Therman Statom, Novella, hand-painting, etching and sandblasting on handblown and laminated glass, PS 160 Addition, Queens

Novella is a site-specific artwork created by Therman Statom for the lobby of the new P.S. 160 Addition, Queens. In this whimsical glass artwork, colorful, hand-blown discs float across the vestibule transom representing school subjects and extracurricular interests that enrich students’ lives—green for science, blue for math, yellow for music, purple for social studies, brown for physical education, red for social-emotional learning and orange for art. Interspersed among the discs are a sapphire-blue heart, a luminous raven and blossoming sunflowers. Anchoring the composition is a screen-printed portrait of the school’s namesake, Francis Walter Bishop Sr., a Jamaican-born composer and musician whose songs were made famous by legendary jazz and blues performers, like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. Spontaneous musical notes, mathematical equations and hand-drawn markings are scattered across the composition, echoing the improvisational energy of jazz and conveying the exploratory nature of learning. The artwork’s highly evocative imagery invites viewers to make their own interpretations.  

Statom, a renowned master of glasswork, skillfully combined a number of techniques—glass blowing, hand-painting, etching, sandblasting and glass lamination—to craft richly textured surfaces that interact as viewers move through the space. Each glass component is a shallow, shadow box-like structure that reveals new views from every angle, while the jewel-like blown-glass discs capture the changing natural light that filters into the lobby. This interplay of depth, light and shifting perspective makes the artwork visually dynamic and emotionally engaging. Meaning emerges through rhythm, variation and surprise. As the title would imply, Novella is an unfolding story. It is a tribute to creative expression and an invitation to imagine, interpret, and explore. As Statom remarks, “The language of color and light has always inspired me. My hope is that the artwork becomes a creative catalyst for the students as they respond to it instinctively and emotionally. There is enough information to inform, but enough abstraction to invite imagination.”