Description
Life & Death Red Flower Ball by Rocko Bellaso. A white skull is hiddened inside a red flower. “Momento Mori” is a latin phrase meaning “Remember that you have to die”. Flameworked borosilcate glass. Signed and dated 2024. Measures approximately 2″ diameter.
About the Artist
Rocko Belloso is an American glass artist best known for his modern approach to centuries-old techniques. He specializes in murine, cut and flip, sculpture, and stringer drawing, and is an innovator in his combination of these elements, as well as his custom color mixing methods. Rocko has also updated the craft by way of subject matter, infusing his influences from comic books, cult movies, metal music, and lowbrow art into his imagery—which ranges from stylized depictions to hyper-realistic portraits. His strong foundation in drawing was cultivated since childhood when he aspired to be a cartoonist and was sent to extracurricular art classes. As a young teen, Rocko anticipated attending art school to pursue his passion, but his plans changed in 2003 when he saw the 2D rendering possibilities with murine, and consequentially accepted a glassblowing apprenticeship and employment at Third Eye Design in California. He spent the following 7 years there as a production artist, assigned to make mostly dry pipes. In his free time, however, he took classes from artists including Scott Deppe, Jason Taj, Marcel Braun, and Jason Lee, whom he respectively credits with learning murine, chip stacking, line-work, and reticello. In 2010, Rocko moved to doing hourly work for an independent glass distributor, for which he was allotted more freedom to explore these specialized techniques. After his murine work began to circulate the market, garnering him notoriety, Rocko decided to make the leap to working for himself in 2014.
Since becoming an independent artist, Rocko has received accolades for his unique work, which has been displayed at galleries and created at live demos across the country. His art has been included in various glass competitions, for which he has received medals and first-place awards, and he has also served as a judge at the World Series of Glass and Champs Glass Games. As a result of his extensive knowledge and groundbreaking applications, he’s been invited to teach workshops at institutions including Corning Museum, Carlisle School of Glass Art, and numerous glass studios coast-to-coast. Rocko currently lives in Philadelphia, where he is a resident artist at Hancock Studios.
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