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 my artistic path and my creative process. The unnatural pace at which Blown Away required its competitors to conceptualize and create caused a mental fatigue unlike anything I had ever felt. As difficult as this experience was, my journey as an artist has never been a straight line, and whether an experience has been positive or negative in the moment, in the end, it was exactly what it was supposed to be. Where You Are is Where You Need to Be is a space created to meditate and reflect on my trajectory both as a person and as an artist."

Hailing from Sandusky, Ohio, near the shores of Lake Erie, Thompson and his sister Leah grew up with a love of the outdoors, sports, and all things creative. These interests were endlessly nurtured by their parents Jim and Kathy Thompson. Ryan's passion for music began in the 5th grade when a group of friends with a band needed a drummer. His love for music and percussion remains today. 

After completing high school, Thompson attended Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Bowling Green, Ohio, to study Visual Communication Technology, a degree program he found to be lacking in creative freedom and excitement. In his third year, he enrolled in an Intro to Glass Blowing course on the recommendation of a friend, and the trajectory of his life was altered forever. 

For the next 3 years, Thompson poured every ounce of his energy into learning to control his molten material. The example of excellence in this craft demonstrated by his peers and instructors such as Scott Darlington set the bar of achievement high. He focused on fundamental skills in the form of vessel and goblet making, utilizing the Venetian processes and techniques he found most exciting and inspirational.

After graduation, Thompson began working at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion as a studio artist and workshop instructor, as well as a production glassblower at many local glass shops in the birthplace of the Studio Glass Art movement. During his time in Toledo, the artist was fortunate to work with many world-renowned glass artists, honing his skills and expanding his network of colleagues in this community-orientated profession.

In 2018, Thompson accepted a production glassblowing position at Greenfield Village (The Henry Ford Museum) in Dearborn, Michigan. The job allowed Ryan to continue to broaden his skill set and expand on his experience as a production glassmaker. In 2021, he was promoted to shop lead and began coordinating the team's production efforts, designing new product and maintaining the equipment that makes glass blowing possible. 

After participating in Blown Away 4, on May 1, Thompson relocated back to Toledo, Ohio, and became the new owner and operator of Gathered Glass, a public glass studio that offers hand-made glass, glassblowing workshops, and public events in the heart of The Glass City. This opportunity is something he has dreamt about for the last decade and is hard at work making the business his own. Thompson's partner, Kayla Kirk of Charmed Ceramics, is in the process of building a pottery studio on the second floor that will offer similar programming as well as hand crafted pottery for the home. The studio will be renamed Huron Street Studio and will celebrate its Grand Opening at 23 N. Huron St. in downtown Toledo, September 14, 2024. 

Thompson will also participate in an Artist Residency at the Museum of Glass Tacoma from October 9 – 13, 2024.

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 combines innovative approach and vibrant compositions to offer a fresh perspective, challenging conventional boundaries and resonating with today's artistic landscape. Layton, a veteran in the glass world, has captivated audiences for decades with his bold, expressive works. His 50-year journey from the studio's beginnings on the Thames to international acclaim highlights his role in elevating glass art. 

Born in Prague in 1937, Layton is one of Europe's pre-eminent glass designers. He has directly influenced several of his country's leading glassmakers and inspired many more. Arriving in England in 1939, there he began his education. While at grammar school, he met another boy who had also won the attention of his art teacher – his name was David Hockney. Layton attended Bradford Art College, then went to London's Central School of Art and Design, to specialize in ceramics, where he was taught by several of the most respected potters of the time. 

On graduating, Layton was offered a teaching job in Iowa University's Ceramics Department. Once in the US, in 1966, he participated in one of the first experimental glass workshops with Harvey Littleton and was bewitched by the immediacy and spontaneity of hot glass. He went on to expand his connections and friendships on this side of the pond to include participating in a Los Angeles exhibition with Marvin Lipofsky, a San Francisco show with pop artist Mel Ramos, and an exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago with Viola Frey.

Back in Britain, in 1969 Layton helped Sam Herman build the first furnace at the Glasshouse in Covent Garden, and he subsequently established his own small glass studio at Morar in the Highlands of Scotland, a Glass Department at Hornsey College of Art (Middlesex University) and, in 1976, the London Glassblowing Workshop in an old towage works on the Thames at Rotherhithe. In 2009 Layton's London Glassblowing Studio and Gallery moved to much larger premises in Bermondsey. Since its opening, London Glassblowing has nurtured and produced some of the world's leading glass artists, including (most recently) Elliot Walker of Netflix Blown Away fame.

