James Carpenter discusses his interest in the natural world. Oral history interview with James Carpenter by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 20, 2018, JCDA Studios, New York, New York. Clip length: 01:03.

James Carpenter: I sort of grew up in Maine and Vermont. But sort of always had more of an interest in the natural world, generally. I could have very easily become an ethnographer, or something like that. But I do think that there are collective ideas about nature that we tend to think don’t exist around us in urban environments but there are ways—and this is where glass as a means of unlocking properties of light and unlocking information that light carries can actually bring us back to revisiting some of these phenomenon that you normally associate with a remote, natural context. But it’s actually present around us at all times. That’s sort of how I think about glass, more of a vehicle for unlocking properties of light that carry information. By that I mean information of what surrounds us or what’s happening with the sun angles and reflected information.