Josiah McElheny

One of the artist’s ongoing projects is “An End to Modernity” (2005), commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. The piece is a twelve-foot-wide by ten-foot-high chandelier of chrome and transparent glass modeled on the 1960s Lobmeyr design for the chandeliers found in Lincoln Center, and evoking as well the Big Bang theory. “The End of the Dark Ages,” again inspired by the Metropolitan Opera House chandeliers and informed by logarithmic equations devised by the cosmologist David H. Weinberg was shown in New York City in 2008. Later that year, the series culminated in a massive installation titled “Island Universe” at White Cube in London and in Madrid. In 2019 the installation was exhibited at Stanford University’s Cantor Center for the Arts.

McElheny went on to receive his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. As part of that program, he trained trained under master glassblower Ronald Wilkins. After graduating, he was an apprentice to master glassblowers Jan-Erik Ritzman, Sven-Ake Caarlson and Lino Tagliapietra.

McElheny grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. While attending high school in the early 1980s, he was part of Boston’s underground music scene, and worked as a sound engineer at Radiobeat Studios. He holds production credits on records by the Proletariat, Sorry, and Death Wish, recorded in 1983 and 1984.

Josiah McElheny (1966, Boston) is an artist and sculptor, primarily known for his work with glass blowing and assemblages of glass and mirrored glassed objects (see Glass art). He is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program. He lives and works in New York City.