Layton's colorful and painterly works of glass art can be found in numerous public and private collections, both at home and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford for his contribution to arts and crafts in Britain. Layton is also the founder of the Contemporary Glass Society, which is Britain's foremost organization supporting and championing the work of glass artists, both established and new. A vigorous proponent of glassblowing as an art form, Layton has authored several books, become an Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, an Honorary life member of the Contemporary Glass Society as well as been given the Freedom of the City of London. 

Layton has always taken inspiration from his environment, natural or manmade: a stone wall on a snowy day, the London skyline, or works by great painters. From a mere detail, a flash of a Klimt orange or a slick of oil on the Thames, he creates painterly works with a masterly use of color. The artist is inspired by whatever is around him. For example, during the winter of 2009, the heavy snow turned his long commute by train into an intriguing black and white world full of movement and texture, shaping his recent Glacier series. He has also created a number of conceptual pieces that reflect his specific concerns with issues such as ecology, religion and racial conflict.

Layton says: "A fellow artist recently described a piece that I had made for her by saying, '…it's as though it holds all my travels in light.' Lovely compliments like that spur me on. You never, ever create the perfect piece of glass and there are always new ideas, techniques and challenges to master. Glass is such an underrated medium – there is a fluidity and uncertainty about it that I choose to embrace rather than overcome. Every piece is an adventure." 

From October 8 – 13, 2024, PAD London returns to the iconic Berkeley Square in Mayfair, where London Glassblowing will be showcasing an extraordinary selection of work from their talented makers alongside designers and galleries from over 20 countries worldwide. To coincide with PAD and Le Verre, London Glassblowing is offering a series of exclusive events, providing a unique opportunity to explore and learn more about the captivating medium of glass.

For more information visit

https://londonglassblowing.co.uk/blogs/exhibitions/pad-london

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 whose work has been exhibited internationally for 50 years, Rainey was born in Whitehead, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1948. He began his career as a linen damask designer and worked in William Ewarts linen manufacturers from 1965 to 1968. Later, the artist studied at Hornsey College of Art, the Walthamstow School of Art, where he specialized in bronze casting, and the Royal College of Art, where he received his MA and specialized in glass. Between 1973 and 1975, Rainey ran his own glass studio in London and won a commission for a small sculpture to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II. In 1984, the artist moved to New York and established additional studios there.

Rainey's sculptural work has been exhibited internationally including: The Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Kunstmuseum in Dusseldorf, Germany, The Millennium Museum in Beijing, China, and the Museo de Arts Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including:  The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, The DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, California, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Art and Design, New York, The Fine Arts Museum of Boston, and The Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Canada. Rainey has realized a number of public art commissions including: The Lime Street Railway Station in Liverpool, England, the Jeddah Monument in Saudi Arabia, and the 911 Communication Center in San Francisco. He is a recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, Chicago, and the 2009 UrbanGlass Outstanding Achievement Award, New York.

Balancing his commitment to studio practice with his desire to share knowledge, Rainey has lectured extensively around the world. He lectured at The Royal College of Art in London for seven years and was a Professor of Fine Art and Chair of the Glass Program at The California College of the Arts from 1991 through 2022. 

On October 8, 2017 at 10:30 p.m., Rainey and his partner, Rachel Riser, were awakened by a neighbor's frantic telephone call warning them that a wind-driven wildfire had kicked up and was blazing toward their shared Napa, California, residence. They needed to get out immediately. Far more devastating than the destruction of his home and studio was the complete loss of all the artwork on the property — not only two year's worth of work for an upcoming exhibition, but the artist's archive of drawings of every project he'd ever done, as well as a collection of his strongest work he was planning to donate to a museum. 

Rainey still resides in Napa, California, and in March 2024 took time away from rebuilding his studio to participate in an artist residency at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma. There, he advanced ideas and processes originally seen in works he lost to fire.

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." 

Using tools of mapping and materials of industry Norwood Viviano makes installations and sculptures that consider various social and environmental factors leading to population changes in American cities. His most recent series, Re-Cast Cities, continues his exploration of the cross-sections of geography, cartography and history, merging urban landscapes with the symbols of industry that have fueled their booms, busts and builds. 

