Talking Out Your Glass podcast
As editor of Glass Art magazine from 1987 to March 2019, Shawn Waggoner has interviewed and written about multitudes of the world’s greatest artists working glass in the furnace, torch, and on the table. Rated in iTunes News and Noteworthy in 2018, Talking Out Your Glass continues to evolve, including interviews with the nation’s finest borosilicate artists making both pipes and sculpture on the torch. Other current topics include how to work glass using sustainable practices and how artists address the topics of our times such as climate change, the political chasm, and life in the age of technology.
info_outline
Oceans of Emotion: Kait Rhoads’ Glass Sculpture
12/12/2024
Oceans of Emotion: Kait Rhoads’ Glass Sculpture
Childhood experiences of life on a sailboat in the Bahamas and Caribbean left a profound mark on Kait Rhoads. The experience of growing up on the water has provided great inspiration for her artwork. The artist’s Sea Stones series hints at its watery origins. Each sculpture is a small world in itself, an intimate object you can hold in your hand. A talisman, the work looks almost molecular, like plankton carapaces as observed under a microscope. Rhoads states: “My work is inspired by nature and informed by memory. And, three oceans—the Caribbean, the Indian and the Pacific – delineate the imaginative boundaries of my practice. I grew up on the water of the Caribbean in a ship with my family where my deep affinity for biological systems began. I lived surrounded by nature; the liquid light and aquatic life imprinted upon my senses. The sculptures I create emanate from my early experiences within and curiosity about the natural world. While exploring the waters around Bali, I experienced the extraordinary biodiversity and extensive architecture of coral colonies there. This has been a deep influence on my sculptural forms and process of making.” Best-known for her innovative use of Venetian techniques such as murrine and filigrana, she applies these decorative processes to sculptural forms as well as to vessels. She was influenced early on by Lino Tagliapietra’s work with cane and Richard Marquis’ use of murrine as a structural material. Rhoads’ unique process involves weaving pieces of blown and cut glass tubes with copper wire to create flexible looking “soft sculptures.” States Rhoads: “My method of construction mirrors how my life has formed me, with individual elements woven together to create a strong whole. I consider the individual units, conical hexagonal forms known as hollow murrine, as architectural elements that fit together to create a fluid or floating object. The concept of the work develops slowly, and the production of a complicated piece can take months to years to complete.” Rhoads is also well known for her public art installations including Bloom, commissioned in 2018 for the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s two-story tall window space. In 2022, Bloom was chosen to be permanently installed inside of the biology department at Highline College, Des Moines, Washington. She also created Salish Nettles, her largest work to date, for the Pacific Seas Aquarium, Tacoma, Washington, and Proto Kelp, which was on view through October of 2024 at Method Gallery, Seattle, Washington. In 2025, the artist will apply for residencies and funding to expand the project sustainably. In all of these public projects Rhoads hopes to inspire in the viewer empathy, curiosity and interest in ocean ecology. Receiving her BFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, Rhoads earned her MFA in glass from Alfred University, New York in 2001. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doug and Dale Anderson Scholarship, The Anne Gould Hauberg Award, and a Fulbright Scholarship for the study of sculpture in Venice, Italy. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Her work can be found in many collections, including the Seattle Art Museum; the Toyama Institute of Glass in Toyama, Japan; the Glasmuseum in Ebeltoft, Denmark; Shanghai Museum of Glass, China; and The Corning Museum of Glass. She maintains a studio in Seattle, Washington. “The cold, deep green waters of Puget Sound are a more recent source of inspiration in my work. Since moving to the Northwest over two decades ago, my fascination extended from coral colonies to kelp forests. Seaweed’s pliable forms continually inspire me—they stretch up from the depths, undulate in the shallows, and lie on tidal surfaces. Aquatic life infuses my sculptures with animated forms, sparkling surfaces and faceted exoskeletons.” In 2025, Rhoads will continue to work on a community generated art project called r (2021-2025), for which she is the lead artist. She shepards stained glass windows made by the public that are donated to Tacoma libraries. She will also participate in group shows including Habatat’s Glass Coast show at Ringling School of the Arts in Sarasota, Florida, and Women Who Make Glass at the Vashon Center for the Arts, Vashon, Washington, in March 2025. Of her work Rhoads states: “I desire my work to be emotionally affective—that it evoke for audiences a similar sense of wonder in our blue planet that continues to inspire me. And even, perhaps, to instill a desire to conserve our fragile aquatic ecosystems.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/34406290
info_outline
Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture
12/05/2024
Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture
Weston Lambert transforms semi-precious stones and found rocks into profoundly beautiful, time-defying glass sculptures. By incorporating an original process for laminating the two materials and by cold-working the surfaces of the glass and rock, the artist is able to bring his skill to bear on these objects that seamlessly transform from stone to glass and back again. Lambert’s work is about dualities and the balancing of contrasting forces. He’s looking for the place where transparency/opacity, and ephemeral/eternal coexist, each taking part in creating equilibrium. This dynamic relationship turns fragility into an asset and rigidity into liability. Lambert states: “In the studio, I accelerate the slow violence of geological processes. My materials are engaged in a condensed passage of time—modified by my brief tenure, on a timeline charted by millennia, not decades. The heat of the kiln allows molten glass to nestle into stone and days of grinding/polishing simulate eons of erosion. In my pursuit of permanence, I create invulnerable, seamless objects that have been broken and mended outside of geological time.” A sculptor based in Tacoma, Washington, Lambert’s primary media are glass, metal and stone. In 2007, he earned a BFA (Maxima Cum Laude), from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and in 2012, his MFA from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2010 and again in 2020, the artist was awarded a full-tuition scholarship at Andersen Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Career Opportunity Grant, one of two such grants awarded nationally per year. Lambert’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including SOFA Chicago, The Toyama International Glass Exhibit, and the Cheongju Craft Biennale in South Korea. As a public artist, Lambert has completed prominent commissions including Untitled, at Western State Hospital, Lakewood, Washington, 2023 and Currents, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington, 2020. His works have been included in such publications as Sculpture Magazine and Glass Quarterly Magazine. In 2024, Lambert’s work was exhibited at Smith and Vallee Gallery, Edison, Washington, and Taoxichuan Glass Studio Gallery, group exhibition, Jingdezhen, China, where he also lectured and demoed. The artist lectured/demoed at Chico State University, California, and on November 23 taught an online class, Making it on Social Media: Aligning Creativity, Integrity, and Studio Success. He has over 350K followers on Instagram. In March 2025, Lambert will participate in a group exhibition at Visu Contemporary, Miami Beach, Florida, and film a class on his process of combining glass and stone at Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, Oregon, available in late Spring. Of his artwork, Lambert explains: “In the context of human lives, rock embodies strength, consistency, and timelessness. There’s safety in its solidity, but the natural world is in constant flux. Granite and sand share each other’s future—forever shattered and recast. Glass is delicate, but when combined with the durability of stone, the pairing embodies harmony.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/34292060
info_outline
Jeremy Sinkus’ Geologicalized Glass
11/15/2024
Jeremy Sinkus’ Geologicalized Glass
Current work by Jeremy Sinkus includes his Contemporary Art Nodules, inspired by collecting and focusing on the top 10 attributes that the artist and viewers found intriguing about glass objects. Simultaneously ancient and from the future, his Nodules combine texture and form with transparent windows that allow the viewer to explore unknown inner worlds. A former mineral collector and digger, Sinkus put down his chisel and picked up a torch when he realized his fondness for minerals and natural history was all encompassed in glass. Sinkus says: “Glass is geological. The material bit me hard in the late ‘90s and opened a future of infinite expression for my fascinations of the subterranean world. I constantly dream about finding objects beneath the surface of either the sea or the earth – the feeling of finding something exceptional and spirit engaging. Maybe that is what spending all this time in the studio is? Digging, searching, revealing important concepts from deep inside myself. Intentional forms should be both something to recognize and something to ponder or be awakened by.” Sinkus now works out of a 2400-square-foot studio in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It is entirely powered by a waterfall on the nearby Deerfield River and functions as a green energy studio. He uses flameworking, metal fuming/deposition, cold working (lapidary), welding, woodworking, laminating and casting techniques to manipulate the glass daily. “Minerals have always captivated me with their color, clarity, and infinite geometric permutations. Of all the images, objects and art I have seen, still it is these natural crystalline forms that strike me. They express something enormous that is otherwise almost impossible to voice. Akin to the felt language underlying a resonant piece of art, minerals speak precisely of their making. They require no interpretation. I am fascinated by the sheer fact of their existence and circumstantial nature of their variety. Human participation was absent but nonetheless, I wanted to be part of it.” The opportunity to experiment with hot glass came in 1998 at a studio in central Massachusetts. The roaring furnaces, smell of burning bees wax and graceful movements impacted Sinkus. He admired the team aspect of glass blowing but needed a more independent approach to satisfy his ambition. In 1998, he began flameworking borosilicate glass as an obtainable approach to working glass on his own. He studied with Milon Townsend, Sally Prasch and Emilio Santini as he developed a body of work inspired by scuba diving, ocean conservation and ocean arts and evolved into a professional working artist. In 2015, Sinkus began his journey in cast glass, studying with Daniel Clayman. This allowed him to apply the techniques necessary to make more authentic and precise mineral designs and increase the scale of his designs. The use of familiar tools and techniques for working stone from his gem cutting years connected him to glass sculpting. Sinkus says: “These tools allow me to venture into the deep process and experience of what made the mineral world so appealing to me creatively. Cast glass has taught me patience and channels a version of a 100,000,000 year geological process. This body of work gives me human participation in a form that would otherwise only be a geological event. My geological designs have reconnected me to the gem and mineral world. Though realistic, they are seen as art. In the art world they are seen as contemporary.” In 2025, Sinkus will have an exhibit of his recent works at the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and launch his new designs at a couple of U.S. galleries. He’s also designing a class that combines casting, flameworking, coldworking, surfacing and adhesives in the creation of glass art sculpture.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/33936617
info_outline
The Artistry and Craftsmanship of Dan Alexander
11/01/2024
The Artistry and Craftsmanship of Dan Alexander
From his Micromorphisms to his Opticals and Pinwheels, Dan Alexander explores the mesmerizing world of optical illusions, where intricate designs and mind-bending patterns come to life in stunning glass artistry. From captivating sculptures to breathtaking installations, each piece in this collection is a testament to his artistry and craftsmanship. Much of Alexander’s inspiration comes from photographs he has taken or his travels. Looking at one micro-aspect of an object, he envisions how that small segment could be used in repetition to create an overall pattern. An example would be looking at one single coral in the ocean and repeating its colors and shape over and over again to make a large glass tile. By rolling that glass tile up hot around a glass bubble or collar, he makes a large vessel. The artist uses the blown glass process to create a three-dimensional canvas on which his murrine and patterns can be displayed. Says Alexander: “The work I am currently exploring is inspired by nature, textiles, travel, and architecture – more specifically patterns therein. Being an artist and world traveler, I look at the world around me and try to determine how it could be translated to glass.” Having grown up in a small farming town in northeast Ohio, Alexander has always been interested in art, history, nature, and creating. Upon seeing glass being made for the first time at Hale Farm and Village, Bath, Ohio, he knew this was a trade he had to master. He received his BFA in glass from Kent State University, where he was able to explore glass as an artistic medium while being introduced to working with other materials, history, color theory, and composition. Following graduation, Alexander studied with some of the top glass artists in the field today and worked in Murano, Italy, with Maestro Davide Salvadore creating large scale blown glass art. Later, he worked for the Corning Museum of Glass as lead gaffer, where he spent six years traveling the world and educating the public about the science and history of glass art. Eventually Alexander decided to take on a new role as the studio director of Third Degree glass factory, St. Louis, Missouri, producing higher volume work, site specific installations, and overseeing studio operations and glass production. In 2016, Alexander began to branch out and create a name for himself as an independent artist. In recent years he was awarded an emerging artist residency at Duncan McClellan’s Gallery in St. Petersburg Florida, the AACG professional artist residency at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Empire of Glass exhibition/residency in Vienna, Austria. He was nominated for the Glass Art Society’s Saxe Emerging Artist Award and received an international exhibiting artist award from the Effect, Dream, Transform exhibition in Uskudar, Turkiye. Alexander is currently building a private studio and 501C3 nonprofit in St. Petersburg, Florida, called Art, Education, Gathering Inc. or AEG. Its tagline is: From Glass to Growth – Building Communities Together. AEG will offer community outreach, using glass as a form of STEM education, residencies, mentorships, classes and an emergency program for artists affected by disaster. Says Alexander: “Education is an extremely important aspect. If the public wasn’t interested in art, many mediums would suffer. The more knowledge we can share with the public, the more sales, donations, and funding will be put into the arts.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/33715647
