Mathieu Grodet: Expressing Complex Modern Themes via Multi-Disciplinary Glass Works
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Using over 17,500 letters of handmade murrine tiles, Mathieu Grodet composed La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, which translated means the Declaration of Human Rights, which was written in 1789. Recreated in mosaic style, dark red was used to represent blood, with the ivory-colored background symbolizing the ivory tower that freedom must be taken from. Intense attention to detail combined with a contemporary message defines Grodet’s multi-disciplinary works in glass. A French-born artist living and working in Canada, Grodet also creates thin and elegant...
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Joshua Hershman: Combining Casting, Coldworking and Photography in Groundbreaking Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
An American born artist dedicated to developing new techniques of glass working, Joshua Hershman combines optical physics with the fluidity of glass to make his contemporary sculpture. By harnessing light though hand-polished lenses, he employs unique methods of casting, coldworking, and photography in his boundary pushing work. Hershman states: “My work offers meditations on the complexities within the concept of photography and the repercussions of the camera’s impact on culture. The incredibly creative and destructive nature of photography is both inspiring and alarming to me. It...
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Kari Russell-Pool: Flameworking Glass Heirlooms
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Primarily a flameworker, Kari Russell-Pool approaches her work in a painterly fashion. She is interested in the transformation of an object into an heirloom. Made from hand-pulled glass rods, her Safety Mom Series, for example, was inspired by post-September 11 ideas of keeping a family safe. That series, in incongruously cheerful colors, is dominated by images of guns and keys, and the delicate glasswork is patterned to look like traditional needlework, which kept women’s hands busy in the 18th and 19th centuries. For her Trophy Series, Russell-Pool flameworked a strikingly delicate and...
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Dylan Martinez: Glass Sculpture Confronting the Limits of Perception
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
At the heart of Dylan Martinez’s work lies the striking H2O/SiO2 series, inspired by the artistic tradition of Trompe L’œil—the technique that deceives the eye into perceiving three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Each sculpture is meticulously hot-sculpted and hand-molded by Martinez, capturing the fluid movement of rising bubbles and the delicate form of what appears, at first glance, to be bags of water. These pieces transcend objecthood; they are immersive experiences that invite stillness, inspection, and recalibration of the senses. Martinez reflects, “Our vision has the...
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Melissa Janda: Sharing Willet Studios’ Gems at AGG Conference
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
As lead painter and art department manager for Willet Studios in Winona, Minnesota, Melissa Janda will speak about Willet’s large-scale projects at the upcoming American Glass Guild Conference, being held in Mesa, Arizona, from May 22 – 24, 2025. With 30 years of experience in the field of stained glass, Janda is adept at all aspects of stained glass production, specializing in glass painting, design and restoration work. From St. Agnes Catholic Church in Key Biscayne, Florida, to St. Jane de Chantal Catholic Church, Bethesda, Maryland, the results are stunning and speak...
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Meggy Wilm: Artist and Owner of Colorado Glass Works, D&L Art Glass Supply
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
One of the most followed stained glass artists on social media, Meggy Wilm of Colorado Glass Works, Boulder, Colorado, shares her creations with nearly 275K (and growing) followers on Instagram – attracting a new audience of young enthusiasts to the medieval craft. Wilm and her husband Dustin Mayfield also recently purchased Boulder-based D&L Art Glass Supply from Leslie Silverman, who dedicated 50 years to the company she founded. Experienced entrepreneurs, Wilm and Mayfield have a deep appreciation for the art glass industry and a forward-thinking vision for...
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Murano’s Ferro Brothers: Carved in Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Working with abrasive spinning wheels, the Ferro brothers cold work glass vessels in brilliant colors. Their dramatic cuts are sometimes five layers deep, and they cradle each piece for hours, days, and often weeks, painstakingly grinding away to reveal what lies underneath. There is always the danger that the piece will shatter, so it is a painstaking process. The finished vessel is a passionate work of art in vibrant translucent colors and energetic textures. Pietro and Riccardo Ferro were born in 1975 and 1980, respectively. Under the guidance of their father, cold-working Maestro Paolo...
