Glass Bead Artist, Kristina Logan: The Dot Queen
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Release Date: 07/30/2024
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...
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Jen Blazina: Casting Lost Memories and Forgotten Voices in Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Perceiving her role as a record keeper, artist Jen Blazina captures the essence of lost memories and forgotten voices. Through her work, she holds onto fragments of personal history, transforming common objects into poignant relics of the past. Her visual narratives express universal concepts of memory, inviting audiences to connect with the stories she preserves. Blazina states: “Memory is embodied in everything around us: in our culture, beliefs, objects, and ourselves. Discarded objects and those passed down to me become personal keepsakes and icons of the past, rather than...
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A Confluence of Passion: Martin Gerdin’s Glass Gamefish
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Nothing short of inspirational, Martin Gerdin’s journey through crafting wild fish in hot glass is inextricably tangled with his evolution to mental health and sobriety. Beginning during the pandemic, the artist has hand-blown dozens of meticulously detailed trout, salmon, redfish, and other revered gamefish from his glassblowing studio, Gerdin Glass in Crawford, Colorado. The dangers, volatility, and physical labor of blowing glass are symbolic of the challenges he faced and conquered on his pathway to sober living. For some, fly fishing is a pastime, something fun to pursue...
info_outlineKristina 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.
https://www.kristinalogan.com/videos
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.”