info_outline
Maria Sheets: Stained Glass, Conservation and Vitreonics
10/18/2024
Maria Sheets: Stained Glass, Conservation and Vitreonics
In her summer 2024 exhibition Trial By Fire at Core Art Space, Lakewood, Colorado, Maria Sheets exhibited a series of colorful, sculpturally dense, illuminated glass panels of portraits and landscapes created in a unique process that combines the mediums of traditional stained glass grisaille/enameling with fused glass “painting” known as Vitreonics. The technique was documented in Justin Monroe’s award-winning documentary Holy Frit. The movie traces artist/designer Tim Carey’s journey through making the world’s largest stained and fused glass window with the help of Italian glass maestro Narcissus Quagliata. Says Sheets: “Our family experienced a major loss in late 2023 that inspired a radical shift in what I was producing. In an attempt to address this swing of emotional intensity, I found I desperately needed to break some sh#t. Inspired by the project created in the new film Holy Frit, I began to learn Vitreonics. The process, particularly the intense smashing, layering, and heating of glass, gave me the change I needed. Vitreonics brought balance to my creative world and reminded me that though I can and do use my skills to make art that is highly technical, I can also relax into flexibility and levity.” With a conservation and glass studio located in Evergreen, Colorado, Sheets is a senior conservator of Foothills Art Conservation and a master glass designer, painter and fabricator. She was Chief Conservator of a fire recovery project with the Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas from 2005-2018. A partial list of additional clients includes the Ross Perot Collection, George Bush Family, Gerald Ford, Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Samurai Collection. She served as President of the Conservators Private Practice Group of the American Institute for Conservation and holds a Professional Associates status. Signed commissioned works in architectural glass include large-scale projects presently housed in museums, universities, houses of worship, businesses and private residences internationally. In 2021, Sheets designed and painted the Legacy Window for Tulsa’s Vernon AME in Greenwood, illustrating 120 years of the church’s history and survival from the Tulsa Race Massacre. Her own work was included in recent juried exhibitions such as American Glass Guild NOW 2016 (juror, contemporary artist Judith Schaechter), Texas National 2018 (juror Jed Perl, international art critic), and Materials Hard and Soft International Craft Exhibition 2019 (2nd place of 1100 entries). She is a resident artist for Valkarie Gallery in Lakewood, Colorado, where her work will be exhibited in a solo exhibition from November 13 through December 8, 2024. In 2022, Martin Faith, Scottish Stained Glass, Centennial, Colorado, approached Sheets with a project that involved reproducing an artist’s pieces made in the 1970s onto glass. Sheets explains: “He showed them to me, and I gasped, recognizing the work as Judy Chicago’s. I had read her early biographies while I was in college in the ‘90s. My feminist art teacher taught us about her work and the famous piece The Dinner Party, which congress was crucifying along with a number of artists trying to get funding through the National Endowment for the Arts. I even wrote her fan mail.” Sheets and Chicago met and spent several years working collaboratively in Chicago’s Belen, New Mexico studio. There they created complex airbrushed/masked pieces onto glass. These took five months of research and development as the technique/design would be some of the most unforgiving yet enlightening of Sheet’s life. Last year Chicago had a blockbuster show of the work at New Museum in New York accompanied by a four-page spread in the New York Times as well as an exhibition at Serpentine in London. Occupying a rare niche in the art world, Sheets was inspired by her great-uncle, a Russian Orthodox priest and iconographer to apply old-world art materials on stained glass to create both traditional religious imagery or modern portraits and scenes rife with politics. Her work Motherboard Madonna was recently exhibited in AI Love You at Niza Knoll Gallery, Denver, Colorado. Says Sheets: “The gallery got blackballed, but the whole point of show was to discuss the ethical concerns and use of AI as a tool. One could say creativity was used in the creation of this technology and that “paint” is not the only medium. Adapt or die…”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/33504722
info_outline
Glassworks Ajeto and Ricardo Hoineff: IGS 2024
09/26/2024
Glassworks Ajeto and Ricardo Hoineff: IGS 2024
In 2021, the town of Nový Bor became the main organizer of the International Glass Symposium (IGS), and once again this small glassmaking town in the north of Bohemia will turn into a true world glassmaking metropolis for a few days. Each of the previous symposia was unique, and this year’s jubilee will be no different. Place and material are the unchanging basis of the tradition, but glassmaking and art are a living, leading and original phenomenon reflecting the times. This year’s IGS will take place on a much larger scale than previous years. The number of organizers and participants increased, and IGS strengthened its global prestige. Despite all the changes that glassmaking has gone through and that have also affected IGS, Nový Bor region remains an exceptional area with its range of glass processing technologies, from machine production, off-hand blown glass at glassworks to an extremely wide range of refining techniques. The beginning of the IGS dates back to 1982 when Crystalex in Nový Bor managed something almost impossible. The idea of an international meeting of glassmakers in totalitarian Czechoslovakia became reality. Crystalex invited artists and designers from all over the world to its workshops. Nearly 50 artists from 13 countries came to realize their artistic ideas with the help of the local glassmakers. More than 300 exhibits were created. Thirty-nine years later, the program structure and the basic idea of the symposium still follow the tradition founded by Crystalex. Many artists also return to Nový Bor regularly. However, the symposium has changed with the time as well. The visit of artists from the “West” is no longer considered exotic and thanks to IGS it’s possible to show the world that Czech glassmakers have not lost any of their famous craftsmanship. IGS has become one of the most important international events in the art glass field and during its existence it has hosted about 600 artists from all over the world. To make the symposium attractive for the public, not only glass artists are invited to participate, but designers, painters, sculptors, architects, personalities from among fashion and jewelry designers, street art and pop culture, which turns every IGS into a four-day art experience marathon. The world is being introduced to Nový Bor, Liberec Region and the Czech Republic as a significant glass destination. The event has an enormous significance for the local glass region, for promotion of Czech glass and Czech glassmaking craft in the world. It contributes to preserving intangible cultural inheritance, and finally, it serves an important function for collectors. The 15th edition of the International Glass Symposium (IGS) will take place from October 3 to 6, 2024 in Nový Bor in North Bohemia and its surrounding area. Preparations have been underway since spring to ensure the participation of more than 40 selected artists or creative pairs from 15 countries around the world. They will create their works of art in collaboration with top glass craftsmen of various professions, whether they are master glass blowers, grinders, engravers, or glass painters, but also experts in the field of slumped or melt glass and other techniques. Several glass companies and specialized workshops and operations will be available to them, including Ajeto. Petr Novotný (1952-2024) enters the Hall of Fame of the International Glass Symposium next week, In celebration of IGS 2024, ToYG speaks with David Ševčík, the director of Glassworks Ajeto as well as Ricardo Hoineff, who moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1991. In 2010 at the age of 41, Hoineff decided to take a two-week glass course that turned into three years of creation and production of art glass at the Higher Vocational School of Glassmaking Nový Bor. He is still kiln forming art glass in Slunečná, North Bohemia.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/33207567
info_outline
Gene Koss: From Farm to Flame
09/18/2024
Gene Koss: From Farm to Flame
Gene Koss uses glass as a medium of pure sculptural expression resulting in monumental sculptures of cast glass, steel and light. He developed innovative techniques to transform his memories of the mechanized Wisconsin farm of his youth into foundry-based glass sculptures. He combines glass and steel found objects to create small-scale sculptures that often also serve as studies for his larger-scale works. Opening on September 20, 2024 and running through February 9, 2025, The Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass (BMM), Neenah, Wisconsin, presents a major solo exhibition of Koss’ work: From Farm to Flame. Says Casey Eichhorn, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at BMM: “Gene Koss’ career in glass has been one informed by experience, and driven by creative experimentation. Alongside two of his sketchbooks, Farm to Flame showcases the tangible results of these experiments in the form of 14 sculptures of glass, steel and wood – each highlighting a specific point in time in the artist’s illustrious career.” After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls in 1974, Koss then earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia. In 1976, he moved to New Orleans to develop a new glass facility and program for Tulane University, and subsequently became head of the department. “Gene’s career at Tulane University helped shape the Newcomb Art Department, and he is a pivotal figure in the teaching and creation of glass art in the South,” said Stephanie Porras, chair of the Newcomb Art Department. Koss is the recipient of several awards including the National Endowment for the Arts, The New Orleans Community Arts Board and Pace-Willson Art Foundation grants. His work has been exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans; the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana; the Sculpture Center in New York City; as well as the International Biennale for Contemporary Art in Florence, Italy. It has been published in International Glass Art, Contemporary Glass-Color, Light & Form and Glass Art from Urban Glass publications. Koss is represented by in New Orleans, LA. His work is in many prominent collections including the Pan American Life Collection in New Orleans and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. The Arnoldsche Art Publishers of Germany released a 2019 retrospective monograph of his work, Gene Koss Sculpture. Creating Koss’ majestic works in glass and steel requires demanding techniques to realize their monumental scale. These massive volumes of glass are married with elaborately engineered steel elements. The artist casts molten glass directly from the hot furnace, working with teams of highly-skilled assistants and rigging elaborate systems for transporting his finished abstract works for display in museums, galleries and public spaces. Working with serial cast glass parts to enlarge scale and combining these elements with iron and neon, he has raised glass sculpture to the realm of public art. Koss’ work has had a profound impact on American artists working in both steel and glass media.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/33110847
info_outline
Ryan Thompson: From Blown Away 4 to Huron Street Studio
09/06/2024
Ryan Thompson: From Blown Away 4 to Huron Street Studio
Those who watched to completion the hit Netflix competition series Blown Away 4, will no doubt remember Ryan Thompson’s final gallery installation, Where You Are is Where You Need to Be. In all black glass, he created large vessel forms that served as sentinels to the recording of time. A blown glass pendulum in the center of the room recorded each moment in a footed reliquary of white sand below it. Its existential message spoke to the viewer silently. Permanently. Thompson states: “This installation was created to satisfy a need to slow down, contemplate, and analyze my artistic path and my creative process. The unnatural pace at which Blown Away required its competitors to conceptualize and create caused a mental fatigue unlike anything I had ever felt. As difficult as this experience was, my journey as an artist has never been a straight line, and whether an experience has been positive or negative in the moment, in the end, it was exactly what it was supposed to be. Where You Are is Where You Need to Be is a space created to meditate and reflect on my trajectory both as a person and as an artist.” Hailing from Sandusky, Ohio, near the shores of Lake Erie, Thompson and his sister Leah grew up with a love of the outdoors, sports, and all things creative. These interests were endlessly nurtured by their parents Jim and Kathy Thompson. Ryan’s passion for music began in the 5th grade when a group of friends with a band needed a drummer. His love for music and percussion remains today. After completing high school, Thompson attended Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Bowling Green, Ohio, to study Visual Communication Technology, a degree program he found to be lacking in creative freedom and excitement. In his third year, he enrolled in an Intro to Glass Blowing course on the recommendation of a friend, and the trajectory of his life was altered forever. For the next 3 years, Thompson poured every ounce of his energy into learning to control his molten material. The example of excellence in this craft demonstrated by his peers and instructors such as Scott Darlington set the bar of achievement high. He focused on fundamental skills in the form of vessel and goblet making, utilizing the Venetian processes and techniques he found most exciting and inspirational. After graduation, Thompson began working at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion as a studio artist and workshop instructor, as well as a production glassblower at many local glass shops in the birthplace of the Studio Glass Art movement. During his time in Toledo, the artist was fortunate to work with many world-renowned glass artists, honing his skills and expanding his network of colleagues in this community-orientated profession. In 2018, Thompson accepted a production glassblowing position at Greenfield Village (The Henry Ford Museum) in Dearborn, Michigan. The job allowed Ryan to continue to broaden his skill set and expand on his experience as a production glassmaker. In 2021, he was promoted to shop lead and began coordinating the team’s production efforts, designing new product and maintaining the equipment that makes glass blowing possible. After participating in Blown Away 4, on May 1, Thompson relocated back to Toledo, Ohio, and became the new owner and operator of Gathered Glass, a public glass studio that offers hand-made glass, glassblowing workshops, and public events in the heart of The Glass City. This opportunity is something he has dreamt about for the last decade and is hard at work making the business his own. Thompson’s partner, Kayla Kirk of , is in the process of building a pottery studio on the second floor that will offer similar programming as well as hand crafted pottery for the home. The studio will be renamed Huron Street Studio and will celebrate its Grand Opening at 23 N. Huron St. in downtown Toledo, September 14, 2024. Thompson will also participate in an Artist Residency at the Museum of Glass Tacoma from October 9 – 13, 2024.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/32936487
info_outline
Peter Layton and the Legacy of London Glassblowing
08/22/2024
Peter Layton and the Legacy of London Glassblowing