Heller Gallery's March 2021 Re-Cast Cities exhibition documented the first eight pieces made in this series focusing on Detroit, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, (OR), Toledo and White Mills, (PA). Curator and writer Sarah Darro called the project "a radical reconsideration of cartography that inflects Viviano's ongoing analysis of the rise and fall of American manufacturing with an experimental energy geared towards the future."  

Viviano received a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA in Sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work is represented in the collections of major museums in the US, Europe and Asia. His work has been shown at the Venice Architectural Biennale (2014), Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX (2013); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015), Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park (2016), Bellevue Art Museum (2016), Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2016), MOCA Jacksonville (2017), Boise Art Museum (2018) as well as at Stanze de Vetro in Venice, Italy (2020). Recent solo exhibitions include Grand Rapids Art Museum in Grand Rapids, MI (2015); Heller Gallery, New York, NY (2011, 2014, 2018 and 2021); Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk VA (2016) and Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG), Corning, NY (2017-18). Viviano is an associate professor and sculpture program coordinator at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Awards and residencies include the 2019 Corning Museum of Glass, David Whitehouse Research Residency for Artists; visiting artist residencies in 2017 and 2010 at Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; inclusion in CMOG's New Glass Review #16, #22, #33, #36, and #38; a 2016 fellowship at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center – Creative Glass Center of America, Millville, NJ; the 2014 Pilchuck Glass School John H. Hauberg Fellowship; the Venice Biennale, Best Exhibition Award, from Global Art Affairs Foundation; and the Center for Scholarly and Creative Excellence, GVSU, Catalyst Grant for Research and Creativity.

The result of Viviano's 2017 Visiting Artist Residency at the Museum of Glass, Cities Underwater focused attention from population and cartographic shifts of the past to the future. The artist conceived the project to visualize the dramatic loss of land predicted to occur in the next 500 years in areas that some 127 million Americans call home. The adaptation needed to mitigate the impending changes that will affect our lives, history and culture is massive. The Cities Underwater work is aimed at keeping this conversation alive and not forgoing it for short-term convenience or gain.

The installation was comprised of 16 sets of nesting glass cylinders, which represent 16 coastal cities in the United States. Using existing LiDAR data and scientific projections, Viviano showed the projected loss of land mass due to sea level rise in Boston, Galveston, Miami Beach, Miami, Mobile, New Orleans, Newark, New York, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Francisco, Savannah, Seattle, St. Petersburg and Tacoma. Each set was accompanied by vinyl cut drawings and animation, which provided additional data.

For Mining Industries, Viviano utilized digital 3D computer modeling and printing technology in tandem with glass blowing and casting processes to create work depicting population shifts tied to the dynamic between industry and community. By showing how landscapes and populations move and are modified as a result of industry, his work creates a 3D lens to view that which is invisible or forgotten. His use of blown glass forms and vinyl cut drawings are micro-models of macro changes at the regional, national, and international level. 

Viviano says: "I find myself looking at the world as a surveyor – telling stories through objects. Stepping back and researching how pieces fit together gives me the opportunity to consider the impact of the component parts. Conversations with specialists in a range of disciplines — historians, urban planners, demographers, climate scientists and statisticians — deepen my engagement with the subject matter and the complexity of my work. My artistic intention is to better understand our place in time by focusing on land use through pictorial imagery and on industrial growth and decline through population studies that also ask questions about the present and future of communities. My installations and objects encourage individuals to make connections and ask questions about the interconnectivity between their and other communities. 

He continues: "My material choice of glass is meant to demonstrate the fragility of populations. I hope my work asks people to examine their own histories of migration, from personal and communal standpoints, just as it continues to help me navigate and explore my own."  

Viviano will teach a one-week 3D printing and mold making workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, CO, July 19-23, 2021. For more information

andersonranch.org

Creativity was fostered in Dan Friday by his family from an early age. Growing up immersed in the rich cultural heritage of the Lummi Nation meant that making things with his hands was a regular activity. Typically working with simple themes and forms, the artist often employs subtle silhouettes when making his glass totems. His more narrative work reflects a personal expression or means of processing a life event, often with an underlying statement. His latest works will be on view at the Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, Washington, in Future Artifacts, on view July 3 – October 10, 2021.

Friday says: "As the recipient of the Bill Holm Grant from the Burke Museum, with my sister I have been studying Coast Salish artifacts in their archives. It is a surreal experience to hold items of your oldest known family members, even see their handwriting on treasured belongings. With all of the information, images, and data I have already catalogued, I hope to make inspired pieces of glass: the Skexe (Coast Salish wooly Dog) Blanket Panels, and The Sxwo'le (Reef Net) projects, to mention a few. It will be my way to document not only my family's history, but the artwork of the Coast Salish people. Glass is a medium that will survive millennia, and a great way to tell a story to future generations. It is, metaphorically, a contemporary painting on the cave wall." 

