Michael Bomes

Michael Bomes began his art career at the age of 16. Mike started working with Fimo clay. He began selling his art in the parking lot of Grateful Dead shows. He had been touring with the Dead for years and this was a natural next step. It was very common for vendors and artists to follow the Band. In 1994, he saw his first piece of handblown glass.

He was completely stricken with awe. Bomes drove home from New Jersey, gripping his new purchase, a piece of art glass, and swore he was meant to blow glass.

A friend of the family introduced Mike Bomes, to Chris Belleau, a talented and established glassblower. Bomes apprenticed with Belleau for two years, and then opened his own studio in the same building.

He then traveled to Colorado for a short stay with another glassblower to learn his technique which was scientific glassblowing.

Shortly after this trip Mike moved to California. He worked with a lot of glass- blowers there and was particularly impacted by Zak Love, who had rented a shop in San Diego, and was renting space out to other glassblowers. What an idea, he thought.

Shortly after his stay in California he returned to RI, to open up a studio in which he rented space to other artists. The Narragansett Art Collaborative. He ran it for two years and was completely displeased with being the landlord, the maintenance man and so on.

While running the Collaborative,  Later that year, he traveled to Amsterdam for the Glass Art Society's annual meeting. Another huge learning experience! There were so many other trips and so many other teachers, they simply can't be mentioned here.

Anyways, Mike has been shooting photos his whole life, not always developing them but definitely shooting them. He was introduced to Adobe Photoshop, and the rest is pure love.  He started selling more photos than glass, so he put the glass aside and made a large study of the photographic and digital experience.

Recently he has been able to mix both.Please look forward too seeing his new work this year. 2013.