Artist, pioneer, and mentor, Peter Layton is one of the founding fathers of British Studio Glass. He discovered the art form while teaching ceramics in the US in the mid-1960s and has played a major part in elevating glass from an industrial medium to a highly collectable art form. Most importantly, he gave it a home in the UK. This month, London Glassblowing presents Glass Heaven, an exhibition uniting two exceptional glass artists: Layton and Tim Rawlinson. The show opened August 2 and will run through September 1, 2024. Representing the next generation of glass talent, Rawlinson combines innovative approach and vibrant compositions to offer a fresh perspective, challenging conventional boundaries and resonating with today’s artistic landscape. Layton, a veteran in the glass world, has captivated audiences for decades with his bold, expressive works. His 50-year journey from the studio’s beginnings on the Thames to international acclaim highlights his role in elevating glass art. Born in Prague in 1937, Layton is one of Europe’s pre-eminent glass designers. He has directly influenced several of his country’s leading glassmakers and inspired many more. Arriving in England in 1939, there he began his education. While at grammar school, he met another boy who had also won the attention of his art teacher – his name was David Hockney. Layton attended Bradford Art College, then went to London’s Central School of Art and Design, to specialize in ceramics, where he was taught by several of the most respected potters of the time. On graduating, Layton was offered a teaching job in Iowa University’s Ceramics Department. Once in the US, in 1966, he participated in one of the first experimental glass workshops with Harvey Littleton and was bewitched by the immediacy and spontaneity of hot glass. He went on to expand his connections and friendships on this side of the pond to include participating in a Los Angeles exhibition with Marvin Lipofsky, a San Francisco show with pop artist Mel Ramos, and an exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago with Viola Frey. Back in Britain, in 1969 Layton helped Sam Herman build the first furnace at the Glasshouse in Covent Garden, and he subsequently established his own small glass studio at Morar in the Highlands of Scotland, a Glass Department at Hornsey College of Art (Middlesex University) and, in 1976, the London Glassblowing Workshop in an old towage works on the Thames at Rotherhithe. In 2009 Layton’s London Glassblowing Studio and Gallery moved to much larger premises in Bermondsey. Since its opening, London Glassblowing has nurtured and produced some of the world’s leading glass artists, including (most recently) Elliot Walker of Netflix Blown Away fame. Layton’s colorful and painterly works of glass art can be found in numerous public and private collections, both at home and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford for his contribution to arts and crafts in Britain. Layton is also the founder of the Contemporary Glass Society, which is Britain’s foremost organization supporting and championing the work of glass artists, both established and new. A vigorous proponent of glassblowing as an art form, Layton has authored several books, become an Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, an Honorary life member of the Contemporary Glass Society as well as been given the Freedom of the City of London. Layton has always taken inspiration from his environment, natural or manmade: a stone wall on a snowy day, the London skyline, or works by great painters. From a mere detail, a flash of a Klimt orange or a slick of oil on the Thames, he creates painterly works with a masterly use of color. The artist is inspired by whatever is around him. For example, during the winter of 2009, the heavy snow turned his long commute by train into an intriguing black and white world full of movement and texture, shaping his recent Glacier series. He has also created a number of conceptual pieces that reflect his specific concerns with issues such as ecology, religion and racial conflict. Layton says: “A fellow artist recently described a piece that I had made for her by saying, ‘…it’s as though it holds all my travels in light.’ Lovely compliments like that spur me on. You never, ever create the perfect piece of glass and there are always new ideas, techniques and challenges to master. Glass is such an underrated medium – there is a fluidity and uncertainty about it that I choose to embrace rather than overcome. Every piece is an adventure.” From October 8 – 13, 2024, PAD London returns to the iconic Berkeley Square in Mayfair, where London Glassblowing will be showcasing an extraordinary selection of work from their talented makers alongside designers and galleries from over 20 countries worldwide. To coincide with PAD and Le Verre, London Glassblowing is offering a series of exclusive events, providing a unique opportunity to explore and learn more about the captivating medium of glass. For more information visit
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/32696377
info_outline
Glass Bead Artist, Kristina Logan: The Dot Queen
07/30/2024
Glass Bead Artist, Kristina Logan: The Dot Queen
Kristina Logan makes unique and complex beads in intricate patterns whose sometimes knobby forms recall the remarkable eye beads made in ancient China. Yet Logan’s style is purely contemporary, reflected in work that stands out for its originality, sophistication, and innovation. She is not only interested in beads as body adornment but also as decorative elements for boxes, candlesticks, goblets and teapots. Logan states: “Beads are part of my lifelong fascination with art and ornamentation. Glass beads form a historical thread, connecting people and cultures throughout our history.” In 2002, Logan was one of only four artists selected for exhibition in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery Invitational Four Discoveries in Craft. “Logan’s beads exist in their own right as art… ,” writes Kenneth Trapp, Curator-in-Charge at the Renwick Gallery. Articles about Logan’s work have appeared in numerous publications including ORNAMENT magazine, GLASS magazine, Beadwork magazine, Bead & Button magazine, Lapidary Journal, and La Revue de la Céramique et du Verre. Her work has been collected by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Musée du Verre de Sars-Poteries, France. The artist served as president of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers from 1996 to 1998. Logan’s work and desire to educate has been an inspiration for many glass beadmakers throughout the world. She travels extensively throughout the United States and Europe teaching workshops and lecturing on contemporary glass beads and jewelry at places such as The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, UrbanGlass, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Craft, Carlisle School of Glass Art, Millville, New Jersey, Musée-Atelier du Verre à Sars-Poteries in France, and Centro Studio Vetro and Abate Zanetti in Venice, Italy. The Corning Museum of Glass produced a DVD video in 2009 of Logan’s flamework beadmaking as part of their Master Class Series. An excerpt and full version of the video is available on YouTube and on Logan’s website. Having taught at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass earlier this year, Logan is now focusing on several projects that have been incubating over the years, including casting small vessels and encrusting them with beads and metal – some that stand alone individually and also as a group of 12 vessels that represent a personal calendar or living reliquary. She also continues working on a new collection of beads centric necklaces. And most importantly, Logan is documenting more of her work on YouTube. She says: “I would like to document with videos more of what I do. I am not ready to teach online or offer specific tutorials, but I would like to use YouTube as a way to share footage from my studio. I am thinking about this as an extension of my creative process–I love being behind a camera. I love being a maker, and I have been so fortunate to learn from others over the years. I want to be part of what I see as a cycle of learning and giving back. As I age, I also think about how I would like to document what I do for my kids and future artists. “I have been fortunate enough to have made a living at what I do, and I would like to be honest about how I have done that.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/32338462
info_outline
Henry Halem: Inspiring and Educating a Generation of Glass Artists
07/16/2024
Henry Halem: Inspiring and Educating a Generation of Glass Artists
More than 50 years after Henry Halem designed a series of cast glass sculptures inspired by the Kent State shootings, he decided to bring the imagery back to life. At a time when the Vietnam War empowered social activism and fueled political debates, the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings seemed to take center stage, influencing several genres of music and art. Among these works was Halem’s glass sculptures. “The imagery was based on the shootings at Kent State and the blindness that the political system had in relationship to what young people were about in protesting the war. They were blind to the generation that was protesting. And, so, I made these blinded images that had their eyes covered,” Halem said. Today, Halem is at it again, creating another series of blinded sculptures, but this time for a different reason. He has created seven blinded sculptures in the series so far, three of which are on view at Habatat Galleries Detroit. “I revived the imagery,” Halem said, “the blind imagery, to reflect the narrative of our blindness to the destruction of the earth, and who we are, what we are.” As a teenager growing up in the Bronx, Halem learned to throw pots at the Greenwich House Pottery in New York’s Greenwich Village. Now, at 86 years old, he’s still making art. Holding a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from George Washington University, Halem did post graduate work at the University of Wisconsin as an assistant to Harvey Littleton in 1968. In 1969, Halem founded the glass program at Kent State University (KSU) and taught there for 29 years, subsequently teaching at Pilchuck Glass School and Penland School of Craft. He was one of the founders of the Glass Art Society and served as its first president. Halem’s body of work ranges from his early blown vessels to Vitrolite glass collages, glass castings to enameled and painted glass wall panels. His narrative boxes have been described as “… ordinary glass boxes filled with enigmatic objects and reverse glass drawings and paintings.” He is known for powerful responses to political events – the 1970 Kent State shootings, 9/11, and a memorial for American soldiers who died in Iraq. Exhibiting extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, Halem’s work is in the permanent collections of The Corning Museum of Glass, Cleveland Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Toledo Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hokkaido & Niijima Museums in Japan, and the Decorative Arts Museum, Prague. He has been honored by the Glass Art Society and the American Crafts Council; he received the Governor’s Award from the State of Ohio as well as the President’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement from KSU. He penned Glass Notes: A Reference for the Glass Artist and is still an authority on all things glass. Throughout the years, Halem has amassed a diverse set of techniques that are put into action with a little bit of know-how. No matter what he does regarding art, it gets “distilled” through what he has learned from one of his favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. “The moral of that book was, in order to fix something, you have to know how it works,” Halem said. “So, my search is into finding out how things work. That, and my belief that the artist’s job is to question authority in itself, is what drives me.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/32131152
info_outline
Pinkie Maclure: Telling Stories of Our Time Through Traditional Stained Glass
07/04/2024
Pinkie Maclure: Telling Stories of Our Time Through Traditional Stained Glass
An artist using the allegorical power of medieval stained glass as a vehicle for contemporary expression, Pinkie Maclure marries traditional craft techniques with a radically different aesthetic. Stained glass was invented in the 12th century to communicate to a largely illiterate population, its vivid colors having a seductive quality that’s hard to resist. However, its narrative role has been largely abandoned in recent years, which is something Maclure hopes to change through her architectural installations and highly-detailed stained glass light boxes that reflect her commentary on the modern world around us. Maclure states: “My goal is to seduce the eye, but crucially, to deal with contemporary subject matter, telling darkly humorous stories from modern life.” For example, in her piece Beauty Tricks, the artist questions interpretations of beauty and a multitude of thorny contradictions. Her central figure is based around a classic Madonna, but she has liposuction lines on her torso and hypodermic needles and scalpels adorning her halo. Her nipples have been censored. Two little girls gaze up at her beautiful pink frock from a grey world of abandoned plastic containers. A woman fires a gun at a mirror, smashing it to smithereens. To her left, a grandmother knits a web of Barbie dolls and to her right is a bulimic Rapunzel. The palm trees refer to the palm oil industry; the roses symbolize feminine beauty. At the top, Satan is hopping across the towers of Oxbridge with a pile of books heaped on his back, stealing all the knowledge while the women are distracted. This work was acquired by the Stained Glass Museum for the national collection of stained glass and is now on permanent display in Ely Cathedral. Maclure was raised in a small fishing town in the northeast of Scotland by an atheist mother, a talented musician who loved to sing sacred music. A prolific child artist, she drew on old wallpaper samples in front of the television every night, but was later put off by a sexist art teacher and turned to music and performance instead. As a singer-songwriter, she has recorded 10 albums over 30 years and performed internationally. To support her music career, after 25 years of depending on low-paying jobs, Maclure found work helping a friend in a commercial stained glass studio. It was not very creative, however, she did start to study the history of stained glass and became disheartened by what she saw as the contemporary dumbing down of this extraordinary medium. She says: “I noticed that many churches now avoid using any imagery and that fewer stained glass artists have the very particular skills required to paint images on glass. In contrast with the heady, dazzling power of figurative medieval glass, many 20th-century stained glass windows had become simple blocks of cheap, colored glass, often designed and mass-produced by glaziers, with no artistic intent behind them – their function was reduced to something purely physical; a kind of upmarket net curtain.” Maclure decided to develop her painting, sandblasting and engraving skills in order to harness the spiritual power of stained glass, exploring the big issues of today such as climate, women’s rights, addiction and grassroots activism. Instead of removing the images, she changes them. Her references include bible stories, folklore, tabloid newspaper headlines and personal experiences. She uses stained glass as a language, as they did in the Middle Ages. “I love the peculiar character of very old, broken windows, which have been repaired many times over the centuries. They have a particular poignancy which reminds us of our mortality and the fragility of the earth.” For Maclure’s 2023 solo exhibition at CCA Glasgow, Lost Congregation, she combined large-scale stained glass, 3D sound, film and live performance, to create a fictional, abandoned rural chapel, haunted by its lost congregation. This multi-media installation questions our relationship with the land and celebrates the way nature and grassroots activism, such as compost-making, can reclaim abandoned places. The show attracted record numbers to the venue and was extended by a month. Scotsman review of the exhibition; The central work in the show, The Soil was a room-sized installation evoking an abandoned chapel where ivy grows up the sides of the old pews and the wind whistles through the broken door. At one end is a resplendent stained-glass window featuring a woman gardener, hands clasped in a secular prayer, urinating on her compost heap (human urine being an ideal activator of compost). A soundscape of whispers, children’s voices and snatches of song adds to the atmosphere. It’s both monumental and irreverent, elevating the humble pursuit of gardening while thumbing its nose at the grandiose history of the medium. While concerns about vanishing communities, climate change and damage done to topsoil by intensive farming are all present in this work, there is also a businesslike cheerfulness to the welly-wearing modern saint and her no-nonsense pursuit of her purpose. The Soil was subsequently on display at Two Temple Place, London, from January 27 – April 21, 2024. In the collection of the National Museum of Scotland and recently exhibiting at Homo Faber (Venice), Collect (London), the Outsider Art Fair (New York) and the John Ruskin Prize (Manchester), Maclure has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Sequested Prize, John Byrne Prize, Zealous Craft Prize and Jerwood Makers. Her work Two Witches (Knowledge is Power) was selected for publication in the 2024 issue of New Glass Review, the Corning Museum of Glass’ survey of cutting-edge glass. Two Witches was also on view at the John Ruskin Prize group exhibition at Trinity Buoy Wharf, Poplar, London back in February. The National Museum of Scotland acquired Self-Portrait Dreaming of Portavadie in 2021. Maclure plans a solo show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in the near future. “I find medieval stained glass bewitching and daring… I want to elevate the medium into a contemporary art form, using its seductive beauty and historical associations to stimulate debate and to tell my own stories.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/32005482
