Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend: Stretching Concepts and Pushing Processes of Traditional Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend is an artist for whom ideas have always been more important than media, and possibly more integral to her work. It’s interesting then that her art has been consistently viewed through the lens of glass. In the creation of her early X series to more recent Calendar Notations, she has pioneered techniques such as non-traditional, unfired painting on glass, mixing glass with other media, and presenting painted, decorated glass on the wall in reflected light. Throughout her career, the artist distilled her own life experiences in the creation of...
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Nadine Saylor: Telling Stories Behind the Objects, Places, and Lives They Touch
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Recently, Nadine Saylor has been creating a series of gas and oil cans featuring imagery of her local surroundings. These more “masculine” objects remind her of the things her grandfather had in his shed. In thinking about gender and how it relates to the objects with which we surround ourselves, she investigates what role gender plays in our world writ large. Assistant Professor of Glass and Sculpture at University of Nebraska, Kearney, Saylor is originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania. She received her BFA in Photography from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and her MFA in Glass...
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Rick Beck: Casting Large-Scale Industrial Objects and Figural Forms in Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Rick Beck’s modern cast and carved figurative glass sculptures are inspired by industrial and architectural works as well as the human form, with an emphasis on formal aspects. Interested in playing the volumes of mass against the rhythm of the lines, Beck enjoys the interplay of the visual versus the verbal, creating art that challenges the eye as well as the mind. Beck states: “My wife, Valerie, got me a book about the competitive relationship between Picasso and Matisse. Their artistic dialogue about the figure has fired my imagination, especially the way they shared and borrowed images...
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The Pain and Pleasure of Karisa Gregorio’s Stained Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Karisa Gregorio’s autonomous stained glass panels explore themes of sex, death, God, the Devil, pleasure, temptation, intimacy, love, lust, and indulgence. The relationship between glass and light in stained glass allows her to create works that feel alive. Using traditional processes as well as techniques developed by modern stained glass master Judith Schaechter, the depth and intimacy of Gregorio’s materials create a world in which the pleasures of the flesh and emotions of the heart are equally illuminated and illuminating. Having received her BFA in Craft + Material studies, with a...
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Stephen Dee Edwards: Studio Glass Pioneer, Glass Caster, Educator
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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Derek Hunt: Inspiring the Next Generation of Stained Glass Artists
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Derek Hunt is an award-winning glass artist and educator, a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an accredited stained glass conservator. He designs and makes glass artworks for public spaces, private homes and churches using methods to include traditional stained glass as well as working with new techniques such as screen and digital printing to push the creative boundaries of the medium. In addition to creating and restoring stained glass works, Hunt hosts specialist Master Classes throughout the year at his studio in...
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Gemma Hollister: Narrative Structure and Divine Light
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Upon graduation from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture with a BFA in glass, Gemma Hollister was awarded the Windgate-Lamar fellowship from the Center for Craft, which allowed her and her partner to start a small studio in Philadelphia, Antolini Glass Co. While balancing her personal artistic practice and work as a production glassblower, the artist recently appeared on Netflix’s Blown Away: Extreme Heat. The show inspired new work, which she made both in her own studio and during a residency at Monterey Glassworks. States Hollister: “Blown Away gave me a chance to...
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Hana Hastings, Sand and Fire Works: Using Social Networks to Successfully Market Stained Glass Patterns, Classes and Artwork
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Using Etsy for pattern sales, Patreon for teaching classes and Instagram for promoting her artwork, Hana Hastings, Sand and Fire Works, Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, has acquired a substantial following for her offerings in stained glass. Wanting to differentiate herself from the more traditional glass designs and commonly seen pattern work, Hastings brought nature and natural subjects into the homes of her patrons by experimenting with 3D sculpture and unique textures and colors of glass. Mastering her marketing efforts on social media, the artist grew a following significant enough to dedicate...
