Pac- Man Ghosts
4 works
Dylan Martinez Water Bag E43 For Sale
Dylan Martinez
Water Bag E43, 2024
Hand-blown glass sculpture
13 x 6.25 x 4.5 in
About this work
Dylan Martinez is a contemporary glass artist known for his hyperrealistic sculptures that challenge the boundary between illusion and reality. Best recognized for his glass water bag series, Martinez uses advanced glassblowing and hot sculpting techniques to create works that appear to be plastic bags filled with liquid. Every bubble, wrinkle, and fold is meticulously crafted, producing sculptures that compel viewers to question whether they are seeing solid glass or water trapped in plastic. His practice draws from the tradition of trompe l’oeil, and his own colorblindness has heightened his sensitivity to perception and visual deception.Beyond the water bags, Martinez explores other playful and experimental forms, such as water balloons, colored variants, and glass renditions of pop-culture figures like Pac-Man ghosts. These works continue his exploration of light, translucency, and fluidity, while also embracing humor and nostalgia. Whether evoking everyday disposable objects or iconic characters, Martinez elevates the ordinary into captivating sculptural forms, balancing technical precision with visual wit.At the core of Martinez’s art is a meditation on impermanence, fragility, and trust in our senses. By reimagining ephemeral objects in glass—a material both fragile and enduring—he invites viewers to reflect on consumption, ecology, and the fleeting nature of perception. His studio in Bingen, Washington, has become the site of an internationally recognized practice, with works exhibited and collected across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Through illusion, craft, and concept, Dylan Martinez transforms the mundane into objects of wonder and contemplation.
Price on Application
Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2024
- Medium
- Hand-blown glass sculpture
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More series by Dylan Martinez
About the H20/sio2 Water Bags Series
Dylan Martinez makes glass sculptures of plastic bags filled with water. The bags are tied at the top, slightly misshapen from the weight of the water inside, and completely convincing. They are made entirely from hot-sculpted, sandblasted, and acid-etched glass, and they look nothing like it.
The work is built around a simple premise: glass and water share enough visual properties that, handled correctly, one can pass for the other. Martinez has spent years refining exactly how to do that. The surfaces on these pieces replicate the transparency of plastic, the stillness of water, and the way light moves through both. The series also includes Bubble Fish 15, a water bag with a skeleton fish suspended inside it. It extends the concept of the water bag beyond the container itself and introduces something that was once living into the illusion. It is among the more unusual works in his catalog.
About Dylan Martinez
Dylan Martinez is a contemporary glass artist based Washington State, USA. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Glass from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he studied broad field science with a minor in outdoor education. His path to glass began as a college elective that quickly became a lifelong pursuit.
Martinez works entirely in hot glass, hand-sculpting each piece without molds or casting. His practice centers on perception and illusion, drawing on the technique of Trompe L'oeil to create works that challenge what the eye believes to be true. He is best known for his water bag sculptures, objects that are indistinguishable from plastic bags filled with water, made entirely from molten glass shaped between 650 and 1150 degrees. The work is animated by his own experience of red-green colorblindness, which has given him a lifelong interest in how perception shapes reality.
He has trained with master glassmakers across the United States and completed a residency with Venetian glass masters in Murano, Italy. His most recent series introduces color for the first time in years, with sculptural works referencing water balloons and Pac-Man imagery that signal a move toward pop art territory.
Martinez's work is held in the Imagine Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida and the Kelime Müzesi in Ankara, Turkey, among other public and private collections. He has exhibited across the US, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, and has been featured in Interior Design Magazine, American Craft Magazine, Elle Decoration, Aesthetica, and Colossal.