info_outline
Rocko Belloso: Creating Narratives in Boro
06/18/2024
Rocko Belloso: Creating Narratives in Boro
An American glass artist best known for his modern approach to centuries-old techniques, Rocko Belloso specializes in murrine, cut and flip, stringer drawing, and sculpture. He is an innovator in his combination of these elements as well as his custom color mixing methods. His work presents an updated aesthetic with influences from comic books, cult movies, metal music, and lowbrow art, ranging from stylized depictions to hyper-realistic portraits. As a young teen, Belloso anticipated attending art school to become a cartoonist, but his plans changed in 2003 when he saw the two-dimensional rendering possibilities of murrine glass. He consequentially accepted a glassblowing apprenticeship and employment at Third Eye Design in California, where he spent the next seven years as a production artist, assigned to making mostly dry pipes. In his free time, Belloso took classes from artists including Scott Deppe, Jesse Taj, Marcel Braun, and Jason Lee, whom he respectively credits with learning murrine, chip stacking, line-work, and reticello. In 2010, Belloso began doing hourly work for an independent glass distributor, affording him more freedom to explore these specialized techniques. In 2014, as his murrine work gained popularity in flameworking circles, the artist took the leap and began working for himself. Since becoming an independent artist, Belloso has received accolades for his unique work, which has been displayed at galleries and created at live demos across the country. His art has been included in various glass competitions, for which he has received medals and first-place awards. He has also served as a judge at the World Series of Glass and Champs Glass Games. The artist was recently a selected competitor among some of the best boro artists in the industry at Midwest Meltdown. To date, Belloso has been an integral part of every Molten Build – the brainchild of friend and artist Adam Hoobrey aka “Hoobs” – an incredible collaboration with some of the most skilled torch artists, resulting in massive, detailed functional boro sculpture. As a result of his extensive knowledge and groundbreaking applications, Belloso has been invited to teach workshops at institutions including the Corning Museum of Glass, Carlisle School of Glass Art, and numerous glass studios coast-to-coast. He just finished a glass sculpting class at Salem Community College Glass Center and will be teaching Creating Narratives in 2D: Borosilicate Cut & Flip Techniques, August 3 – 14, 2024, at Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, with Eriko Kobayashi as his TA. Info and registration: Over the past year, Belloso and flameworking icon Paul Stankard have been transferring the soft glass techniques Stankard pioneered into borosilicate glass. The duo recently demonstrated the processes at Salem Community College’s International Flameworking Conference, held March 15 – 17, 2024. They are currently developing a new body of work, Momento Mori, for future exhibition at WheatonArts, Millville, New Jersey, dates TBA. Stankard states: “Rocko Belloso, who is a master in the borosilicate world, was able to interpret my botanical vocabulary in a way that has inspired me, knowing that a new botanical aesthetic is going to evolve in borosilicate glass. I was assisting Rocko with keeping things hot, organizing the vacuum pick-up for the honeybees, and all-around taking advantage of his incredible talent. I’m fascinated with the possibility of different aesthetic results that could develop by using borosilicate glass. The quality of the colors and clear glass rods is impressive. It takes a lot longer to encase the components and ball up the glass; that said Rocko brings skill and patience to the task. I prefer the title Boro Flower Balls and believe that future collectors will embrace this new work – going beyond the paperweight world with enthusiastic collectors building large collections with a wide range of artists represented.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/31800477
info_outline
Audrey Handler: A Conversation with “The First Lady” of Glass
06/07/2024
Audrey Handler: A Conversation with “The First Lady” of Glass
Housed in a 19th-century cheese factory, Audrey Handler’s studio was founded in 1970 and is one of the oldest continually operating glassblowing facilities in the country. Through demonstrations she gave there and workshops she taught on the road at places such as Penland School of Craft and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, she helped spread the idea that glass could be used as a medium for personal artistic expression. A pioneer of the Studio Glass Movement, Handler started working in glass in 1965 as one of Harvey Littleton’s first female glass students. He and his students experimented and learned together, renting old glassblowing films from the Corning Museum of Glass and trying to emulate the techniques. “It was so exciting,” Handler recalls. “Every day was something new.” As a glassblower, Handler creates fruit forms, glass platters, and vases but also sculptural environments that comment on universal experiences, usually domestic in nature. These sculptures reflect small worlds and landscape portraits with life-sized objects and tiny sterling silver or gold people that evoke a surrealistic time and place. In well-known series the artist calls Monuments in a Park, Pear in a Chair and Wedding Pair, glass, wood and precious metal combine to tell a story. These works are made in collaboration with her husband, John Martner, who fabricates the tiny wooden chairs and love seats. Wrote James Auer, Art Critic, The Milwaukee Journal: “By combining pieces of hand-blown fruit, in particular apples and pears, with tiny, hand-cast silver figures, (Audrey Handler) creates bizarre, Lilliputian landscapes that evoke universal human emotions and experiences. …this universality – combined with a neat sense of humor – is Handler’s principal strength. It permits her to invest her work with a cutting satirical edge, to the point where her miniaturized depictions of conventional household scenes and cliched gender role models become winning little exercises in small-town surrealism.” Handler was a board member of the Glass Art Society, an international organization she helped create in 1971. She holds a BFA from Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts and a MS and MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Department of Art. Her work was represented in the New Glass 1979 and New Glass Now 2019 exhibitions and published in the Corning Museum’s survey of cutting edge-glass art, New Glass Review, in issues 5, 16 and 43. In 2014, Handler was awarded the Wisconsin Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, joining fellow honorees Frank Lloyd Wright and Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist currently serves on the Glass Advisory Board of the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass in Neenah, Wisconsin. Handler’s sculptures can be found in collections and museums worldwide. During 2023 and 2024, her work was exhibited at the Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, in two separate group shows: Women in Glass and Wisconsin Artists: 1960 – 1990: A Survey. Her work is on view now at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, in 60 Years of Studio Glass, 2022 to present, and at the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin, in Recent Acquisitions, 2021 to 2023, and an ongoing exhibit of her work from 1965 to present. Her latest endeavor involves creating new mixed media sculpture and painting with low-fire glass paints on tiles and glass, creating landscapes of the prairie seen from her studio window, areas around Wisconsin and visions of landscapes from her many travels. These glass paintings are an extension of her work with blown glass – an endeavor which spans more than 50 years – as well as a return to her roots as an oil painter.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/31634802
info_outline
Jonathan Capps’ Global Practice of Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Social Engagement, and Cultural Exchange
05/08/2024
Jonathan Capps’ Global Practice of Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Social Engagement, and Cultural Exchange
The inspiration for Jonathan Capp’s art comes from the experiences that shape his life. Whether hiking the Appalachian Trail, coaching Little League Baseball, becoming an archaeological illustrator halfway around the world, or competing on Blown Away, he channels those experiences into ideas and fully embraces life as a part of his art. Capps states: “I welcome new ideas and innovations in the studio, bringing fun, energy, and an inspiring enthusiasm into the hot shop.” Raised in Knoxville, TN, Capps spent much of his youth outdoors, camping, hiking, and playing baseball. After moving to Kentucky in 2001, he developed a passion for glassblowing during undergraduate school at Centre College in Danville, KY, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2005. For the following decade, he worked as a freelance glassblower, artist, and designer, traveling extensively to learn, teach, and pursue the mastery of his craft. During this time, he received several residencies and scholarships, including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, The Pittsburgh Glass Center, Corning Museum of Glass, Penland School of Crafts, and an International Artist Residency at Lasikompannia in Nuutajärvi, Finland. After “thru-hiking” the Appalachian Trail in 2013, Capps attended graduate school at Ohio State University and, in 2016, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. He received several awards and scholarships, most notably a travel grant and fellowship as an archaeological illustrator in the remote Oğlanqala region of the Autonomous Republic of Naxçivan, Azerbaijan. In 2018 and 2019, Capps was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Arts Grant to research Finnish glass and design for a year in Finland. In 2020, he was chosen to serve as an Alumni Ambassador to the U.S. Student Fulbright Program; today, he continues to engage in outreach and recruitment for the Fulbright Program and Finland’s National Fulbright Foundation. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Finnish Glass Museum and the Prykäri Glass Museum in addition to private collections. Capps has taught and exhibited extensively in the United States and Internationally. Throughout his career, he has worked with many glass artists and master craftspeople, developing a diverse practice that fluently moves between traditional techniques and experimental methods, pushing the boundaries and seeking new applications of the glass medium. He says: “My studio practice is rooted in the multicultural traditions of the glass craft; significantly, the physical nature of glass blowing requires reliance on others to create art successfully. For me, learning and then mastering a variety of glass techniques is where the culture behind the craft comes alive. “My work in the visual arts is rooted in the hot glass studio. My research has developed, over time, into a global practice of interdisciplinary collaboration, social engagement, and cultural exchange. I have learned that there is something in my use of the glassmaking tradition that goes beyond form and function, and enters into the realm of experience, relationships, and communication.” Most recently, Capps competed in Season 4 of the hit Netflix series Blown Away. On Saturday, May 18 at the Glass Art Society convention in Berlin, Germany, Capps will demonstrate at Berlin Glassworks from 10 a.m. to 12 – an opportunity he won on the show. From June 10 – 14, he will teach a summer intensive at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Lifting the Veil, and present a free lecture on June 11. He will also be the featured guest artist for this year’s Gay Fad Studio’s Festival hosted at the Ohio Glass Museum.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/31177702
info_outline
David Graeber: Preserving Nature for Eternity in a Paperweight
04/24/2024
David Graeber: Preserving Nature for Eternity in a Paperweight