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Michael Meilahn: An Artist Farmer’s Focus on Corn and GMOs
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Michael (Mick) Meilahn’s body of work, which includes glass sculpture and large glass and multi-media installations, intertwines the artist’s investigation into agriculture, crop production, genetic food modification, and the ancient history of corn. Primordial Shift, a quintessential example of Meilahn’s later installations, consisted of 32 hand-blown glass ears of corn averaging 4-feet high, suspended on stalks of cord with leaves of cast bronze on a backdrop of video projected to create an illusion of gentle swaying in the breeze and surround-sound audio that included the...
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Austin Stern - 111325 3.40PM
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Austin Stern’s Little Monsters series is a body of work where cartoon-like creatures interact with physical manifestations of their own anxieties. These worries which assail the monsters, gleefully weighing down their minds and bodies, are simultaneously sinister and comical representations of our daily setbacks and stumbling blocks. By approaching this subject matter from a playful perspective, the viewer is invited to find the humor in the small battles we fight daily to find positivity, peace, and happiness. States Stern: “I am inspired by the bright and highly saturated...
info_outlineMicah Evans’ Paradigm Shift
Micah Evans blew people’s minds with his fuctional flameworked glass sewing machines that balanced clean traditional craft form and personal sculptural work. Referring to his glass obsession as “a disorder,” Evans was the first flameworker to receive the glass residency at Penland School of Craft, which he served from 2012 to 2015.
He says: “Lately I seem to be describing my work falling into two categories, things I love to make and things I have to make. The first category is easy; I am in love with the material. Like many glass artists I am a slave to the substance, the way it behaves and looks, the way it demands and gets my full attention whenever I work with it. I love to work with the material, therefore whatever I am making brings with it a genuine feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. The second category is harder to define but equally important. The work I can’t help but make are the ideas that won’t let me sleep, the ideas that have me drifting off in conversations to my own world of redesigning and problem solving. It’s the repeated execution of the simple shape that seems to inhabit every page of my sketchbook at the time. It’s exploring ideas over technique and the struggles that come with that process. These two worlds often interact, and I bounce back and forth constantly.”
Born in Cashmere, Washington, in the eastern foothills of the Cascade mountains, Evans moved to Seattle in 1996. He attended The Art Institute of Seattle, focusing on computer animation and illustration before he started flameworking at Stone Way Glass in 1999. After relocating to Jacksonville Beach, Florida, in 2000, the artist opened his first glassblowing studio two blocks from the beach. Five years of workshops and hustle in addition to the struggles of coping with the federal crackdown on pipe making inspired a transition to making more traditional craft objects and personal work.
Upon resettling in Miami, Evans became a studio assistant to William Carlson, chair of the Art Department at the University of Miami. Shortly thereafter he began working with ceramic artist, Bonnie Seeman, combining glass and ceramics. Through working with both of these artists he was introduced to SOFA and Art Basel.
In 2008, Evans relocated to Austin, Texas, where his personal artwork and pipe designs began to mature and develop a symbiotic relationship. His friendship with pipe maker and sculptor SALT pushed both artists in new directions. A 2011 class at Penland with Carmen Lozar inspired a big shift in Evans’ career. He describes his subsequent Penland Residency as “the most wonderfully brutal four years” of his life, where he learned to balance the dynamic of pipes and fine art in more than one way.
In 2016, Evans began designing full time for GRAV Labs, a product design company based in Austin, Texas. Working with glassblower, designer and engineer, Stephan Peirce, Evans has learned the language of industrial and product design. This opportunity presented him with a window into glass manufacturing that changed the way he thought about the material and how it can be used. He regularly visits glass studios and factories in China to research new ways of working and designing in borosilicate glass, with a current focus on engineering and adapting small-scale manufacturing processes observed in Asia to his studio practice. These events inspired a “paradigm shift” in Evans’ understanding about borosilicate glass and what can be done with the material.
Currently building out an expanded studio space at GRAV Labs focused on both R&D and his own work, Evans travels, teaches and lectures at schools and universities around the world about flameworking, design and glass subculture in the United States.