Glass House Presents: Mark Mennin: Outdoor Sculpture at The Glass House

Join artist Mark Mennin and Glass House chief curator Hilary Lewis for a conversation about the exhibition Mark Mennin: Processi, on view at The Glass House through December 15, 2023.

Mark Mennin was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa and grew up in New York. He graduated with a degree in history from Princeton University, where he also assisted ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu.

He began to carve stone in Italy shortly after, making a living copying Greek statuary, executing commissions, and preparing his early gallery shows at The Marisa Del Re Gallery and Victoria Munroe Gallery, among others. From 1989 to 1993 he lived and worked in Paris where he exhibited with Galerie Enrico Navarra and Galerie Von Lintel in Munich while producing a series of commissions in the South of France.

In recent years, the scale of many of his sculptures evolved into giant landscape and architectural works, often involving hundreds of tons of granite and nearly all carved by his hand. The significant scale of his art has required ever larger arenas over time – leading to his collaborative work within architecture and landscape design.

Presently, he has a one-person exhibition at the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, and a 40 ft-commission in granite, Schuylkill Currents, to be permanently installed along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Other collections and installations include the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, The Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge, MA , Stanford University Law School, the Palmer Museum at Penn State University, The Millennium Sundial at The Bruce Park in Greenwich, CT, the Chelsea Market in New York, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, among many others.

Mennin has taught sculpture and art history for over twenty years, first at the Parsons School of Design and then at The New York Academy of Art in Manhattan, where he is still on the faculty. Mennin is a dual American/Italian citizen and will be creating a one-person indoor/outdoor exhibition in Todi, Italy, in the Piazza del Popolo and La Sala degli Pietre.

Glass House Presents is an ongoing series of live events that extends the site’s historic role as a gathering place for artists, architects, and other creative minds. This talk is co-hosted by New Canaan Library and supported in part by the New Canaan Community Foundation.