Early in his career, Paul Stankard used to trade paperweights for gasoline and car servicing with John Graeber. In 1989, through his uncle John, David Graeber wound up casually visiting Stankard’s studio and weeks later was invited to come and work with him. Young Graeber started learning about glass in the deep end of the pool. Thirty-five years later, he continues to work with Stankard about a day a week. Having mastered numerous glassmaking techniques and having developed his own working style and visual aesthetic, in 2009 Graeber started his own art glass business. One thing he shares with his mentor Stankard is a deep appreciation for and interest in imagery from the natural world. His paperweight subjects include Chysanthemum, so life-like you want to reach out and pluck them from their crystal orb. Fall Harvest, including pumpkins and blueberries in floral arrangements that celebrate their season with color and vibrancy. And Fruits of Discovery that pays homage to the enchanting yellow lemon trees of Italy. Graeber says: “My stories in glass have evolved over time. However, one fact, my love of nature, remains constant. Many of my creations celebrate the memory of a loved one or the joy of a special event. All capture nature’s elegance and remarkable diversity.” In order to create paperweights that reflect nature precisely, Graeber studies his subject matter carefully. A major source of natural inspiration is the million-acre Pinelands National Reserve, which has served as a living laboratory. He is always trying to “find a new illusion,” a new way to express the transcendence he experiences in those environs. Despite his stunning and widely collected artworks, Graeber prefers to be regarded as a craftsman continuing the South Jersey glass tradition into the 21st century. A life-long “Jerseyman,” Graeber honed his craft under the watchful eye of teachers, mentors, and friends including: the late George Vail, who introduced him to the world of architectural reconstruction and forensic sculpture; William “Bill” Marlin, Ed.D., a dedicated teacher and established painter; Stankard, the internationally acclaimed glass artist who encouraged him to strike out on his own; and the late Ed Poore, a renowned master cutter whose skill has enhanced several of Graeber’s paperweights. Graeber has created both a life and a living from the magic of glass. His intricate glass paperweights and impressive flameworking techniques are on display and can be accessed through the L H Selman website as well as Graeber’s own website. He is careful to always keep in mind how much more there is to know and that you always need to be learning something new to expand your horizons as an artist. He is restless and often makes no more than a few paperweights of a particular design before he needs to explore another direction. Two years ago, Graeber met filmmaker Dan Collins at an event, and the two decided a documentary film was needed focusing on the paperweights and artistic contributions of Stankard. Graeber took on the role of executive director and began fundraising for the project in earnest. Since January, Flower and Flame has thrilled hundreds of viewers at packed regional venues, including the Morris Museum, Perkins Center for the Arts and Salem Community College’s International Flameworking Conference. The next showing will be at the Paperweight Collectors Association convention May 15 – 18 at the Warwick Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. Plans for national distribution are ongoing and will be updated on the film’s official website as they develop. The film is an official selection of the G.A.S. Film Festival in Berlin, Germany (May 16, 2024), and the Jersey Shore Film Festival (June/July, 2024). Considering art to be a vehicle for sharing and giving back, Graeber started a glass program five years ago at the nonprofit Perkins Center for the Crafts in Collingswood, New Jersey. There, he recently organized a showing of Flower and Flameto raise money for veterans – a group to whom the artist is particularly interested in teaching glass. Graeber has also given his time and energy to the nonprofit Project Fire, located on Chicago’s West Side, and helmed by glass artist Pearl Dick. He states: “I have a passion for the simple gifts of nature: the timeless beauty of a rose, the industriousness of a small bee, or the untamed wildness of a sunflower. Working in glass allows me to explore this passion, and under the tutelage of master glass artist, Paul Stankard, I refined my passion to the art of capturing nature – frozen for eternity in a paperweight.” More about Flower and Flame 1. Film Reviews Andrew Page of Urban Glass: Richard Pope, The Independent Critic: 2. Upcoming Screenings | Many not listed here are in planning stages. The updated list is at 4/18 Levoy Theatre, Millville, NJ 5/16 Official Selection, GAS Film Festival, Berlin Germany 5/18 PCA Convention, Warwick, RI Late June (TBD) Official Selection, Jersey Shore Film Festival 7/10 Common Ground on the Hill, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD 3. How can people host a screening? Answers to screening inquiries and general questions can be found here at our FAQ:
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30958233
info_outline
Morgan Peterson: Winner of Blown Away 4
04/11/2024
Morgan Peterson: Winner of Blown Away 4
Said Blown Away Season 4 winner, Morgan Peterson, “I’m not just the creepy weirdo lurking in the background anymore. I’m right up front.” As champion of Netflix’s 2024 glassblowing competition series, the Seattle-based artist received a whopping cash prize of $100,000, a paid residency in Venice, Italy, with glass legend Adriano Berengo, and a residency at the world-renowned Corning Museum of Glass. Growing up in Boston, MA, Peterson’s watched horror films and Unsolved Mysteries with her Godmother, introducing her to the unnerving and creepy style so associated with her unique work that uses metaphor and imagery to address themes of pop culture and addiction. On Blown Away 4, from her initial bathtub-toaster combo titled Best Friends to a knife thrower’s impeccably made knives, black and white targets, and puddles of blood to her unforgettable monster mushroom, dark humor and twisted style set Peterson’s work apart- not just from other artists on the show, but from other artists making work in glass today. Her final gallery, 6 Crime Scenes, included 80 glass objects and was described by guest evaluator Berengo as “fresh, new, and very contemporary.” The crime scene installation was based on six murders that occurred in Chicago during the 1920s and inspired by the artist’s obsession with the musical Chicago. Peterson graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a dual degree in 2006. Upon completion of her degrees, she relocated to Seattle, WA, to pursue a career and continue her education and advancement in the arts. She has worked for many notable artists including Buster Simpson and Bruce Mau, and is a full-time team member for Dale Chihuly. Heavily involved with Pratt Fine Arts and Pilchuck Glass School, she is not only a member of the staff but also an instructor. Included in The Young Glass Exhibition, hosted by the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, which is an international competition that only occurs once a decade, Peterson has also participated in multiple group shows in 2019, including Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Habatat Invitational, CHROMA (Nashville, TN), Traver Gallery (Seattle, WA), REFRACT (Seattle’s Glass Art Fair), and the Irish Glass Biennale (Dublin also in 2023). In 2020 and 2022, the artist exhibited virtual solo shows through Habatat in Royal Oaks, MI. Her first in person solo exhibition was held at Method Gallery, Seattle, WA, in October 2021. Since winning Blown Away 4, Peterson says she has been “very busy in the best ways possible.” Her latest work will be on view in Once Upon a Crime In Hollywood, opening Saturday, April 13, 6 p.m. -10 p.m. at the new Nathie Katzoff Art Gallery, 8900 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood. PLEASE RSVP – . Her Corning residency takes place April 22 – 28, and she’ll participate in a group show at Traver Gallery in Seattle this October.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30784948
info_outline
Clifford Rainey: A Life's Travelogue in Cast Glass
03/29/2024
Clifford Rainey: A Life's Travelogue in Cast Glass
Principally a sculptor who employs cast glass and drawing as primary methodologies, Clifford Rainey creates work that is interdisciplinary, incorporating a wide spectrum of materials and processes. A passionate traveler, his work is full of references to the things he has seen and experienced. Celtic mythologies, classical Greek architecture, the blue of the Turkish Aegean, globalization and the iconic American Coca-Cola bottle, the red of the African earth, and the human figure combine with cultural diversity to provide sculptural imagery charged with emotion. A British artist whose work has been exhibited internationally for 50 years, Rainey was born in Whitehead, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1948. He began his career as a linen damask designer and worked in William Ewarts linen manufacturers from 1965 to 1968. Later, the artist studied at Hornsey College of Art, the Walthamstow School of Art, where he specialized in bronze casting, and the Royal College of Art, where he received his MA and specialized in glass. Between 1973 and 1975, Rainey ran his own glass studio in London and won a commission for a small sculpture to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II. In 1984, the artist moved to New York and established additional studios there. Rainey’s sculptural work has been exhibited internationally including: The Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Kunstmuseum in Dusseldorf, Germany, The Millennium Museum in Beijing, China, and the Museo de Arts Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including: The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, The DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, California, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Art and Design, New York, The Fine Arts Museum of Boston, and The Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Canada. Rainey has realized a number of public art commissions including: The Lime Street Railway Station in Liverpool, England, the Jeddah Monument in Saudi Arabia, and the 911 Communication Center in San Francisco. He is a recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, Chicago, and the 2009 UrbanGlass Outstanding Achievement Award, New York. Balancing his commitment to studio practice with his desire to share knowledge, Rainey has lectured extensively around the world. He lectured at The Royal College of Art in London for seven years and was a Professor of Fine Art and Chair of the Glass Program at The California College of the Arts from 1991 through 2022. On October 8, 2017 at 10:30 p.m., Rainey and his partner, Rachel Riser, were awakened by a neighbor’s frantic telephone call warning them that a wind-driven wildfire had kicked up and was blazing toward their shared Napa, California, residence. They needed to get out immediately. Far more devastating than the destruction of his home and studio was the complete loss of all the artwork on the property — not only two year’s worth of work for an upcoming exhibition, but the artist’s archive of drawings of every project he’d ever done, as well as a collection of his strongest work he was planning to donate to a museum. Rainey still resides in Napa, California, and in March 2024 took time away from rebuilding his studio to participate in an artist residency at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma. There, he advanced ideas and processes originally seen in works he lost to fire.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30587253
info_outline
The State of Stained Glass
03/21/2024
The State of Stained Glass
Enjoy this stained glass panel discussion with top industry professionals and educators Judith Schaechter, Stephen Hartley, Megan McElfresh, and Amy Valuck. Topics addressed include: what is needed in stained glass education; how the massive number of Instagrammers making suncatchers and trinkets affect stained glass; how to promote stained glass in a gallery setting; and how to stay relevant as stained glass artists. The panelists: By single-handedly revolutionizing the craft of stained glass through her unique aesthetic and inventive approach to materials, Judith Schaechter championed her medium into the world of fine art. The content of her work – some of which gives voice to those who experience pain, grief, despair, and hopelessness – resonates with viewers, leaving a profound and lasting impression. Schaechter has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited her glass art widely, including in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, The Hague and Vaxjo, Sweden. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hermitage in Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other public and private collections. Schaechter’s work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2012, and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow. In 2013 the artist was inducted to the American Craft Council College of Fellows. The Glass Art Society presented Schaechter with a Lifetime Achievement award in 2023, and this year she will receive the Smithsonian Visionary Award. Schaechter has taught workshops at numerous venues, including the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, the Penland School of Crafts, Toyama Institute of Glass (Toyama, Japan), Australia National University in Canberra, Australia. She has taught courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the New York Academy of Art. She is ranked as an Adjunct Professor at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art Glass Program, both in Philly . Born in Philadelphia, Stephen Hartley began his craft career working on a variety of historic buildings and monuments throughout the region. In 1999, he moved to South Carolina to attend Coastal Carolina University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in History. He then relocated to Savannah, Georgia, and continued to work in the traditional crafts and conservation fields while attending graduate school. After completing his MFA in Historic Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hartley was employed as an instructor at various colleges within the Savannah area. He earned his PhD from the University of York in 2018 where his dissertation thesis studied the historical and modern frameworks of trades training in the US and the UK. Hartley eventually returned to the Philadelphia area and accepted the position of Head of Building Arts at Bryn Athyn College, where he formulated the first Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (BFA) in traditional building within the United States. Hartley, currently an associate professor in Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, wants his students to have a deeper appreciation for the work craftspeople do to fulfill an architect’s vision—by learning the vocabulary of the trades, understanding their history, and, when possible, trying out the tools. Executive Director of the Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA), Megan McElfresh has dedicated her professional life to community service and the art and science of stained glass. With a background in fine arts and operations management, she joined the Association as a professional member in 2015 and became the Executive Director in the fall of 2017. Growing up in small stained glass studios, McElfresh continued to build on her technical skills in the medium by seeking mentorship opportunities throughout college. Some of the highlights of her glass studies were traveling to Pilchuck Glass School and time spent at the nationally recognized kiln forming resource center, Vitrum Studio. Prior to working with the SGAA, McElfresh worked in a variety of roles from operations management at a life sciences firm in Washington, D.C. to IT and web support for small non-profit art organizations. In 2011, McElfresh moved from Northern Virginia to Buffalo, New York, and founded her studio, McElf GlassWorks. With a passion for her professional career as well as her new community, she never turned down an opportunity to collaborate with neighborhood teens and local programs to provide enthusiastic and creative educational enrichment. In her personal work, McElfresh uses her artwork in the advocacy of issues she became passionate about during her time working at a forensics laboratory concerning subjects like domestic violence and rape, and DNA backlogs. Her studio work has been featured in the Stained Glass Quarterly, Design NY, The Buffalo News, and Buffalo Rising. Find out more about the SGAA’s 2024 conference here: Amy Valuck is a stained glass artist and conservator based in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the current president of the American Glass Guild. She began her apprenticeship in 1998 at The Art of Glass in Media, PA, and in 2014 went on to establish her own studio, Amy Valuck Glass Art, now located in West Chester, PA. Her studio’s primary work is the restoration and conservation of historical windows from churches, universities, and private residences. As a conservator she specializes in complex lead work, plated windows, and replication painting. Valuck also maintains a personal art practice, producing autonomous stained glass panels for private commissions and public exhibition, including the AGG’s American Glass Now annual exhibit. Her personal work is heavily influenced by the fabrication and painting techniques of historical windows but frequently includes experimental fused glass elements. Valuck is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, who earned her BFA degree in jewelry and light metals. Her work in jewelry earned awards including the first annual Cartier Prize, and the MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Silversmiths’ Association) Award. She has served on the board of directors of the American Glass Guild since 2017 and has participated as a lecturer and instructor at several of the AGG’s annual conferences. Registration is now open for the 2024 Grand Rapids conference, July 9 – 14. Find out more about the AGG’s 2024 conference here: For further exploration of panel discussion topics:
