“All of the art fairs that I would visit really opened a portal to this other dimension,” Floridian artist Autumn Casey says. She studied dance, performance, and sculpture—and immersed herself in Miami’s creative scene—before she had her light-bulb moment. “I don’t want to ever get too stagnant in what I’m doing, which I think has led me to become a lamp maker. And now it’s hard—I can’t stop putting light bulbs into sculptures!”

That’s a good thing. Inspired by Tiffany lamps, and the Applebee’s and Pizza Hut pendant lights that captivated her as a child, Casey’s fantastical sculptures glow with a life of their own. They’re weird, wonderful, and dripping with color—which is apt, because she paints them instead of using stained glass. “I think I secretly want to be a painter, but I don’t know,” she says. “Sculpture’s just more fun.”

Working out of her home studio, which is packed with plants, colorful curtains, and boxes of found objects, Casey begins each lamp by welding a steel skeleton and filling in fine details with aluminum wire. Then she builds up layers of plaster, epoxy clay, fabric, paint, and resin to re-create the look of colored glass.

Her motifs range from botanical specimens to freshly picked produce—“I think I did every fruit imaginable on one”—and lately she’s been assembling a menagerie of animal shapes. “There’s something about them that’s warm and comforting,” Casey says. “I’ve always wanted my sculptures to kind of feel like friends you can have in your house with you.”

Now that she’s perfected her process, she’s also working on commissions. “I kind of feel like I can make anything—if someone said, I want a chicken, I’m curious to see what would come out,” she explains. “A lot of it is like, okay, I have to make this with my hands out of thin air. Let’s go.”

Casey recently launched a show with the Future Perfect, and last year she exhibited at Design Miami, one of the art fairs that initially inspired her. “It was a dream to be able to show there—I couldn’t even believe that was happening,” she says. “I’m pretty new to design. I’ve always just considered myself a sculptor or an artist, but with the addition of light bulbs, it’s become a whole new world.”

You can learn more about Autumn Casey by visiting the studio’s website or on Instagram.

Top photo courtesy Autumn Casey

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The Dwell 24: Autumn Casey