Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture

Talking Out Your Glass podcast

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Weston Lambert transforms semi-precious stones and found rocks into profoundly beautiful, time-defying glass sculptures. By incorporating an original process for laminating the two materials and by cold-working the surfaces of the glass and rock, the artist is able to bring his skill to bear on these objects that seamlessly transform from stone to glass and back again. Lambert’s work is about dualities and the balancing of contrasting forces. He’s looking for the place where transparency/opacity, and ephemeral/eternal coexist, each taking part in creating equilibrium. This dynamic relationship turns fragility into an asset and rigidity into liability.

Lambert states: “In the studio, I accelerate the slow violence of geological processes. My materials are engaged in a condensed passage of time—modified by my brief tenure, on a timeline charted by millennia, not decades. The heat of the kiln allows molten glass to nestle into stone and days of grinding/polishing simulate eons of erosion. In my pursuit of permanence, I create invulnerable, seamless objects that have been broken and mended outside of geological time.”

A sculptor based in Tacoma, Washington, Lambert’s primary media are glass, metal and stone. In 2007, he earned a BFA (Maxima Cum Laude), from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and in 2012, his MFA from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2010 and again in 2020, the artist was awarded a full-tuition scholarship at Andersen Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Career Opportunity Grant, one of two such grants awarded nationally per year.

Lambert’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including SOFA Chicago, The Toyama International Glass Exhibit, and the Cheongju Craft Biennale in South Korea. As a public artist, Lambert has completed prominent commissions including Untitled, at Western State Hospital, Lakewood, Washington, 2023 and Currents, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington, 2020. His works have been included in such publications as Sculpture Magazine and Glass Quarterly Magazine.

In 2024, Lambert’s work was exhibited at Smith and Vallee Gallery, Edison, Washington, and Taoxichuan Glass Studio Gallery, group exhibition, Jingdezhen, China, where he also lectured and demoed. The artist lectured/demoed at Chico State University, California, and on November 23 taught an online class, Making it on Social Media: Aligning Creativity, Integrity, and Studio Success. He has over 350K followers on Instagram. In March 2025, Lambert will participate in a group exhibition at Visu Contemporary, Miami Beach, Florida, and film a class on his process of combining glass and stone at Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, Oregon, available in late Spring.

Of his artwork, Lambert explains: “In the context of human lives, rock embodies strength, consistency, and timelessness. There’s safety in its solidity, but the natural world is in constant flux. Granite and sand share each other’s future—forever shattered and recast. Glass is delicate, but when combined with the durability of stone, the pairing embodies harmony.”

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