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30467403
info_outline
Kazuki Takizawa Uses Glass Art to Address Mental Health Issues
03/07/2024
Kazuki Takizawa Uses Glass Art to Address Mental Health Issues
Kazuki Takizawa’s 2015 installation entitled Breaking the Silence represents the artist’s interpretation of a person’s breaking point and the juxtaposition of balancing inner struggles with oppressive external forces. The installation incorporated performance aspects and sound, where slanted vessels filled with water until submitting to the liquid’s weight, falling over onto a table. Takizawa’s work provided a new perspective for interacting with glass, going beyond form and technique to provoke a deeper level of engagement. Impressed by how humble and open Takizawa was when discussing the deeply personal experiences reflected within his art, Emily Zaiden, director and curator at Craft In America Center, Los Angeles, offered the artist a solo exhibition. She states: “I was drawn in by Takizawa’s metaphorical use of the material to articulate new themes through new forms and new applications. He is dealing with subject matter that has been untouched and under-represented, particularly in his medium, and sharing this vital message through compelling sculptural works of beauty is perfectly in line with our mission.” For Takizawa’s 2017 Craft in America exhibition, Catharsis Contained, the artist designed and fabricated another unique installation, creating an aural experience produced by suspending colored glass bulbs enclosed in a swaying metal structure. The rocking motion of the work, entitled Breaking the Silence II, caused the blown bulbs to gently bump into one another, producing a soothing, tinkling sound inspired by the artist’s visit to a temple in Thailand. Takizawa combined a sonic atmosphere with the rich visual experience of repeated glass forms in various subdued hues to inspire a conversation about a topic rarely addressed in art – suicide. The work was inspired by the artist’s struggles to support his brother who has wrestled with mental health issues and suicidal ideation. As an artist who himself lives with bipolar disorder, Takizawa uses glass as a means to explore his inner reality and destigmatize mental illness. With , Takizawa crafts and , each with a unique story. Universally rooted in a dialogue around mental health, his series examines broad themes such as attaining among chaos as well as his personal narratives around the topic of living with and . Takizawa has traveled to numerous communities in and outside the US to share his work and act as an advocate for mental illness. His practice offers an uncommon and inclusive space to increase awareness and start a conversation. Takizawa is a Japanese glass artist based in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a BFA in glass art in 2010 and owns and runs in the historic West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. Takizawa’s work was exhibited in Monochromatic, which opened at Duncan McClellan Gallery (DMG) in St. Petersburg, Florida, on February 10 and included his latest Minimalist series. A few pieces from his Container series can be seen at Hawk Galleries, Columbus, Ohio, and additional sculptures are on view in an exhibition called The Optics of Now: SoCal Glass at Palos Verdes Art Center, curated by Zaiden from Craft in America Center. The show runs through April 13, 2024. From November 1 through December 25, Takizawa’s work will be exhibited at the Glass Invitational exhibition at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. In 2024, the artist endeavors to offer more artist talks with a focus on his perspective on mental health. Says Takizawa: “I started speaking about mental health including my experience living with bipolar disorder and suicide prevention back in 2015, wondering if I would ever regret this decision. But the entire journey since then has been nothing but empowering, and I don’t regret this at all. I just wanted to be someone who could freely speak about things related to mental health without the stigma. And I felt the need to do something about helping someone who had suicidal ideation at the time. Since then, I have continued to make new work to support my story and to continue speaking.” 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline We can all help prevent suicide. The 988 Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. Just dial 988.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30260393
info_outline
Jessica Loughlin’s Kiln Formed Glass: An Homage to the Observation of Light
03/01/2024
Jessica Loughlin’s Kiln Formed Glass: An Homage to the Observation of Light
Jessica Loughlin’s work is characterized by a strict reductive sensibility and restricted use of color. Fusing kiln formed sheets of opaque and translucent glass together in flat panels or in thin, geometric compositions and vessels, she alludes to shadow, reflection and refraction. Loughlin’s work is influenced by the flat landscapes and salt lakes of South Australia, and the recurring motif of the mirage appears in much of her work. Each piece makes its own poetic statement. “My work investigates space, seeing distance and understanding how wide-open spaces, particularly of the Australian landscape, affect us. I am fascinated by the unreachable space. The view we look upon, but can never reach. In this minimal landscape, all elements are stripped back, light becomes the landscape, and I am left looking at space, the space between here.…and there. This viewed distance is a place we can never reach, never get to, for as we move towards it, it moves away from you. Is this a real place or is it a projected space of the imagination. My work does not aim to represent this landscape directly but rather induce a state of looking inward and outward simultaneously.” Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Loughlin is a graduate of the Canberra School of Art under the tutelage of late Stephen Procter. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the National Gallery of Australia, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh GB, and the Musee de Design et d’Arts Appliques Contemporains in Lausanne, Switzerland. A studio artist for over 20 years, Loughlin has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2020, she was only the second Australian to have work selected as a finalist in the Loewe Craft Prize. In 2018, she was awarded the Fuse Glass Prize, and in 2004 and 2007, the Tom Malone Art Prize. She is represented by Sabbia Gallery, Sydney, Australia, and Caterina Tognon, Venice, Italy. A committed and passionate artist who is highly regarded both in Australia and internationally, Loughlin combines her thoughtful and instinctual approach with extraordinary technical skills. With a gentle color palette of soft muted hues, her work often explores ideas of evaporation, space and distance, all inherent in the Australian landscape. Loughlin’s work was on view in late 2023 in a solo exhibition near | far at Sabbia Gallery, Sydney, and her piece of light is on national tour as part of the Jamfactory Icon series, accompanied by a monograph of her art Jessica Loughlin: from here published by Wakefield Press. In 2024, Loughlin was selected for and will participate in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, March 29 through June 2.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/30142343
info_outline
The Glass Galaxies of Josh Simpson
02/16/2024
The Glass Galaxies of Josh Simpson
Apollo 8, which launched on December 21, 1968, was the first mission to take humans to the moon and back. While the crew did not land on the moon’s surface, the flight was an important prelude to a lunar landing, testing the flight trajectory and operations getting there and back. Capt. James A Lovell, Apollo 8 astronaut, shared his memories of that historic mission: “Then, looking up I saw it, the Earth, a blue and white ball, just above the lunar horizon, 240,000 miles away…I put my thumb up to the window and completely hid the Earth. Just think, over five billion people, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb…I began to question my own existence. How do I fit in to what I see?” Inspired by this wonderment and interest in perspective, glass artist Josh Simpson embarked on his own exploration of the cosmos. Born on August 17, 1949 and educated at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York (1972), much of Simpson’s career in glass has been dedicated to communicating his fascination with the earth and its role as our planet, first through entertaining demonstrations for middle schoolers, then with art lovers worldwide. He has enthusiastically shared his glass art in much the same way the astronauts shared their experiences – with any man, woman or child whose heart fills with excitement just thinking of the possibilities. Since the 1980s, Simpson has been hiding his glass Planets all over our Earth. In 2000 he launched the Infinity Project, which invites people around the world to hide Planets in exotic, mysterious, and sometimes even seemingly mundane – but personally meaningful – locations. Simpson’s space-inspired glass art includes Planets, vases, platters, and sculpture. The artist has dedicated more than 50 years to inventing new glass formulas and making unique objects that embody his fascination with color, form, light, pattern, complexity, and the working of the universe. His iconic Planets evoke imaginary worlds that might exist in distant undiscovered galaxies. His New Mexico Glass suggests star-filled night skies and swirling blue seas, while Corona Glass evokes deep-space images captured by the Hubble Telescope. Simpson’s work has been exhibited in the White House and numerous international museums. Select pieces are currently on permanent display at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, Yale University Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many more. Says Simpson: “I am moved by the beauty of the night sky and other astronomical phenomena. Physics and cosmology fascinate me, as does high temperature chemistry, powered flight, and all things mechanical. I am mesmerized by color, form, contrast, iridescence, tessellating patterns, and complexity.” Located in the rural hills of Western Massachusetts, Simpson’s studio can be found in a converted dairy barn beside his home. Every night, the last thing he does is walk from the house to his studio to check the furnaces. Seeing an aurora borealis, watching a storm develop down the valley, or looking at the sky on a perfect summer night, compels him to translate some of the wonder of the universe into his glass. This process doesn’t happen in any planned way, but gradually and unpredictably. He never tries to replicate what he sees around him, and in fact often doesn’t recognize the source of inspiration until someone points it out later. Simpson states: “Molten glass consists of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat. The result is a material that flows like honey. When it’s hot, glass is alive! It moves gracefully and inexorably in response to gravity and centripetal force. It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that make it simultaneously one of the most rewarding and one of the most frustrating materials for an artist to work with. Most of my work reflects a compromise between the molten material and me; each finished piece is a solidified moment when we both agree.” In his most recent book, Josh Simpson 50 Years of Visionary Glass, 500 beautiful photos and informative (and humorous) narration by the artist, reveals the evolution of Simpson’s evocative glass art over the past 50 years. In-depth looks at his several signature series and experimental works illustrate how the artist has continually explored new ways to express—in glass—his fascination with outer space, the natural world, and the workings of the universe. Text and photo spreads narrate the story of Simpson’s glass, details of his life and process, and his contributions within the craft world. Text by experts in the glass world, including William Warmus, Tina Oldknow, Nezka Pfeifer, and others, supplies additional views. In addition, strategically placed comments from numerous museum curators, along with insights from astrophysicists and space flight professionals, present a unique perspective on the meanings and broad appeal of his unique glass. From playing the spoons, to winning story slams and flying high performance planes to the wrong number that resulted in him marrying astronaut Cady Coleman – enjoy this fascinating conversation with Josh Simpson.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/29942398
info_outline
Wesley Fleming: Flameworking the Realism of the Microcosmos
02/02/2024
Wesley Fleming: Flameworking the Realism of the Microcosmos
Wesley Fleming brings the fantastic realism of the microcosmos to life in glass. An ambassador for smaller denizens of the earth, his passion for nature sparks awe and curiosity in others. Growing up in the countryside, his favorite pastime was exploring beneath logs and rocks in the woods or reading science fiction and comic books. Hence the natural world and his own imagination became his muse. Says Fleming: “I hope to rekindle awe and curiosity for nature with my fantastic realism. I’ve focused more than two decades honing my flameworking skills and trying to capture the essence of actual species with intricate detail of tiny stamen or antennae. Today, I conjure plants, animals and mystical beings by merging the fantastical with the real through choice of color palette and referencing familiar archetypes. Regardless of the end result, I love the alchemical potential of sculpting glass – a brittle and cold substance transformed by fire into a pliable and molten material.” In 2001, Fleming began working with glass, learning via apprenticeship under the tutelage of Italian maestros Vittorio Costantini and Lucio Bubacco in Venice, Italy. He subsequently gained valuable experience working for Josh Simpson and the MIT Glass Lab. His work has been included in numerous publications, exhibited around the United States and included in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Kobe Lampwork Museum, Tacoma Museum of Glass and Racine Art Museum. Recently, Fleming was commissioned by Wes Anderson to make glass flowers, which were animated by a studio in London for his 2023 movie Asteroid City. Along with his wife, Rebecca, the artist demonstrated his techniques at Denizli Glass Bienali in Denizli, Turkey, where she played her composed pieces on the cello while Fleming worked at the torch. In March 2020, his first solo museum exhibit was scheduled to open at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. Sadly, opening day the museum was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Says Fleming: “Insects have been my main focus for many years, but recently I have been very inspired by the Blaschka Glass Flowers at Harvard and have been working on developing my plants and flowers. This was what was so exciting for me about the Brattleboro exhibit – that I was given trust and free rein to make my new passion and to focus on local wildflowers, which I see on the regular hikes I do around my home.” In 2024, Fleming will co-teach “Bugs, Figures, Plants, & Beyond” with Emilio Santini at Penland School of Crafts, April 28 – May 3. He will also co-teach “Collaborative Soft Glass Sculpture” with Michael Mangiafico at Touchstone Center for Crafts, August 5 -9 .
