Rick Beck works in cast glass; his large-scale work ranges in scale from 15 inches to around 7 feet tall. His medium--glass--makes the scale of Beck's pieces very impressive. He is probably best-known for his oversized cast glass sculptures of common hardware: nuts, bolts, screws, measuring spoons, saws, eating utensils, eye hooks, wing nuts and more. His pieces take on a sort of irony in that they are images of craftsmen's tools, crafted with a traditionally known craftsmen's material, glass. In theory, Beck's motives make sense, but his sculpture, featured in this article, is titled "Self-Portrait." What does this self-portrait say about Rick Beck? It is an image of compression, of inward movement, of restraint. The containment is of his own creation, but it's hard to tell if this is a constant condition or just a temporary mood. If nothing else, this self-portrait expresses something familiar (physically, emotionally or psychologically) to the artist. Beck's focus on formal and mechanical concerns persists, but the metaphor for the human condition has grown much stronger. His self-proclaimed self-portrait is certainly abstract and almost conceptual, but in some ways it might be more realistic, or telling, than any image from the mirror.