Ed Carpenter (artist)
Ed Carpenter is an artist specializing in large-scale public installations ranging from architectural sculpture to infrastructure design. Since 1973 he has completed scores of projects for public, corporate, and ecclesiastical clients. Working internationally from his studio in Portland, Oregon, United States, Carpenter collaborates with a variety of expert consultants, sub-contractors, and studio assistants. He personally oversees every step of each commission, and installs them himself with a crew of long-time helpers, except in the case of the largest objects, such as bridges.
While an interest in light has been fundamental to virtually all of Carpenter's work, he also embraces commissions which require new approaches and skills. This openness has led to increasing variety in his commissions and a wide range of sites and materials. He is known as an eager and open-minded collaborator as well as technical innovator. His use of cold bent tempered glass, encapsulated glass elements, programmed artificial lighting, and unusual tension structures has broken new ground in architectural art.
Carpenter is grandson of a painter/sculptor, and stepson of an architect, in whose office he worked summers as a teenager. He studied architectural glass art under artists in England and Germany during the early 1970s, and now lives with his wife and two children in the Coast Range mountains west of Portland.