He continues: "The preparation for this show at MoNA has already given me great satisfaction, not just the physical act of producing these works, but the connections I have made within the beautiful and resilient Coast Salish community."  

https://www.monamuseum.org/future-artifacts

A lifelong resident of Washington State's Puget Sound region, Friday maintains an independent glass studio in Seattle. He has worked for Dale Chihuly at the Boathouse Studio since 2000 as a glass blower collaborating with other studio staff on Chilhuly glass designs. This experience helped Friday expand and perfect technical skills in glass working and increased his insight into the relationship and interaction between artist and the public. Working at Pilchuck Glass School since 2006 as a teacher, gaffer, and coordinator for the hot shop and wood and metals departments, Friday has fabricated and facilitated works for international artists. He has also assisted James Mongrain since 2009 on various glass blowing projects, domestically and abroad. 

Working at Tacoma Glass Museum since 2004, Friday is part of a specialized team of glass sculptors, demonstrating a variety of methods to educate the public about the medium of glass. He has also collaborated and assisted prominent artists in the creation of major glass art commissions and installations, including James Drake, Nicolas Africano, Wendy Maruyama, and Charles Ledray, to name a few. As personal assistant for Paul Marioni, Friday cast and cold worked glass tiles for a large-scale installation. 

Friday has taught at the University of Washington, Pilchuck Glass School, and the Haystack Craft Center. He has been awarded residencies at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, the Burke Museum in Seattle, the Corning Museum in New York, and the Dream Community in Tai Pei, Taiwan. He is the recipient of the Bill Holm Grant, the People's choice award from the Bellevue Art Museum, and the Discovery Fellowship through the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.

Represented by Blue Rain Gallery (Santa Fe), Stonington Gallery (Seattle), Ainsley Gallery (Toronto), Habatat (West Palm, Florida), and Schantz (Stockbridge, Massachusetts), Friday's work in glass is contemporary in format while maintaining Native American qualities. Cultivating his artistic vision with strong influence from his indigenous roots in the Pacific Northwest, the artist allows craft, form and idea to drive his work from conception to object. 

Many teachings describe sacred geometry as the blueprint of creation and the origin of all form. This ancient science explores and explains the energy patterns that create and unify all things, and reveals the precise way that the energy of creation organizes itself. It is said that every natural pattern of growth or movement comes back to one or more geometric shapes. Ian Chadwick expresses his homage to sacred geometry by kilnforming colored glass strips that are deconstructed and reconstructed into symmetrical patterns similar to those seen in the rose windows of cathedrals and mandalas.

Chadwick says: "The inspiration behind my glass work comes from a love of optical art, traditional pattern-forming and an interest in sacred geometry – in particular the meditation symbols known as mandalas. Mandalas contain many of the principles important in the esoteric practice of geometry, utilized by craftsmen for centuries in the design of cathedrals and stained glass windows. In my most recent work, I am embodying the essence of mandalas into the patterns present within each individual hand-made piece of glassware. The techniques I use are similar to mosaic work, each individual point of color is an individual piece of glass arranged in a manner which produces a kaleidoscopic, op-art effect. The combination of colors, which I carefully choose, are designed to complement the pattern formed within the glass."

Born on the Isle of Wight and after moving to a few locations, Chadwick finished his schooling in Banchory near Aberdeen, Scotland. He graduated from Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen, in 1994 with an honors degree in Fine Art specializing in sculpture. Final artworks produced for his degree show in 1994 utilized glass and plastics to create sculpture which had op-art qualities and were deeply concerned with geometry and symmetry – artistic interests that continue today. In 1996 the artist pursued his interest in glass and worked for a number of years at a stained glass studio in Scotland, eventually working as a freelance window designer and traditional glass painter.

In 2001, Chadwick moved to Timperley in Cheshire, where over the next two years he taught himself glass fusing and kiln-forming techniques. In 2003, the artist established a business producing traditional glass craft and kiln-formed glass art.  Since then, he has developed an extensive portfolio of contemporary glassware, including items such as kaleidoscopes, glass bowls, glass platters, wall art, glass vases and other glass interior home wares. To survive lockdown, Chadwick launched a collection of smaller, more affordable bowls on his Instagram page. Initially planning to number each bowl CVD-1, CVD-2, up to CVD-19, the demand was so high that he is now working on CVD-72 and has a waiting list of over 50 people.

