Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Early in his career, Paul Stankard used to trade paperweights for gasoline and car servicing with John Graeber. In 1989, through his uncle John, David Graeber wound up casually visiting Stankard’s studio and weeks later was invited to come and work with him. Young Graeber started learning about glass in the deep end of the pool. Thirty-five years later, he continues to work with Stankard about a day a week. Having mastered numerous glassmaking techniques and having developed his own working style and visual aesthetic, in 2009 Graeber started his own art glass...
info_outline Morgan Peterson: Winner of Blown Away 4Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Said 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...
info_outline Clifford Rainey: A Life's Travelogue in Cast GlassTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Principally a sculptor who employs cast glass and drawing as primary methodologies, Clifford Rainey creates work that is interdisciplinary, incorporating a wide spectrum of materials and processes. A passionate traveler, his work is full of references to the things he has seen and experienced. Celtic mythologies, classical Greek architecture, the blue of the Turkish Aegean, globalization and the iconic American Coca-Cola bottle, the red of the African earth, and the human figure combine with cultural diversity to provide sculptural imagery charged with emotion. A British artist...
info_outline The State of Stained GlassTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Enjoy this stained glass panel discussion with top industry professionals and educators Judith Schaechter, Stephen Hartley, Megan McElfresh, and Amy Valuck. Topics addressed include: what is needed in stained glass education; how the massive number of Instagrammers making suncatchers and trinkets affect stained glass; how to promote stained glass in a gallery setting; and how to stay relevant as stained glass artists. The panelists: By single-handedly revolutionizing the craft of stained glass through her unique aesthetic and inventive approach to materials, Judith...
info_outline Kazuki Takizawa Uses Glass Art to Address Mental Health IssuesTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Kazuki Takizawa’s 2015 installation entitled Breaking the Silence represents the artist’s interpretation of a person’s breaking point and the juxtaposition of balancing inner struggles with oppressive external forces. The installation incorporated performance aspects and sound, where slanted vessels filled with water until submitting to the liquid’s weight, falling over onto a table. Takizawa’s work provided a new perspective for interacting with glass, going beyond form and technique to provoke a deeper level of engagement. Impressed by how humble and open Takizawa was...
info_outline Jessica Loughlin’s Kiln Formed Glass: An Homage to the Observation of LightTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Jessica Loughlin’s work is characterized by a strict reductive sensibility and restricted use of color. Fusing kiln formed sheets of opaque and translucent glass together in flat panels or in thin, geometric compositions and vessels, she alludes to shadow, reflection and refraction. Loughlin’s work is influenced by the flat landscapes and salt lakes of South Australia, and the recurring motif of the mirage appears in much of her work. Each piece makes its own poetic statement. “My work investigates space, seeing distance and understanding how wide-open spaces, particularly of the...
info_outline The Glass Galaxies of Josh SimpsonTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Apollo 8, which launched on December 21, 1968, was the first mission to take humans to the moon and back. While the crew did not land on the moon’s surface, the flight was an important prelude to a lunar landing, testing the flight trajectory and operations getting there and back. Capt. James A Lovell, Apollo 8 astronaut, shared his memories of that historic mission: “Then, looking up I saw it, the Earth, a blue and white ball, just above the lunar horizon, 240,000 miles away…I put my thumb up to the window and completely hid the Earth. Just think, over five billion people,...
info_outline Wesley Fleming: Flameworking the Realism of the MicrocosmosTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Wesley Fleming brings the fantastic realism of the microcosmos to life in glass. An ambassador for smaller denizens of the earth, his passion for nature sparks awe and curiosity in others. Growing up in the countryside, his favorite pastime was exploring beneath logs and rocks in the woods or reading science fiction and comic books. Hence the natural world and his own imagination became his muse. Says Fleming: “I hope to rekindle awe and curiosity for nature with my fantastic realism. I’ve focused more than two decades honing my flameworking skills and trying to capture the essence of...
info_outline Robin and Julia Rogers: A Collaboration Resulting in Provocative Glass SculptureTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Physically and metaphorically Robin and Julia Rogers put their minds, hearts and hands together to create sculptural works in glass – their chosen material because of its inherent qualities of luminosity, viscosity, and seductive flow. Their inspiration is drawn from the natural world, personal experience, family life, music, psychology, and science. Robin and Julia state: “Complex and mystifying, the human mind drives us, but the subtle inner workings remain, to certain extent, unknown. Delving into the psyche, our work explores the human mind to reveal a metaphorical interior of...
info_outline Flameworking 2024: PerspectivesTalking Out Your Glass podcast
Talking Out Your Glass podcast kicks off 2024 with our first episode of Season 9! This fascinating panel discussion on flameworking features four of the technique’s most well-known artists: Paul Stankard, Carmen Lozar, Dan Coyle aka coylecondenser and Trina Weintraub. At different points in their careers, these four artists compare and contrast their journeys and experiences working glass behind the torch. Considered a living master in the art of the paperweight, Paul Stankard’s work is represented in more than 75 museums around the world. Over his 52-year...
info_outline“Today I opened the window to let the spring come in, and I discovered to my surprise that the forest is in my house and the landscape is within me.”
Miriam Di Fiore’s journey through life and glass reads much like Laura Esquivel’s popular 1989 novel, Like Water for Chocolate. With a similar magical realism, the kiln worker discovered both her artistic medium and voice beginning in the small seaside town where she grew up in Argentina. Though it was a forbidden love, a lifelong relationship with fused glass triumphed in the face of political adversity and family objection.
As a child Di Fiore lived in Miramar, a little city near the Atlantic Ocean protected from wind and sand by a vast pine forest. Because important moments of childhood passed among those trees, the forest continues to contain deep and symbolic meaning inspiring the drawing, painting, and photography vital to the artist’s work.
“What I try to do with my art is not an interpretation of the woods, but rather a simple respectful translation in glass of a little part of our wonderful world where I have been in the company of trees. I want to speak about that place and how I felt there. In that way I can share at least a part of the magic and beautiful moments that made me feel happy to be alive. My works are an illusion of eternity, virtual places that try to preserve what’s constantly changing and what my eyes see in fragments of time.”
Di Fiore received her art degree in ceramics and drawing in 1977 from the Escuela Nacional de Ceramica y Dibujo, Mar del Plata, Argentina. In 1991, she studied pate de verre with Linda Ethier at Creative Glass, Zurich, Switzerland, which inspired and informed a new direction in Di Fiore’s fused glass. Additional training took place in 1994 at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, from instructors Lino Tagliapietra and Rudy Gritsch. Her professional experience includes working as Narcissus Quagliata’s teaching assistant at the Museum of the Royal School of Glass, Segovia, Spain, and for his Florence, Italy, seminars in the 1990s.
Represented by Habatat Gallery, Mostly Glass Gallery, and SOFA throughout the 2000s, Di Fiore’s work can be found in the permanent museum collections of the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG), Corning, New York; the Newark Fine Art Museum, Newark, New Jersey; Cafsejian Museum of Contemporary Art, Armenia; Museo Nazional del Vidrio, Segovia, Spain; in the Coleccion Estable de la Revista del Vidrio, Barcelona, Spain; in the Museo delle Arti Decorative, Castello Sforzesco, Milan, Italy and in the Municipal Glass Art Museum of Alcorcon, Madrid, Spain.