Oceans of Emotion: Kait Rhoads’ Glass Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Jeremy Sinkus’ Geologicalized Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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....
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The Artistry and Craftsmanship of Dan Alexander
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Maria Sheets: Stained Glass, Conservation and Vitreonics
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Glassworks Ajeto and Ricardo Hoineff: IGS 2024
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Gene Koss: From Farm to Flame
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Ryan Thompson: From Blown Away 4 to Huron Street Studio
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Peter Layton and the Legacy of London Glassblowing
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
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Glass Bead Artist, Kristina Logan: The Dot Queen
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
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...
info_outlineSaid 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 – [email protected]. Her Corning residency takes place April 22 – 28, and she’ll participate in a group show at Traver Gallery in Seattle this October.