Carmella Jarvi is a full-time artist & entrepreneur. This McColl Center for Art + Innovation and Hambidge Center alumna — since her first ArtPop billboard in 2014 — has explored water through glass & public art. Her studio practice involves capturing water through kiln glass & painting. Jarvi transforms spaces, & works with community around the theme of water.

Water is universal. Regardless of language, age, or culture, we all are connected through water.

During a 2018 AiR at The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, she started painting water again. Painting water was the focus of the artist’s 2019 AiR at McColl Center for Art + Innovation. (As the Atrium Health AiR at MCAI, she also explored healing waters with teens and a local hospital.)

Painting is great connector of people to art and the subject of water. Jarvi approaches her glass like a painter — using multiple layers, heat, and gravity to move the materials and create depth.

She created her first corporate glass commission — for PricewaterhouseCoopers — which highlights her glass transforming a space. Jarvi’s first public art project (in South End Charlotte) is comprised of many large translucent vinyl rounds of her signature blue water glass.

Most exciting is a new collaborative project the artist is working on with five other creatives, the Hickory Museum of Art, and the Corning Foundation. (Group is working with glass, video, and other mixed media.) Since April, the group has documented the creative process ultimately leading to the creation of new large work — debuting at HMA in November 2019.

Want to see more? Go to carmellajarvi.com or @carmella.jarvi on Instagram.