David Hopman is a glass artist based in Amador County in California’s Sierra Foothills, returning to the region after many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. A zoology graduate from UC Davis, he was working at Stanford University when his interest in glassmaking took hold, leading him to study glassblowing at San José State University. In 2000, he committed fully to his craft.
His background as a zoologist and his experience as an avid scuba diver deeply inform his work. The natural world — its structures, rhythms, and underwater color — shapes the palettes and patterns he brings into both classic and freeform blown glass.
Working with a state‑of‑the‑art electric furnace, he melts glass from batch and introduces colors sourced from around the world, including specialty stocks from New Zealand. At temperatures exceeding 2100 degrees, he blows and hand‑shapes each piece, creating forms that range from refined to organic. Many of his signature color patterns emerge from complex, ever‑shifting interactions between the chemical compounds in different color stocks.
His work is currently represented in galleries in California, Ohio, and Florida.
See Daves other work @ Chaos Glassworks