contemporary Art Group. He was featured in two shows at Haverford College, Haverford, PA in the Cantor-Fitzgerald Gallery. He has had pieces of his work in the Eugenie Gallery in Scotch Plains, the Everhart Gallery in Basking Ridge, the Papermill Playhouse, the Madison and Mountainside libraries, the Somerset Art Center in Pluckemin, and the Atrium and Macculloch Hall in Morristown. He has had a show of his work in the Palmer Museum in Springfield along with a Japanese painter and has given numerous demonstrations of his technique in making glass art to local groups.
