From KNKQ:
Marvin Oliver has died at the age of 73. The Seattle-based artist was world-renowned and drew on his Native American roots to create his pieces. Oliver had been battling pancreatic cancer.
He was a sculptor, printmaker, teacher and mentor during his decadeslong career. Blown-glass artist Preston Singletary, one of his mentees, says the loss of such a creative mind is a huge hit to the arts community.
“I know that in talking with him over the past year or so, he had so many ideas and projects that he wanted to accomplish,” Singletary said. “It’s a real shame that he wasn’t able to follow through on some of these things.”
One of the projects Oliver was working on would have incorporated virtual reality. Singletary says Oliver envisioned an idea that would allow him to be in the same room with the people viewing his art and describe the work to them.
Singletary is now a much-loved and lauded blown-glass artist. But when he was first starting out in the ’80s, he would rely on Oliver’s creativity and the little ways he would push him to come up with new designs and ideas. Singletary says that spoke to Oliver’s ambitious thinking, which he always admired.
“I loved his enthusiasm,” he said. “He always had a wild imagination. Always wanting to try out new techniques in glass, and how could he get images into the glass. How could he push the material in different ways.”