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Stephanie Trenchard: Casting Womens’ Narratives in Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Stephanie Trenchard’s multi-disciplinary creative process includes painting and poetry along with cast glass. With a focus on biographical stories of how women artists have navigated careers and partnerships, motherhood and making a living while still focusing on their creative practice, the work also discusses the price the art has to pay in this grand juggling act. The artist prioritizes the actual experience of the work, making and seeing it, over the classification of genre or ownership of an idea. Says Trenchard: “I create my own visual vocabulary in storytelling. Using...
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Joyce J. Scott: Repositioning Craft as a Forceful Stage for Social Commentary and Activism
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
For more than three decades, trailblazing artist and activist Joyce J. Scott has elevated the creative potential of beadwork as a relevant contemporary art form. Scott uses off-loom, hand-threaded glass beads to create striking figurative sculptures, wall hangings, and jewelry informed by her African American ancestry, the craft traditions of her family (including her mother, renowned quilter Elizabeth T. Scott), and traditional Native American techniques, such as the peyote stitch. Each object that Scott creates is a unique, vibrant, and challenging work of art developed with imagination,...
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Studio Glass Pioneer Joel Philip Myers
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
self-described loner, Joel Philip Myers developed his skills in relative isolation from the Studio Glass movement. With works inspired by a vast array of topics ranging from his deep love of the Danish countryside to Dr. Zharkov, the artist avoided elaborate sculpture in favor of substantial vessels that are simple yet powerful. States Myers: “In 1964, on the occasion of an exhibition titled Designed for Production: The Craftsman’s Approach, I wrote in an essay in Craft Horizons magazine: ‘My approach to glass, as it is to clay, is to allow the material an...
info_outlineKim Thomas: The Escape and Beyond
A prolific borosilicate flameworker producing highly recognizable works in functional and sculptural glass, Kim Thomas aka Zii is changing the face of flameworking. From detailed and realistic human teeth and severed finger pipes to her latest kinetic sculpture, the artist is redefining what is possible at the torch. From January – April, 2021, recent works The Cloud Capturing Apparatus and The Cloud Riding Contraption were exhibited in Glass in The Expanded Field at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, New Jersey.
Thomas also participated in Hunterdon’s companion symposium, Pipe Art: Understudied Glass, which considered the glass pipe as a fluid work of art fundamental to the art history of glass. Celebrated artists Dan Coyle and Luken Sheafe, whose artist name is SALT, presented their intensely wrought, figural, and in the case of Thomas, sometimes kinetic, pipes. Joined by Susie J. Silbert, Curator at the Corning Museum of Glass, these artists further contextualized their work within the burgeoning field of pipe-making.
Following graduation from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in ceramics, Thomas attended The Make Up Designory and later worked as an assistant to award-winning special effects make-up artist Kevin Haney. In 2009, when she answered an advertisement for a studio apprentice in North Hollywood, California, Thomas discovered her passion for flameworking. With lessons from her studio mates and observation she quickly learned the medium and turned her practice into a career.
Now making work from the Urban Pheasant Glass Studio, Detroit, Michigan, Thomas is a former professor of glass at Salem Community College in New Jersey, and guest instructor at various schools and studios including Penland School of Craft, Snow Farm, and the Pilchuck School of Glass. She has demonstrated her techniques at The International Flameworking Conference and The Glass Art Society Conference, and exhibits her work in museums and galleries across the United States. Her attention to detail and regard for realism have resulted in a highly recognizable aesthetic signature. In a world where the inherent beauty of glass is regularly exploited, Thomas relies on a gritty realism to set her work apart. Few, if any, artists create similar work.
As Thomas continues to work on The Escape series – she prepares to teach classes at Penland School of Craft, July 18 – August 2 and Snow Farm from August 8 – 13. Both classes are full with waiting lists. She will also participate in an emerging artist residency at Pilchuck Glass School, October 6 – November 22, 2021.
Nicknamed after her classic 1978 Camaro Z28, Zii believes the most creative and engaging work is influenced by the things that find their way into your dreams. She says: “It’s easy with pipemaking to get pigeonholed into making one type of piece –- if you’re doing it as a living, you have to please your fans and make things they will buy. As an artist, if you want to grow and develop, and have some sort of message, you can’t just make one thing over and over.”