steffen Plistermann

Steffen Plistermann is largely self-taught. Born in Berlin, Germany, he moved to the US in 1987. After 25 years as an established painter and sculptor in the Pacific Northwest, he started working with glass in 2015 while living on Maui, Hawaii. In 2017, Steffen moved to Santa Fe to pursue his own work in glass full-time.

Plistermann approaches his glass colors from a painter’s viewpoint. Through a lot of experimentation, he developed a process based on colored glass that has been ground to a powder size. Layering these powders, then heating and cooling them in specific ways, allows him to create these unique and distinctive finishes. 

Occasionally, the desired result isn’t satisfactory. Sometimes a piece cracks during the annealing process, while other times the shape or composition differs from what was envisioned. Even so, the fragments remain beautiful, and Steffen realized he could cut these pieces apart and repurpose them in his fusing projects. After fusing the fragments into flat sheets, he reshapes them and often combines them with other elements created specifically for each individual piece.