Photos by Laura Moss Otto Rigan leans against one of his monolithic glass and stone sculptures, Untitled Reconstruction, 84" x 30" x 12", limestone and laminated plate glass.

Otto Rigan combines glass and stone in stunning architectural sculptures

I feel I’m completely of my time, yet I do not see my work fitting any trend,” says Arizona sculptor Otto Rigan. “Looking at his abstract sculptures—their heightened sense of texture and alluring juxtaposition of stonework and glass—one cannot help but agree.

Rigan, who grew up in California and now lives in the mining town of Bisbee, always knew his future lay in the art world. During high school, he took art classes every Saturday at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Eventually, he studied art both there and at California State University Stanislaus; but a full scholarship from the Italian Consulate to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, seduced him away from finishing his degree. “In Italy, I worked with a mentor in his studio, until he thought I was done,” Rigan comments.

He traveled throughout Europe and lived in London before returning to the United States to pursue a career as a painter. But a secondary interest from his undergraduate days slowly resurfaced. “I always had an appreciation for architecture,” Rigan explains. “I liked the solidity and timelessness of it.”

Pyramidal forms define this detail of a work in progress, which eventually will be leafed in white gold.

To make a living, he began writing books about glass art and architecture. An artistic vision changed his professional direction, drawing him back to painting and, ultimately, to sculpting. “I was imagining columns held together with seams of light,” he recalls. A knowledge of glass also began to exert its influence. “I knew glass could carry as much weight as stone,” he relates. 

Today, Rigan sculpts abstract shapes infused with glass elements that function as light conduits. From free-standing pieces to wall installations, their rough-hewn textures and glittering inserts disclose an intimate knowledge of both stone and glass. “When I work with stone,” he notes, “I don’t want to eliminate its stone-ness. I try to maintain a relationship with the organic.” The glass surfaces, creating their own artistic element by allowing light to diffuse, function as illuminated striations and glyphs upon the stonework. 

Rigan’s inventive, architecturally informed works grace residences and a number of corporate, educational and public sites. Among accolades, in 1994 he was honored by the city of Phoenix with the Mayor’s Award for Public Art, and by the Scottsdale Cultural Council, which presented him with the Chairman’s Award: Artist of the Year, also in 1994.

Sheets of laminated glass are prepared for inlay in the sculpture pictured at right.

Scottsdale residents Terry and Len Campagna have 10 of the artist’s sculptures displayed both inside and outside their home. “Otto really captures the beauty of the desert,” observes Len. “These are timeless pieces.”

Rigan says his sculptures are inextricably tied to the desert. “I was born in the Mojave,” this Master of the Southwest offers. “The light and the exposed landscape are extremely important to me. It’s how I identify myself.”

Ultimately, Rigan defines his work as “the summary of the landscape I see around me.” The singularity of his sculptural creations constitutes their artistic strength: They are, indeed, a genre unto themselves.

Inset glass squares impart the look of windows in this detail of Untitled Reconstruction.

An unfinished, untitled limestone sculpture, 72" x 12" x 12", commissioned for indoor use by a client in Virginia, awaits completion in Otto Rigan’s studio.

In the sculptor’s model room, wooden maquettes of bowls and a human silhouette are elements of a scale model of Sonoran Soliloquy, an installation from the late 1990s that Otto Rigan is reproducing for a shopping plaza in Scottsdale.