page_title: Danny Lane
section_title: Public Sculpture
hierarchical_section_title: Danny Lane / Life and career / Public Sculpture
caption_attribution_description: English: Parting of the Waves, Danny Lane, 2003, Glass, stainless steel
context_page_description: Danny Lane is an American artist, best known for his glass and steel sculpture. Lane is also known for his work in art furniture and contemporary design. He lives and works in London.
  Lane came to attention in the 1980s through his art furniture. He moved into large-scale public sculpture in the 1990s, being responsible in 2006 for Borealis, believed to be the largest glass sculpture in the world. Lane’s work can be found in public spaces and collections worldwide, such as London Underground, Canary Wharf Plc, Victoria & Albert Museum, Microsoft, British Land Plc, Rolex UK, British Airports Authority, Swire Properties and General Motors.
  To construct his glass sculptures, Lane exploits the strength of glass under compression and its qualities of luminosity. This approach expands on traditional methods of glass and metal smithing and has resulted in a varied body of work, from monumental structures made from industrial float glass and steel, to coloured glass sculpture, casts and design objects.
context_section_description: In the early 1990s, Lane’s focus shifted to making large-scale glass and steel sculptures for public and corporate spaces.
  Lane’s first public commissions occurred in the late 1980s, including Stacked Glass Fountain (1986) in Miami, Florida and etched glass screens and a wall sculpture for the British Embassy in Helsinki in 1989, both of which contained elements that provided the basis for later work.
  From 1989-90, Lane travelled to Tokyo and Osaka in Japan to produce new commissions. Further work followed during 1991-93 across China, Spain and London and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, including Wave Wall (1993) for Dalian Glass Company, China, which saw Lane experimenting with curving glass walls that refract light.
  In 1994, Lane was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London to create a glass balustrade for their new Glass Gallery. The balustrade is made up of 140 pillars of cut glass, lining the stairs leading to a glass mezzanine floor
  In 1996, the steel and glass sculpture Man Catching A Star was commissioned for the Wembley Stadium approach in London. More public sculptures followed over subsequent years, including glass water sculptures in China and India, Pantheon for Henley Festival in 2000 and The Presence of Seven (2002) in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
  In 2003, Lane made Parting of the Waves for Canary Wharf Plc, East London. The work is a 4m high, 10m long ribbon of glass running each side of the north entrance. It was constructed from 2000 narrow strips of glass, which are locked into place by their own weight.
  The following year in 2004, Opening Line, a 90-m long public sculpture, was created for the Gateshead public transport interchange, Nexus at Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. The work contains multiple references to the local culture and history of Gateshead, such as engineering and maritime culture. Also in 2004, Ellipsis Eclipses was made for Newcastle’s city centre, situated outside The Gate entertainment centre.
  2005 saw further public sculptures produced including Assembly Field at the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff and Stairway, for Cass Sculpture Foundation in the UK. Stairway is a glass and steel construction that rises up into the sky with no landing platform, designed to be reminiscent of Jacob's Ladder.
  In May 2006, Lane produced Borealis for the General Motors Renaissance Center in Detroit, USA, which is believed to be the largest glass sculpture in existence. The work was inspired by the Aurora Borealis, a spectacle that Lane references in the refraction of light through the numerous strips of glass.
  Colour Eclipse was made in 2009 for Bishopsgate’s Broadgate Tower in London, one of many coloured glass works created in this period using furnace technology. Other coloured glass works such as Blue Moon demonstrated this method on a smaller scale.
  In 2010, Lane produced Threshold, commissioned by the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Coloured glass objects arranged behind the curving glass wall were backlit to produce numerous shifting reflections, while the title Threshold directly references Lane’s interest in the metaphysical experience of art.
  In recent years, Aether (2013) was produced for the window of Marble Arch House, London, commissioned by British Land Plc.
caption: Parting of the Waves, 2003
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