“I feel at times I am capitalizing on others misery to make these pieces. What right do I have to display their names, track their murders? I do not know the answer but my interactions with the public in front of City Hall often results in meaningful conversations and kind words for the remembrance of lives lost and calling attention to the awfully high numbers of homicides in New Orleans.”

−Mitchell Gaudet

In 2015 Mitchell Gaudet created his first murder rate piece. The number of homicides that year was 164. After adding additional glass castings to represent the 164 victims, he decided to exhibit the piece in front of New Orleans City Hall for one day. One hundred and sixty four was just a number, but the visual of one hundred and sixty four cast glass crying baby heads made it possible for Gaudet to see the awful number of deaths in his New Orleans. Gaudet’s years in front of City Hall talking to the public has truly influenced his work.

The Murder Rate Collection is about the viewer’s experiences with the horror and fear of crime, stories of murdered family or friends and their anger and solutions.

Mitchell Gaudet received his B.F.A. from Louisiana State University and a M.F.A. from Tulane University. In 1991 he founded “Studio Inferno,” a glass studio and artist space located in the Bywater Neighborhood of New Orleans. In early 2020, the studio was relocated to Waveland, Mississippi.

Mitchell Gaudet has been sculpting glass for over thirty five years. He casts hot glass into hand formed sand molds which allows him to easily compose and abstract his ideas. Gaudet is influenced by the patina and pace of the south and in particular New Orleans. His uncontrollable passion to collect historical objects of desire has often led him to create his own.

Gaudet has exhibited his works nationally and internationally and has received both a Pollock-Krasner Grant and the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. He has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, WA; The Glass Furnace, Turkey; Toyama Institute of Glass Art, Japan, Bild-Werk Frauenau, Germany and the Crafts in Glass and Ceramics School, Denmark.

Gaudet is currently living on luck, with his artist wife Larkin in Carriere, Mississippi.