Sharon Bladholm has pursued her artistic vision through the steady acquisition and command of a variety of disciplines including glass, bronze, ceramic and printmaking. Since 1976, when she established Opal Glass Studio, she has expanded her focus from flat to three dimensional mediums, her range of subject from the surrounding natural world to that of indigenous cultures isolated from the modern society. Her body of work has become a living testament to the rapid encroachment of technology upon the environment.

Artist, Aquarap Expedition (Field Museum, Conservation International), Rio Pastaza, Peru, 1999

Museum Research, Paris, Rome, Florence (Europe), 1992

Artist & Documentarian, Chicago Rainforest Action Group, State of Roraima (Yanomami area), Brazil, 1991

Artist & Documentarian, Chicago Rainforest Action Group, State of Amazonas (Yanomami and Piaroa areas), Venezuela, 1990

Artistic Research, Costa Rica, 1985

Artistic Research, Belize and Guatemala, 1985

Artistic Research, Mexico, 1980-85

Independent studies in ceramics under Tom Malone, Illinois State University, 1998-99

Independent studies in glass casting under Bill Carlson, University of Illinois, 1996-97

Independent studies in glass casting under Joel Myers, Illinois State University, 1995

Multi-disciplinary studies in painting drawing printmaking and sculpture, School of the Art Institute Chicago 1990-94

Printmaking and drawing studies, Columbia College, 1976-78

On-site archeological studies, Northwestern University, 1972-73

Artist in residence, Glenbrook South High School, Glenview, 1999

Lecturer & Visiting Artist, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, 1994 & 1999

Instructor, Drawing & Sculpture, Sun Foundation, Peoria, 1998

Course Instructor, Sculpture, Suburban Fine Arts Center, Highland Park, 1996

Illinois Artisan Program (State of Illinois building), Chicago, IL

Other Side Gallery, Union Pier, MI

Illinois Women Artists, "The New Millenium", National Museum for Women in the Arts (on tour), Washington, DC,1999-2001

Through the Looking Glass of Art, Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago IL 1999

Chicago Art Open, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago IL 1998

The Velvet Show, Cafe Bacci, Chicago IL 1998

Body & Soul, Checkered Raven Gallery, Peoria IL 1998

Pandora's Box Show, Wood Street Gallery, Chicago IL. 1996

S.O.F.A. with Portia Gallery, Miami, FL. 1996

Group Glass Show, The Other Side Gallery, Union Pier, MI, 1996

Best of Illinois, Portia Gallery, Chicago IL, 1995

Emerging Woman In Glass, Portia Gallery IL, 1995

Group Monotype Show, Gallery 451, Rockford, IL, 1994

Cast Glass, Enid Oklahoma Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1994

The Human Condition, Wood Street Gallery. Chicago IL, 1994

Group Glass Show, The Ark Gallery, Saugutuck, MI, 1993

The Rooftop Series, Southport Gallery, Chicago IL,1991 Species, Synergy Gallery, Chicago IL, 1990

Sultzer Gallery, Chicago, IL 1990 Great Lakes Gallery, Chicago, IL 1989

N.A.B. Gallery, Chicago, IL 1988 Prairie Avenue Gallery, Chicago, IL 1986

N.A.B. Gallery, Chicago, IL 1986

Fabrile Gallery, Chicago, IL 1984

Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL 1983

Ethel Rosenthal Collection, Wilmette, IL

Bachman Collection, Wilmette, IL

Dobson Castle, Glasgow Scotland Douglas Korsland, Chicago, IL

Roman Wiel, Chicago, IL

Roman Atelier, Evergreen Colorado, 1994

Pilchuck Glass School, Scholarship Awards 1992

Smith Scholarship, Art Institute of Chicago, 1990

Delphi Glass Competition, Design Award, 1984

Body & Soul,(one person show), Peoria Journal Star, Peoria IL, 1998

Tree of Life (exhibition), Grand Rapids Sentinel, Grand Rapids MI, 1994

Old Home Show (article), Crain's, Chicago IL, 1990

Photographer (re-building church article), Chicago Tribune, Chicago IL, 1997

Illustrator, writer & photographer, Chicago Rainforest Action Group Newsletter, Chicago IL, 1990-94

Illustrator & writer for "Mountain Call" newspaper, John F. Kennedy Foundation Internship, West Virginia, 1976

For much of my artistic life, my sculpture has been a response to a long term investigation of the transient nature of the human figure. My starting point in the creative process begins with simple materials such as wax, plaster and clay and after a process of maturation is finally formed into glass, bronze and ceramic.

Each of these materials becomes a word in a growing vocabulary, allowing me the possibility to express more with the properties of the particular substance. I am seduced anew by the tension between the advantages, and limitations that each presents. Each one teaches me about the other and causes a situation of cross pollination. Each one is a process that involves intensities of heat integral to the final transformation of one substance giving way to another. The intrinsic qualities of these materials speak to the corresponding strengths, frailties, and the innumerable mutable as well as unexpected states of humaness as well as becoming a paradigm for the cycles of nature through the symbolic transposition of these aspects to specific materials used within each of the art works.

Through my work I attempt to offer an insight as to what this sense of humanity leads to in terms of my own experience. I believe that the figure becomes an appropriate vehicle allowing me to address the larger concerns of the human condition. It is very important that my work can reach across social, economic, and cultural barriers reaching back to that time when art was not a separate function of life and spoke a more universal language.

My time spent in the living libraries of North, Central, and South America forests, amidst various indigenous peoples has profoundly influenced my art to the same measure. Much of my work has been in direct response to my different experiences living with the Yanomami peoples of Brazil and Venezuela, where I filled volumes of my sketch books with all types of plant forms. These sketches would become the nucleus for an internal record of the many varied elements of plant anatomy, leaf, stem, seed, stamen, blossom, thorn that would form a lexicon of symbolic natural elements that would infuse much of my later work.

The close observation from nature metamorphosed into my own vision of the natural forms much in the same way that my dual interest in human forms has also progressed. I became intensively focused on the understated, little appreciated, relationship of humanity with the plant kingdom, which despite our efforts to destroy it sustains our existence upon this planet. Two emergent themes of my visual universe came forth in the consistent portrayal of the human form and the dynamics of organic plant forms as sharing a common morphology. This correlation led to an almost unconscious intermingling of both kinds of shapes in the resultant final image or object where the somatic knowledge of each resonates within the other in the manifestation of hybrid forms. This work seems to come of a compulsion to 're-bioengineer' the concept of the human species, co-mingling the structural elements of both but stressing plant-like sensibilities.

I am more concerned with the intuitive process of artmaking that is fired by the emotions and fed by feelings inspired by larger ideas. Though the type of concentrated effort needed to evolve artistically I hope a process of homeopathic distillation and concentration will occur, where the essence of what is left will act upon and speak to the viewer with a greater intensity.