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/29762043
info_outline
Robin and Julia Rogers: A Collaboration Resulting in Provocative Glass Sculpture
01/19/2024
Robin and Julia Rogers: A Collaboration Resulting in Provocative Glass Sculpture
Physically and metaphorically Robin and Julia Rogers put their minds, hearts and hands together to create sculptural works in glass – their chosen material because of its inherent qualities of luminosity, viscosity, and seductive flow. Their inspiration is drawn from the natural world, personal experience, family life, music, psychology, and science. Robin and Julia state: “Complex and mystifying, the human mind drives us, but the subtle inner workings remain, to certain extent, unknown. Delving into the psyche, our work explores the human mind to reveal a metaphorical interior of ideas, emotions, and mystery. Floating in the vast sea of our own thought we are alone. This solitude, both deeply haunting and beautiful, is ours to contemplate, conquer, and call our own. Our minds never stop imagining the possibilities of what can be explored, discovered, shared, and executed.” In their series, Architecture of the Mind, heads are turned into buildings whose history and occupancy is contemplated. Each building has its own unique story, a background different from the one living next door. Community is formed, despite the differences, allowing life to thrive in this modern, fast-paced world. Thoughts from day-to-day life, memories, or even multiple personalities are reflected in these works. Animalia is also a driving and important theme in the narrative of the Rogers’ work. Since the advent of human expression, animals have been ever present. The artists feel that animals have a certain wisdom and intuition that brings alignment with the natural world. There is something to be learned from the animal spirit; especially in today’s fast paced digital life where it is easy to forget that we, ourselves, are inseparable from nature. Human Hybrids (Bioengineered) is a series of anthropomorphic humans, where animal and human DNA have been melded together. Imagine the possibilities of a not- so-distant future, where rapid breakthroughs in genetic research, advances in molecular biology, and new reproductive technologies, allow scientists to manipulate human DNA at the gene level to cure inheritable diseases. In this plausible future, parents can choose which of their own genes to share with their children and which to omit. One can even imagine how animal genes could be introduced to give heightened senses and new abilities to these superhuman species. Discovering how to translate their ideas into glass can be both challenging and rewarding. After scale drawings are made, Robin and Julia decide who will make which parts of the sculpture and hot work begins. Once all the parts are made, they work with a skilled team of assistants for the final assembly. The finished glass is often combined with other materials such as fur, wood, and steel to complete the sculpture. Currently, Robin and Julia both work at the Chrysler Museum of Art, where Robin is the Glass Studio Program Director and Julia is the Higher Education and Outreach Coordinator. They met in a small hot glass studio in Western Montana in 2001 at a glass shop called Cloud Cap Glass. As their friendship grew, their glass practices began to overlap. They both became part owners of the studio and worked together, operating the small business and creating glass works. In pursuit of Master of Fine Art degrees, the couple decided to leave their beloved Montana in 2005. They re-envisioned their glass studio and created a trailer-mounted portable shop. With their tools, dogs and one-year-old son, they set out for Southern Illinois. Following professional opportunities, the glassy family has lived in Carbondale, Illinois; Bowling Green, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Norfolk, Virginia. In 2010, after nearly 10 years of working together and assisting with each other’s work, the duo decided to start creating artwork collaboratively. In these bodies of work, every step of the process, from conception to installing, is completed by both artists. This method of working has led to the creation of artwork that Julia and Robin are excited to make and proud to exhibit. Through the synergy of this collaboration, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The couple is currently working on new pieces to be shown in the Habatat International Exhibition in April 2024 at Habatat Gallery in Michigan. They are also starting a collaboration with Fabiano Zanchi, teaching at UrbanGlass in June, and will be the featured artists at the International Glass Symposium in Novy Bor, Czechia in October. Additionally, the studio at the Chrysler Museum of Art, where they make most of their work, is currently tripling in size. Phase 1 of the project ends in May 2024 and phase 2 will be completed by the end of 2024.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/29550393
info_outline
Flameworking 2024: Perspectives
01/11/2024
Flameworking 2024: Perspectives
Talking Out Your Glass podcast kicks off 2024 with our first episode of Season 9! This fascinating panel discussion on flameworking features four of the technique’s most well-known artists: Paul Stankard, Carmen Lozar, Dan Coyle aka coylecondenser and Trina Weintraub. At different points in their careers, these four artists compare and contrast their journeys and experiences working glass behind the torch. Considered a living master in the art of the paperweight, Paul Stankard’s work is represented in more than 75 museums around the world. Over his 52-year artistic journey, he has received two honorary doctorate degrees, an honorary associate’s degree, and many awards within the glass community, including the Masters of the Medium Award from Smithsonian’s The James Renwick Alliance and the Glass Art Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Craft Council and a recipient of the UrbanGlass Award—Innovation in a Glassworking Technique. Stankard’s current exhibition From Flame to Flower: The Art of Paul J. Stankard can be seen at the Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, now through February 4. A documentary film titled Paul J. Stankard: Flower and Flame by award-winning filmmaker Dan Collins, premiers on January 31. On March 16, the film will be shown at Salem County Community College, Carney’s Point, New Jersey, at the International Flameworking Conference, presented there by Collins. Born in 1975, Carmen Lozar lives in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, where she maintains a studio and is a member of the art faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. She has taught at Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Craft, Pittsburgh Glass School, Appalachian Center for Crafts, The Chrysler Museum, and the Glass Furnace in Istanbul, Turkey. She has had residencies at the Corning Museum of Glass and Penland School of Craft. Although she travels abroad to teach and share her love for glass – most recently to Turkey, Italy, and New Zealand – she always returns to her Midwestern roots. Lozar is represented by the Ken Saunders Gallery in Chicago, and her work is included in the permanent collection at Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, Wisconsin. Besides continuing her work at Illinois Wesleyan University, Lozar will be teaching workshops at UrbanGlass, June 4 – 8, 2024, and at Ox Bow School of Craft, Saugatuck, Michigan, August 4 – 10, 2024. Menacing monkeys. Peeled bananas. Bad-tempered bears. Uniquely original Munnies. Daniel S. Coyle’s whimsical, toy-inspired aesthetic in concert with mind-blowing skills on the torch have earned the artist a hefty 116K following on Instagram. The artist recently celebrated 12 years of being a full-time pipe maker. Coyle’s work has been displayed in galleries around the world, and has been seen in print and web publications including Vice, Huffington Post, NY Times, and in the books This Is A Pipe and his self-published Munny Project book. Now residing in Western Massachusetts, he works alongside some of the state’s top pipe makers. Coyle’s 2024 events include: Community Bonfire (Maine), January 27; Michigan Glass Project, June 21 – 23: two-week intensive class at Corning Studios, Corning, New York, June 24 – July 5; Parlay Philly in September TBA; and Bad Boyz Do Basel 3 (Miami), September TBA. Creating playful objects and curious scenes inspired by childhood memories and dreams, Caterina Weintraub uses glass, a fragile and heavy material, to recreate iconic toys or re-imagine personal memories that evoke a sense of sentiment, wonder and discomfort. She utilizes a variety of techniques to create sculptures and installations in her Boston-based studio, . From intricate torch work to large-scale kiln castings and hot blown pieces, she chooses the process best suited to realize her vision. In 2024, Weintraub will participate in Habatat’s Glass Coast Weekend, Sarasota, Florida, February 1 – 4; Glass52, International Glass Show, Habatat Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan, May 5 – September 6; and the International Glass Show, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana, December 2 – February 18. Enjoy this panel discussion about how these four artists crafted careers using the techniques and appeal of flameworking and where the process is headed into the next decade and beyond.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/29432738
info_outline
Indre Bileris: Mastering Design and Painting for Liturgical, Educational, and Residential Glass Projects
12/16/2023
Indre Bileris: Mastering Design and Painting for Liturgical, Educational, and Residential Glass Projects
Master Glass Painter at Judson Studios in Los Angeles, California, Indre Bileris earned a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and became involved in stained glass conservation during that same time at St. Ann and the Holy Trinity’s conservation program. Having been a conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters from 2007 to 2012, the artist arrived at the Judson Studios with an extensive body of design and painting work for liturgical, educational, and residential installations. Her hand can be seen in much of the painted work that comes out of the studio today. As a replication painter since 1996, Bileris has learned her craft from masters no longer bound by earthly constraints. Their work remains, part legacy, part teacher, and in learning how to recreate their style and imagery she is now able to incorporate elements of each master into her own artwork. The artist has created new work and done replication painting in equal portions, with a side of autonomous work made for art shows and donations to the American Glass Guild (AGG) auction. With a Masters in education, for a time she countered her solitary life as a glass painter by working with young children as an art teacher. Bileris began her training as a stained glass replication painter while still attending and completing undergraduate work at Parsons School of Design. As a funded Kress Fellow and conservation apprentice at St. Ann’s for Restoration and the Arts, Inc. in Brooklyn Heights, New York, she recreated numerous damaged or destroyed painted works. Following her apprenticeship she did internships at Canterbury Cathedral Stained Glass Studio, England, and the Cologne, Germany Cathedral Studio. Early in her career Bileris was employed by Jack Cushen Studio Restoration, East Marion, New York, to replicate the painting and staining of The Four Winds stained glass window for the Stanford White Cottage, Tick Hall, Montauk, New York. Some of her other freelance projects for Cushen include painting and staining work for the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Ave, New York, and painting two figures in a Tiffany Studios window (circa 1900), which was in the possession of a private collector. “As a replicator, it’s not about you, but the people who came before. It’s detective work. You have to figure out what the artist did. It’s never gotten any easier. Now that I know more I realize how challenging it is to do. Part of what I love about stained glass is that it’s handed off from generation to generation. Replication allows you to be trained by artists who are no longer with us.” Her career as a replication painter has allowed Bileris to work on prestigious commissions with many of the best stained glass studios in the country. She co-designed and created watercolor sketches and cartoons for Venturella Studio, Union Square, New York, for the studio’s 68 square feet of designed and fabricated stained glass for The Ivy Club, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. These windows commemorate the inclusion of women into the club through the imagery of migrating butterflies and ivy. Another project for Venturella Studio involved designing and painting windows for a synagogue in Maple Glenn, Pennsylvania, home to 70 windows created by Benoît Gilsoul. Like many glass painters, Bileris’ process begins with a trace and matte. She started out working with gum and water for tracing, but eventually switched to clove oil because it’s much more forgiving and flexible. In 2013, Bileris was awarded an AGG scholarship to study glass painting with Jonathan Cooke at Wheaton Village, Milleville, New Jersey. Cooke served a traditional apprenticeship at York Minster and started his own business in 1987. His book was published early in 2013. Bileris’ projects have included residential commissions, such as her work for a private wine cellar on Oyster Bay, Long Island. This commission included four windows: a plated window that mimics tile patterns and displays an iron work pattern on a separate piece of plated glass; a pair of sandblasted, painted, and stained glass windows that feature animals drinking wine; and a tessellating pattern window also featuring wildlife. “Those windows feel very much like me,” she states. As a submission for the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review, Bileris created her autonomous work The Show as well as a nursery window based on her love of English illustration. Fabricated at Venturella Studios, The Show was included in AGG’s 2011 members’ exhibition. “It’s challenging to find an in-road to doing painted windows as personal artistic expression. Stained glass is not considered art because there are a lot of works out there taken directly from pattern books. The ecclesiastic tie reminds many people of houses of worship rather than galleries. And stained glass is dependent on light and environment and somehow is too crafty or pretty or religious. But it fits me. I want to keep growing and see if I can really become an artist in this medium, to be brave enough to go beyond being an able illustrator on glass. Georgia O’Keeffe said: ‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.’” At the end of 2015, Bileris left New York and took a position as lead painter at Judson Studios in LA. Though she has never prioritized showing gallery work, thanks to Judson Studios the artist exhibited in a group LA Art show, and a small work was included in the 2023 show through the SGAA. She is starting work for a group show at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, California, this upcoming year and may be working with Narcissus Quagliata on his online class in 2024. Earlier this year, Bileris taught a two-week course at the Vilnius Academy of Art In Lithuania, which was a dream come true as she is the child of Lithuanian immigrants. “I was born in the US but spoke Lithuanian as my first language, so that chance basically pulled together everything I care about.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/29103598
info_outline
Deanna Clayton’s Figurative and Decorative Pate de Verre Vessels
12/01/2023
Deanna Clayton’s Figurative and Decorative Pate de Verre Vessels
Following her father’s passing 10 years ago, Deanna Clayton’s artwork took an unexpected turn when she found herself modeling clay into a figurative vessel rather than a decorative one. The translation of the clay form into glass symbolized glass’ inherent life-affirming qualities. Soft, flowing edges at the bases of these sculptures add to the sense of impermanence; electroplated copper helps to ground the figures, enhancing their presence. Clayton states: “The inspiration for this new body of work is a true love of the life inherent in glass itself. To create a face in glass is a self-evident evocation of the material’s life quality. Creating abstracted forms in glass that become believable as life is what is truly inspiring. This is what continues my quest to experiment and explore glass and its capabilities as an art form.” Clayton started working with glass 35 years ago as a student in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She began as most glass artists do, by being introduced to a blow pipe and a furnace of molten glass. Her work prior to finding glass was primarily drawing and printmaking, with an emphasis on representing the human form. She earned her associates in fine arts degree at Bucks County Community College. Wanting to continue her education in glass, Clayton chose Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, where the program taught by Henry Halem had produced some of the most successful glass artists working at the time. After two years, she moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor of fine arts degree in art history in 2002. While attending the University of Illinois, Clayton started her own glass studio with her husband, Keith Clayton. After 10 years in Illinois, in 1995 the couple discovered beautiful Door County, Wisconsin, where they moved with their three children. The studio was known for its pate de verre technique and electroplated copper vessels – a successful source of inspiration to her for over 20 years. Today, D.C. Studios LLC is designed to educate others in the ancient and rewarding process of pate de verre. Clayton has taught classes at the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; The Cleveland Institute of Art; and Duncan McClellan Glass Project, St. Petersburg, Florida. Her work can be seen in public and private collections around the world. This year’s exhibitions included a solo exhibition, Surging Forward, at Duncan McClellan Gallery, St. Petersburg, Florida; Glass Coast Weekend, Habatat Fine Art, Sarasota, Florida; and Art Palm Beach, Mattsen Fine Art, Palm Beach, Florida. Artist awards include the 2019 Collectors Choice, 47th Annual International Glass Invitational, Habatat Galleries, Royal Oak, Michigan; SAC Award, Professional Dimensions Group, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Most Unique Interpretation of a Vessel, Habatat Galleries, Boca Raton, Florida. Says Clayton: “I love the versatility and freshness of glass as an artistic medium. The potential for expression in contemporary glass is limitless.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/28873303
info_outline
Daniel Clayman: Capturing Light in Cast Glass Sculpture and Large-Scale Installations
11/24/2023
Daniel Clayman: Capturing Light in Cast Glass Sculpture and Large-Scale Installations
Some might say that Daniel Clayman is more a sculptor using glass as his primary material than a glass artist. That is to say his sculptures would be successful from a formal point of view no matter what material they were created in. With one major exception: the play of light in Clayman’s glass art enhances the objects dramatically in comparison with how they might appear in a solid, non-translucent medium. Born in 1957 in Lynn, Massachusetts, Clayman planned a career as a theater lighting designer, studying in the theater and dance departments at Connecticut College, eventually dropping out of college to work in the professional theater, dance and opera world. A chance class in 1980 introduced the artist to using glass as a sculptural material. In 1986, he received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and has maintained a studio in East Providence, Rhode Island since then. Clayman’s interests in engineering, the behavior of light, and the memory of experience, act as an impetus for much of his work. Having turned his attention to large-scale installations, he employs technology from the simplest hand tool to the latest three-dimensional modeling and production tools. Recent public projects include Rainfield, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Media Center Atrium, exhibition dates: January 23, 2017 – January 23, 2018; and Radiant Landscape, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton Township, New Jersey, exhibition dates: May 7, 2017 – February 28, 2018. Clayman is the recipient of several grants and awards and has had numerous one-person shows throughout the country to include the Tacoma Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts. Works in glass sculpture by the artist can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Art in San Francisco, The Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. An artist/educator, Clayman has taught in Japan, Israel and Australia in addition to a robust teaching schedule here in the U.S. He has been a Visiting Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design and Artist in Residence at Tyler School of Art and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He lectures frequently and teaches workshops at Penland School of Crafts, Pilchuck and The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, among others. In 2018, Clayman became the first endowed chair of glass at University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Clayman states: “While I moved away from a professional career pursuit in lighting design, I have never turned away from my observations of light. Using glass as my primary sculptural material, I have spent the last 20 years developing a vocabulary of forms which describe volumes of light. Over the past four years, my studio work has centered around the creation of large-scale glass castings that thematically reference the capturing of light. One of the many mysteries of light is that it refuses to reveal any of its essence until it happens to reflect on something other than itself. For instance, the headlight of a car projects (reflects) light onto objects as the viewer approaches, but not until there is a foggy mist in the air does one see the shape and arc of the beam.”
