Kait Rhoads

Kait Rhoads is an American glass artist whose sculptural practice explores aquatic ecosystems, biological structures, and patterns of growth through the language of Venetian glassmaking. Working across sculpture, installation, public art, and wearable objects, she is known for adapting traditional murrine and filigrana techniques to construct complex, interconnected forms that evoke coral colonies, kelp forests, cellular structures, and other forms of marine life.

Born in 1968, Rhoads spent formative years of her childhood living with her family aboard a boat in the Caribbean. Immersed in the sea from an early age, she encountered aquatic organisms and ecosystems firsthand; an examination of sargasso seaweed at the age of six became an early expression of a curiosity that would remain central to her work. Later experiences in the waters surrounding Bali expanded this visual vocabulary through the biodiversity and architecture of coral colonies, while the waters of Puget Sound introduced another enduring subject: the pliable, continually moving structures of kelp and seaweed.

Rhoads translates these observations through an innovative adaptation of murrine, the centuries-old Italian technique of constructing patterned glass cane. She blows multicolored glass into hollow hexagonal tubes that are cut and fire-polished to produce individual conical units she describes as hollow murrine. These elements are joined, often with fine metal wire, into larger structures. Functioning as modular components, hundreds of individual units accumulate into flexible, seemingly fluid forms whose construction parallels the growth and organization of coral colonies and other interconnected biological systems.

This method of construction is integral to the work. Individual elements gain structural strength through their connection to one another, allowing Rhoads to build sculptures that appear to float, expand, undulate, and gather. Large-scale works may develop over months or years, their incremental assembly echoing processes of growth and accumulation found throughout the natural world. Through this intersection of material, structure, and observation, Rhoads examines the extraordinary complexity and fragility of aquatic ecosystems and our relationship to them.

Rhoads received a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied sculpture in Venice, Italy, in 2001–02, further developing her engagement with Venetian glass traditions.

Rhoads has taught at Pilchuck Glass School and Penland School of Craft and was an Artist-in-Residence at The Corning Museum of Glass. In 2018, she completed Salish Nettles, a permanent public installation commissioned for the Pacific Seas Aquarium at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. Her work is held in institutional collections including the Seattle Art Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art; Tacoma Art Museum; Museum of Glass; The Corning Museum of Glass; Toyama Institute of Glass Art, Japan; Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark; and Shanghai Museum of Glass, China. Rhoads lives and works in Seattle, Washington.