BIO   RENE CULLER is an artist working in Glass for over fifty years.
She relocated to Mobile, Alabama, from her native Cleveland, OH where she now works with glass in her private studio. 
    Website: reneculler.com/wp

She is versatile in numerous techniques in glass-making: blowing, casting, fusing, and vitreous painting.

Her glass sculptures can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Hot Blooded” is on permanent display at the Luce Center there. Other museum collections include:     The Corning Museum of Glass,
The Georgia Museum of Art, 
The Mobile Museum of Art, AL. 
The Cleveland Institute of Art, OH.
The Museo de Arte en Vidrio, national museum of glass, Spain
The Glass Furnace Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey. 
Nanseoul University, South Korea

Work in Glass can also be viewed in the collections of institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital (OH) and Robert Woods Johnson, Case Western Reserve University and in collections of additional universities, libraries, corporations, such as ForestCity Enterprises and in the collections of individuals.

Rene Culler was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship for study in South Korea and had a solo exhibition with work made in Korea at Gallery Iang in Seoul.

Culler is the author of Glass Art from the Kiln, a tutorial book on glass-making, Schiffer Publishers.

Her work has been recognized with grants from the Alabama Council for the Arts. She has been honored with multiple fellowship and travel grants from the Ohio Arts Council before residence in Alabama.

Culler’s large- scale site-specific installation was inspired by the Mobile-Tensaw Delta (where she loves to kayak) and was exhibited at the Mobile Museum of Art. See  MMoA Web Talk- Rene Culler
Rene Culler enjoys working with glass in her studio in Mobile AL. She is inspired by history, architecture and the art that has come before.

“Fusing” is the contemporary approach to working with glass in the environment, either small or large scale. Firing the glass over refractory materials allows for the greater dimensionality and texture of the surface. The idea always dictates the techniques that result in the finished composition. The depiction of abstract, narrative, or realistic imagery can be accomplished with various techniques such as drawing, silk-screening, photography, and printing. Painted images can be created with the use of high fire enamels, layered within the glass that is then fused together.  Blown glass elements may be included. Surface techniques including sandblasting and engraving, allow for imagery and surface texture.

Culler’s series of the Grail Variations are about the seeking of perfection in art and in life. Blown forms of cups and bowls are stacked and unified through a glass casting process. The number of objects coordinates with the suit of cards/or numbers seen in the Tarot. The cards suggest a beginning and multiple blown glass objects are combined and invested in a plaster/silica mold. The glass is re-liquified in the firing process and flows together; combining forms and re-arranging color. Our eyes travel up and around the sculpture as a journey suggested by the finished work in glass.

Rene Culler creates work based on ideas; a union of transparent, translucent and textural surfaces reaching a synthesis of identity, and metaphoric poetry.