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/28761383
info_outline
A Pursuit of Perfection: Jack Storms’ Cold-Fusion Glass Sculptures
11/10/2023
A Pursuit of Perfection: Jack Storms’ Cold-Fusion Glass Sculptures
Each piece in Jack Storms’ newest line of sculptures begins with the artist’s unique and meticulously hand-crafted Infinity Core, boasting 30 times more intricacy and a mesmerizing sparkle that outshines anything you’ve seen before. Every facet reflects a world of colors, and each sculpture captures a symphony of light. Growing up in New Hampshire as a talented athlete and motivated student, Storms didn’t discover his passion for art until his twenties, at the end of which he earned his BA in art with a focus on studio production from Plymouth State University. During his junior year, the young artist began apprenticing at the studio of coldworking artist Toland Sand, who was combining lead crystal and dichroic glass via a cold-glass process. Eventually Storms became a strong enough sculptor to branch out on his own and in 2004 opened StormWorks Studio. Storms’ unique cold-glass process can take up to 10 weeks. He begins at the heart of the design by creating a core of lead crystal which is cut, polished and laminated creating reflective mirrors. When wrapped in optical glass, the refraction of light as it passes through the glass art creates rainbows of hypnotic color. The process requires repetitive cutting, grinding and polishing, and relies upon Fibonacci’s theory of natural mathematics found in nature. States Storms: “Natural beauty is created, not manufactured. From the repetition of florets in a flower to the scales of a pineapple’s skin, Fibonacci numbers are found in the pattern of growth of every living thing in nature.” Both challenged and inspired by the notion that his artistic goals were impossible, early on Storms invented a cold-working lathe uniquely suited to his process. His invention offered the artist the ability to turn glass and sculpt shapes with curves and details like one would produce from a wooden medium. Early memories of studying his father’s craftsmanship on a wood lathe provided him with the blueprint for his vision. Pioneering new trails in the world of fine art has always motivated Storms. Seen by the world in multiple viral videos featuring his kaleidoscopic and prismatic cold-fusion glass sculptures, Storms’ pieces have also been featured in Marvel’s film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1, and the artist created a life-sized bat to commemorate Derek Jeter’s 3000th Hit. Storms’ laborious process of repetitive cutting, grinding and polishing requires intense passion and rigid self-discipline, resulting in his signature works of contemporary glass art. Currently, Storms is developing new designs for wearable art. These wearable sculpture designs follow the same creative process and spirit as the artist’s larger, more dynamic sculptures. He says: “My design philosophy revolves around creating something that fosters a closer connection with people. I want people to have a personal item they can take with them and truly fall in love with. I believe the future holds great promise for wearable art, and I anticipate seeing its prevalence grow in the coming years.” Go to for 10 percent off your Jack Storms artwork purchase! Use coupon code GLASS10.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/28568723
info_outline
Pioneering Cold Worked Glass: David Huchthausen’s Mysterious Fourth Dimension
11/03/2023
Pioneering Cold Worked Glass: David Huchthausen’s Mysterious Fourth Dimension
The emitted light from a David Huchthausen sculpture is an artwork unto itself. For the last five decades plus, the artist has been captivating viewers through sculpture defined by its unique and other-worldly manipulation of light. A critic once described his work as “high tech spiritual,” an observation the artist rather liked. Huchthausen once stated: “Creation is a continual and evolutionary process, constantly digesting and reevaluating past experiences and current perspectives. My work has always been deliberately enigmatic and mysterious. I constantly strive to generate a strange and curious quality that both tantalizes and challenges the viewer to develop his own response system. The work must have an existence of its own if it is to have any real significance.” Huchthausen was one of the first artists of the Studio Glass Movement to emphasize cold working and fabrication techniques such as cutting, sawing, laminating, and optical polishing. Within his most recent crystal-clear geometric forms, the artist integrates complex shapes, concave lenses and intricate color panels, reflecting and refracting light as it hits the shapes and projecting colored glass patterns into the fractures and lenses below. Huchthausen’s sculptural narrative has always been enigmatic by design, challenging the viewer with its curious and unknowable quality. Ferdinand Hampson, co-founder of Habatat Gallery, wrote: “David Huchthausen is one of an elite group of artists who have altered the history of contemporary glass. As a Fulbright scholar, university professor and museum consultant, his achievements over the past 50 years have played a vital role in the evolution of the material into a fine art form. “As an architecture student at the University of Wisconsin, Huchthausen gravitated toward the sculpture department, working with welded steel, wood and found objects. In 1970 he discovered an abandoned glass furnace in the corner of an old brewery building on the Wausau campus. After six months of struggling, he learned of Harvey Littleton’s work in Madison 150 miles to the south. Once contact had been established, Huchthausen’s career moved with rapid strides. He served as Littleton’s graduate assistant in the early 1970s, ran the Illinois State University Glass Program during Joel Myers’ sabbatical in 1976 and lectured throughout Europe as a Fulbright scholar in 1977 and 1978. During this period, he established vital links between European and American artists and galleries, organizing numerous exhibitions in both the United States and Europe. As curatorial and acquisitions consultant for the Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, he conceived and developed Americans In Glass. This important series of exhibitions in 1978, 1981 and 1984 documented the evolution of American Studio Glass from its early emphasis on blown forms and hot working to the explosion of sculptural and conceptual concerns of the mid 1980s. The landmark 1984 exhibition traveled to museums across Europe and provided the first major review of any glass exhibition by Art In America. “As an educator and art professor, Huchthausen has been a significant influence on a generation of glass artists. He was one of the first Americans to emphasize coldworking in the early 1970s. Large sculptural constructions such as Spider’s Nest, which combined hot-worked, cast, and architectural glass elements, stand as historical landmarks of the period. Many of the specialized fabrication techniques he pioneered are widely used by other artists today. “Throughout his career, Huchthausen has remained a strong advocate of increased aesthetic criticism of contemporary glass. His outspoken and often controversial positions have helped articulate a basis for today’s increased level of critical dialog. As an artist Huchthausen has consistently maintained a high degree of integrity in his work. Limiting production to 12 to 15 pieces each year, he devotes several months to the development and creation of each sculpture. Even within a specific series the images are extremely unique, furthering his evolution of the concept without letting it harden into a formula. “Huchthausen’s background in architecture and personal fascination with primitive art and ritual, have remained strong influences over the years. He deliberately imbues his sculpture with an enigmatic quality, generating a strange and curious energy, which entices the viewer. “One unique aspect of Huchthausen’s sculpture is his innovative integration of glass and light, the concept that the projected images and patterns constitute an integral and inseparable component of the sculpture. These ideas have their genesis in his large totemic forms of the early 1970s and have permeated his work to varying degrees throughout his career. They were more fully explored in his mysterious Leitungs Scherben series of the 1980s, where transformed and altered patterns were projected with amazing clarity onto the surface beneath the piece. Huchthausen’s next body of work expanded on that foundation. “The Adumbration and Implosion series (1991 – 1999) combine the integral color laminations that have become a trademark of his work, with massive blocks of crystal. By juxtaposing the pristine optically polished surfaces with fractured jagged edges, Huchthausen created precariously balanced fragments alluding to a larger whole. The colored shadow projections are directed into the heart of the piece, splashing colored light onto the fractures, radiating like translucent watercolors into pools of intense color. Huchthausen creates an illusion of incredible complexity that appears and then vanishes as the viewer is drawn around the piece, only to reappear as the refracted image mutates and projects onto another plane. The constantly shifting visual depth and dimensionality create new and unique views from every angle. This use of the full 360-degree circumference of the piece sets Huchthausen apart from many artists, creating sculpture that is in perpetual visual motion. “The Implosion sequence evolved into the Echo Chambers, which expanded on the use of hand polished lenses cut into the bases of the sculpture. These concave orbs reflected and distorted the geometric color patterns laminated onto the top of the sculpture, further enhancing the complexity of the illusionary space and creating a kaleidoscopic effect as the viewer moves. “Huchthausen’s latest series of Spheres began after he read an article on the theoretical analysis of gravitational fields. The article described the three-dimensional universe that we perceive, as a holographic projection, generated by a two-dimensional field at the edge of infinity. The optical simplicity of the sphere permits an intimate exploration of the interior geometry. With the Spheres, Huchthausen has fully escaped the perception of three-dimensional space. His spheres have no top, bottom, up, down, front, or back; every axis point creates a unique visual perspective that is in a constant state of flux.” Having participated in over 500 national and international exhibitions and included in 80 permanent museum collections, Huchthausen is considered a leader in both the glass specific and larger art worlds. His public collections include: (NY); (Norfolk, VA); (MI); (Atlanta, GA); The Hokkaido Museum (Sapporo, Japan); (CA); (New York, NY);; ; (Liège, Belgium); (Washington, D.C.); (WA); and many more. Today, Huchthausen creates sculpture from his Seattle studio. He has also renovated several historic buildings in the city, including the 150,000-square-foot Bemis Brothers Bag Building, where studio space is leased to other artists. Over his 53 years in glass, Huchthausen’s work has been documented in many books and catalogs. He is currently working on three new books to include Classic Motor Yachts 1910-1960 and Art Deco Glass: The Huchthausen Collection, as well as a book covering the history of his own sculpture. An exhibition of the artist’s Art Deco collection has been travelling for seven years. On his way to Cebu in the Philippines where he escapes Seattle’s gray winter, Huchthausen spoke with TOYG about when he fell in love with light, how he uses glass in the telling of his stories and why his work remains relevant and collectible into the 21st century and beyond.
/episode/index/show/talkingoutyourglass/id/28499612