Debora Moore was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 and was educated at Pratt Fine Arts Center, Seattle and Pilchuk Glass School, Stanwood, Washington. She was Visiting Artist in Residence, at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington and Artist in Residence, Murano, Venice, Italy.

Debora Moore’s glass orchids are hand-blown, unique pieces. Always intrigued by nature, the artist found her voice in glass by creating graceful sculptures of flowers. She now concentrates her energy exclusively on orchids. Her earlier works are free standing plants. Her newer pieces are wall sculptures of orchid leaves from which she suspends branches filled with gossamer glass orchids of brilliant palette. Moore creates a watercolor for each piece and works out the palette for her orchid flowers on paper first. She then blows the flowers and leaves, taking her cue from nature, but heightening the color with artistic license. While capturing the fragility of the flower in glass, Moore’s blooms are a powerful homage to nature’s infinite possibilities.

In a recent article on the artist, Judy Wagonfeld writes: “[Moore’s} regal botanical specimens, though based in reality, spill from imagination; composite imagery garnered from hiking orchid-lush forests in India, Thailand, Japan, South American and rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. Her art celebrates their essence, beauty, peace, fragility and strength of nature.

Acid-etched glass and sprinkled glass dust from surface “skins” suggestive of nature’s velvety, mossy and rugged textures, ingenious, but tricky, repeating rotations of semi-molten bubbles stretch powdery lines into thready radiating veins that nourish leaves. Moore cuts her bamboo and faux wood trunks in foot-long lengths, the broken sections a metaphor for our fragmented lives, saying we are part of a whole and not alone. They also represent the reductive focus used when sketching in forests.

“In today’s conceptual art world, Moore’s abstracted style relates more to past artists who sank their aesthetic teeth into flowers. Photographer Harold Feinstein viewed flora as a spiritual messenger. Man Ray’s calla lily, Robert Mapplethorpe’s tulips and Salvador Dali’s “Meditative Rose” inspire contemplation. Painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s close-up views released the sensuality of organic life.”