There is something fitting about glass sculptures of the sea displayed in a room made almost entirely of glass. In the Sterner Atrium Gallery — with its two-story clear glass walls and glass roof flooding the space with natural light — Raven Skyriver's Fluid Life finds its ideal home.

Skyriver grew up on Lopez Island, in the heart of the San Juan Islands, and the marine world surrounding him never left his imagination or his hands. He began working in glass at sixteen, and the sea has shaped nearly everything he has made since. His sculptures — fish, whales, squid, seashells, and other inhabitants of the deep — are formed from molten glass, shaped in the moment of transformation when material is still moving and alive. As Skyriver describes it, his goal is to capture not just the appearance of aquatic life but its essence: the effortless glide, the shimmer, the weightless suspension of a creature in water.

Glass is the perfect material for this pursuit. It holds light the way water does — bending it, softening it, letting it pass through. In the Atrium's natural daylight, Skyriver's sculptures will shift and glow as the hours pass, never looking quite the same twice.

His training is as distinguished as his vision. Mentored first by Lark Dalton in traditional Venetian technique, Skyriver went on to study at Pilchuck Glass School and work alongside legendary glass artist Lino Tagliapietra. From 2003 to 2007 he worked with master sculptor William Morris. He has since established his own studio and taught and exhibited across Japan, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, and beyond.

Fluid Life is an invitation to slow down, look closely, and reconnect with the fragile, luminous world beneath the surface.