"As a student, I was into water and glass and fire. Playing around with elements like blown multiples and sheet glass, I started making structures. I did a lot of casting in cement, and cutting and breaking things. It's important to do things that address how you think about what you do, as much as what you do." In the early 1970s, Therman Statom began his career with glass as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Although he wanted to be a glassblower, he was also attracted to sheet glass, which he cut and assembled with his blown forms in room-size installations. His interest in composition and assemblage led him to make small, paint-splashed, sheet glass houses. The houses enclosed glass elements, such as shards and blown objects, with mixed media, including found objects in a variety of materials and the artist’s writing and drawings. Over time, Statom’s houses grew larger, and other similarly constructed domestic forms, such as chairs and ladders, appeared. These were followed by the wall pieces, such as Clearly Oranges, that the artist calls “divided paintings.” Statom combines all of these elements—houses, divided paintings, chairs, and ladders—in his fanciful, large-scale installations.