Zachary Layhew and Hoseok Youn: Rise of the Tradition
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Release Date: 08/28/2025
Gen Z Glassblower Jack Spitzer
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Demonstrating at the 2026 Glass Art Society conference at the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 24-year-old Jack Spitzer impressed the standing-room-only crowd as he created a vessel form from his Stochastic Series. The young glassblowing phenom was met with enthusiastic applause as he carried out a technical move known as “The Laydown.” Born in July of 2025, Spitzer’s Stochastic Series started as opaque vessels and transformed into the current transparent cane vessels. The newer work debuted at Sandra Ainsley Gallery last week. These new...
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John Luebtow: Perfect Investigations of Beauty and Abstraction
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Over the past 55 plus years, John Gilbert Luebtow has become one of the most respected names in contemporary glass sculpture. Inspired by Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, the artist developed innovative technical processes in glass-making, introducing and incorporating gesture and expressive qualities into impeccably finished sculptural components. A student of Harvey Littleton, Mark Peiser and others, Luebtow explored blown, cast, and fused glass, as well as other techniques. Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, California, presented Retrospective – From...
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Cedric Mitchell: At the Intersection of Craft, Design and Culture
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Cedric Mitchell is a multidisciplinary designer, glass artist, and cultural tastemaker successfully combining elements including craft, utility, and visual culture. His work is rooted in handmaking but reaches beyond any single medium. He designs objects that carry energy, emotion, and intention – pieces meant to live with people. Says Mitchell: “My design language is what I call modern funk. It is defined by bold color, playful geometry, and confident forms balanced by structure and refinement. I draw inspiration from music, movement, architecture, and everyday rituals. Whether I am...
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C. Matthew Szösz: Traversing Unpredicted Landscapes
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
An artist and educator, C. Matthew Szösz has established a practice that revolves around experimentation and investigation of techniques and material, with a focus on understanding the ways in which physical objects and events transform into intellectual and emotional experiences. He operates and is interested in the space that exists between design, craft and fine art. Wrote William Warmus in Glass, the UrbanGlass Art Quarterly: “So each Szösz project represents a unique inquiry into outcomes driven by curiosity, inspiration, and technical opportunity. Attempting to...
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Davide Salvadore: Keeping Murano at the Heart of the International Glass Community
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
You might imagine that if you were born and raised on the island of Murano in Italy, with forefathers and relatives immersed in glass for generations, that one would have a mighty head start in becoming a famous glass artist. But in many ways, these connections make the goal of establishing an original voice as a glassblower a hefty challenge indeed. The artist in question would have big shoes to fill. Davide Salvadore strives for perfection in his work, surpassing the simple notion of glassblowing as a job and entering into the realm of passion, artistry and service to the material. His...
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Studio Glass Pioneers Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C. Mace: Inventing Processes to Realize Ideas
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C. Mace consistently invite us to enter a meditative state. Whatever the medium, each piece seems to raise more questions than provide answers. The artists, respected for their innovative work, have concluded the series for which they are most known, large-scale blown glass fruit and vegetable forms. Their subsequent work includes life-size figurative wood and glass sculptures as well as outdoor bronze installations and glass work that features blown vessels and cast panels with illustrations of the ‘first facts’ of bird identification realized through...
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Jesse Olwen Stained Glass: Wrapping New Flesh on the Bones of An Ancient Craft
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
In a heartbreakingly dark and beautiful panel depicting the Statue of Liberty afloat in a pond amongst lily pads, water grasses and small frogs, Jesse Olwen reveals his inner sadness about the state of affairs in the US and wider world today. Though the most recent, this is not the only one of his works to reference Memento Mori– a Latin phrase meaning, remember that you have to die. Olwen is a stained glass artist based in Montreal, working at the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary visual culture. His work reinterprets historic techniques through...
