Laura Sallade is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. Sallade earned a Certificate in
Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and completed a coordinated
Bachelors of Fine Arts at The University of Pennsylvania in 2024. The artist has worked at the
intersection of painting and glass, exhibiting in New York, Philadelphia, and beyond, creating
large scale multi panel works. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Cairn University (2023)
and Massey Klein Gallery (2022), with two-person shows at Works on Paper Gallery (2024) and
Werring Contemporary (2025). Notable group exhibitions include the Susquehanna Art
Museum, Future Art Fair, and The Woodmere Art Museum. Laura has completed public
commissions for Atlantic Aviation Airport, Jefferson Hospital, and The Ritz Carlton, among many
others. Recent awards and residencies include The SIM Residency in Iceland, The Pilchuck
Glass School Scholarship, and The Nextfab Fellowship. Laura is currently completing her
master’s research in glass at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Artist Statement
Without light we can’t see matter—inversely, without matter we can’t see light. This
interdependent relationship is the crux of my practice. I’m interested in colloquial references to
light as a fleeting presence—a shadow appears, the sun sets, a beam of light enters the room.
In reality, we know that light is the constant and we are the variable—it’s our physical world that
is shifting, our planet that is rotating, our galaxy that is hurtling through space. I use glass, silver,
and chemical processes to capture moment of material flux and work into these paradoxical
understandings.
Compelled to ground reality in the material world, I contend with the over filtration and
diminishing returns of technological mediation by making work that walks the line between
image and object. Giving agency to discarded matter, I orchestrate its behavior and consider the
accelerating shift of material ecologies. Salvaging and foraging glass from various contexts, I
disrupt and conflate existing binaries between producer and consumer, and track the lineage of
glass while building new trajectories.