David Graeber: Preserving Nature for Eternity in a Paperweight
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Morgan Peterson: Winner of Blown Away 4
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Clifford Rainey: A Life's Travelogue in Cast Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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The State of Stained Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Kazuki Takizawa Uses Glass Art to Address Mental Health Issues
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Jessica Loughlin’s Kiln Formed Glass: An Homage to the Observation of Light
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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The Glass Galaxies of Josh Simpson
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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,...
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Wesley Fleming: Flameworking the Realism of the Microcosmos
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Robin and Julia Rogers: A Collaboration Resulting in Provocative Glass Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Flameworking 2024: Perspectives
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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The Nature of Hallie Monroe’s Autonomous Panels
With nature as her muse, stained glass artist Hallie Monroe recently completed two ground-breaking autonomous panels. The first references a recent study on octopus intelligence. It depicts her imaginings of what cephalopods could do with the car keys, sunglasses and smartphones routinely dropped overboard and into the ocean by humans. The other illustrates the heart-wrenching effects of 2019’s summer fires on the world’s wildlife.
“These are not your grandmother’s church windows. I wanted to explore topics that go beyond the blonde Jesus interpretations I have painted so many times to speak about modern topics of climate change and society.”
A graduate of the Pratt Institute with a BFA in Illustration, Monroe’s experience as a glass painter is vast and includes All Saints Episcopal Church’s Chapel of Ease in Barbados (2006 – 2009); Conrad Pickel Studios, Vero Beach, Florida, where she worked on one of the largest stained glass windows in the US for Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida (summer 2009); and Willet Hauser Architectural Glass (2010- 2014). Over the years, the artist has also painted for many freelance clients including Holdman Studios, Lehi, Utah; the Art of Glass, Media, Pennsylvania; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; The Gil Studio, Brooklyn, New York; Serpentino Stained & Leaded Glass, Needham, Massachusetts; and Sunlites Stained Glass, Far Rockaway, New York.
Monroe’s process and techniques are basically the same whether painting liturgical work or creating personal autonomous panels. She begins by standing sheets of glass around her studio, allowing color and texture to interact with different light and inspire a design. In her work, Red Elephant, the artist utilized acid etching on red flashed glass in a protest against the slaughter of these animals for their ivory tusks. Silver stain was expertly applied to produce a glowing effect used in combination with the angle of the elephant charging to heighten the urgency of the message.
In another work, Owl in the Birches, Monroe relied upon Catspaw glass to create the dappled green background that so vividly conveys sunlight in the forest. This panel was exhibited in American Glass Now: 2014, the American Glass Guild’s (AGG) annual juried show held at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, from May 1 to June 30, 2014.
Semi-photorealistic portraits comprise a large percentage of both her personal and liturgical painting. “People of color are rarely depicted in stained glass, and I wanted to change that.”
The recipient of the AGG Scholarship, Monroe also received two grants from the Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA). The 2009 SGAA Elskus Scholarship enabled her to take a 12-day stained glass tour of southern France given by author and guide, David Wilde.
After 30 years of running her studio in Southampton, New York, Monroe recently relocated and opened Twin Elms Stained Glass Studio at Pittsford Village Farm, Pittsford, Vermont. An experienced instructor, Monroe has taught workshops at St. Michael’s Institute, Mystic, Connecticut; Amagansett Applied Art School, Amagansett, New York; Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York; and the 2019AGG conference held in San Antonio, Texas. In 2020, the artist will teach workshops at Yestermorrow Building Arts School, Waitsfield, Vermont, and out of her own studio.
In discussions about why stained glass has not found its place in art galleries, lack of content in the work is cited as a primary factor. This is closely followed by the challenges of exhibiting an art form with an absolute dependence on natural light. Monroe accepts the inherent limitations of her medium and with a masterful painter’s hand, blurs the lines between art and craft in profound images of our vanishing natural world.
“The public still thinks of stained glass as church windows. Architects using stained glass windows in ways outside of that definition and artists like myself showing in galleries so people can see the work outside of a church setting, will build new audiences for autonomous works in glass.”