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Documenting Laura Donefer's Glass Fashion Show
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Laura Donefer is known for artwork that pushes boundaries by exploring memory, assault, bereavement, joy and madness. Celebrated for her innovative, colorful blown glass and flameworked Amulet Baskets, the artist has been using glass as the primary medium in her work for over 40 years, all while teaching, promoting the glass arts worldwide, and producing her unforgettable Glass Fashion Show (GFS). Donefer has produced 15 of her extraordinary fashion shows, many for the Glass Art Society (GAS). In fact, at GAS Murano 2018, her remarkable and ground-breaking event included 33 glass costumes worn...
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Jen Elek: Reflecting, Magnifying and Representing Bold Color in Hot Glass
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Investigating interpersonal themes and the notion of community, Jen Elek is a studio artist and educator based in Seattle, Washington. She creates objects and installations of colorful glass and neon light employed as a form of non-verbal communication. Her most recent glass series titled Doliums is inspired by large Roman clay storage containers. Elek received her BFA from Alfred University in Metal and Hot Glass sculpture in 1994, after training as a welder in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was a student of Michael Scheiner, Dante Marioni, and Ann Wahlstrom at Pilchuck...
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Ariana Makau and Nzilani Glass Conservation: At the Intersection of Equity, Preservation and Art
Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Ariana Makau, founder of Nzilani Glass Conservation, was the second person in the world – and the first woman – to receive a Master’s Degree in Stained Glass Conservation from the Royal College of Art in London. Equally comfortable on a job site, at a board meeting or in a museum, Makau has over 30 years of experience with art and architectural preservation. Her work is most fulfilling at the intersection of equity, preservation and art. Nzilani Glass Conservation is an award-winning firm and one of the few companies in the United States qualified to create new or preserve...
info_outlineAt the Glass Art Society’s (GAS) 2025 conference, Trailblazing New Traditions, held in May in Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas, Zachary Layhew and Hoseok Youn presented a unique collaborative glassblowing demonstration where Youn’s Venetian fantasy vessels intersected with the baroque, cubist influences of Layhew’s practice. The artists shared their unique approaches to traditional techniques and designs, both makers transforming the context of tradition through the lens of their original personalities. The result was a figurative sculpture constructed from historical goblets and decorative stemware, combined with the line patterns of cane. Goblets and cane are common and popular in the glass tradition, but this demonstration showed the community a creative and innovative way to elevate those methods to new frontiers while paying respect to their origins.
Layhew started his glass career at the age of 14 by taking an introductory intensive at the Pittsburgh Glass Center (PGC) called Teen Bootcamp. He quickly fell in love with the material and the community surrounding it. Through the years, the artist has focused on his technical skills in glass and developing his personal voice through sculpture. His work revolves around a combination of glassblowing, cold working, and then further reheating, manipulating, and assembling the pieces.
Working as an artist and instructor at PGC, Layhew assists other Pittsburgh artists in his spare time. He will teach Lines, Rings, and Patterned Things at Foci, the Minnesota Center for Glass Arts, from November 12 through 16. In December, the artist has a residency at Keystone College, Factoryville, Pennsylvania, and through the rest of 2025 and 2026, he will teach eight-week classes at PGC. Additionally, Layhew creates production work that is sold online and in person.
A South Korean glass artist specializing in glassblowing, Youn holds a BFA degree in glass and ceramics from Namseoul University, Cheon Ahn, Korea, and earned an MFA in glass from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois. He has taught at Bowling Green State University as an adjunct professor, was a studio artist at Toledo Museum of Art and a studio lead at Belger Arts in Kansas City, Missouri.
Youn’s artistic practice focuses on Venetian traditional glass, figurative sculptures, and photography. He is inspired by heroes and villains based on pop culture and toys. His work reflects the image of his ideal successful self, combining crystal clear glass, elaborate vessel forms, intricate stemware, and abundant details. In 2026, he will teach a workshop at Pilchuck Glass School, session 7. Click this link for details https://www.pilchuck.org/programs/sessions/lost-and-found
Enjoy this conversation with Layhew and Youn about their individual work in glass as well as their groundbreaking collaborative demo at the 2025 GAS conference.