An internationally recognized kiln-formed glass artist and instructor, Chadwick is the winner of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers Award at the British Glass Biennale in 2019. He recently released a 30-minute YouTube tutorial, which attracted more than 10,000 views in 2 weeks. No longer viewable online, it is in the final stages of production and will be released by Bullseye Glass Co. later this year as part of the company's new online teaching program. Attracting a loyal following among the US kiln-forming scene, Chadwick also has a strong collector base in the US boro glass scene with pieces of his work in the collections of well-known functional glass artists including Eusheen, Kaj Beck, Marcel Braun, Adam Reetz and Calmbo. 

Chadwick's ritualized process of making is employed to bring the essence of mandalas into the symmetrical glass patterns, which have become his unique aesthetic signature. As his work progresses, he continues to investigate different pattern forming techniques and new ways to engage with the viewer. He says: "The production of the patterns requires a high level of accuracy and patience. Once formed, they are fired in the kiln up to three times in total and go through extensive cold-working using diamond abrasives to ensure the best quality finish. Each piece of glass I manufacture is a unique work of glass art."

Menacing monkeys. Peeled bananas. Bad-tempered bears. Uniquely original Munnies. Daniel S. Coyle's whimsical, toy-inspired aesthetic in concert with mind-blowing skills on the torch have earned the artist a hefty 116K following on Instagram. The artist recently celebrated 10 years of being a full-time pipe maker with an exhibition at Ziggy's in Huntington Beach, California. Decade Arcadia featured new work, collabs and early pieces from Coyle's personal collection.

He says: "Often my work is playful in nature and can remind you of toys. I guess I like to bring the viewer (or user) back to their childhood and also remind them to not take life so seriously. Why pipes? Making an object into a pipe will allow someone to bond with that object. They will have experiences with it, develop a relationship with it, and in time it will become more than a piece in their collection—it will become sentimental." 

Coyle began blowing glass in 2003 while taking a workshop with artist Jerry Kelly. As his interest in the craft developed, he pursued education in glass working techniques at Salem Community College, the only school in the US with a program dedicated to scientific glassblowing. Graduating in 2006, the artist began his career as a laboratory glassblower for a chemical company, leaving after five years to pursue his artistic vision in glass pipes. Coyle's work has been displayed in galleries around the world, and has been seen in print and web publications including Vice, Huffington Post, NY Times, and in the books This Is A Pipe and his self-published Munny Project book. Now residing in Western Massachusetts, he works alongside some of the state's top pipe makers.

In March 2021, Coyle participated in a virtual seminar sponsored by Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, New Jersey. Pipe Art: Understudied Glass considered the glass pipe as a fluid work of art fundamental to the art history of glass. Sometimes demoted by law or public opinion to the category of "paraphernalia," the artwork of the pipe nonetheless defies its sometimes categorization as sub-sculpture. Celebrated artists Kim Thomas and Coyle, whose works were featured in the accompanying exhibition, and Luken Sheafe, whose artist name is SALT, presented their pipes. Joined by Susie J. Silbert, curator at the Corning Museum of Glass, the artists further contextualized their work within the field of pipe-making. 

Post Covid, 2021 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Coyle, including a residence at Pilchuck in July. In September, you'll find the artist at Molten Art Classic, Southern California's premiere glass flameworking event. Team leader, Adam Whobrey, also known as Hoobs, handpicks some of the top borosilicate glass artists in the world to create an exquisite one-of-a-kind piece together at Classic 33 Studios in Huntington Beach. It is the largest collaborative art event to unify top borosilicate glass artists from around the world, all adding their respective influences and unique flair to the collective piece. 

The marriage of Tim Carey's art and glass making skills with Justin Monroe's unique approach to presenting both on film has resulted in rewards, accolades and attention in both the filmmaking and glass worlds. Following the release of Monroe's award-winning documentary, Holy Frit, the artist and filmmaker have teamed up again to start a new company called Vitreonics, dedicated to education through content creation around the medium of glass. Their goal is to reach and teach the newer generations of artists about the wonders of glass with a fresh new approach to presenting online education in an entertaining and fun format. Their first classes were released last week through Bullseye Glass Co. 

Find out more at https://classes.bullseyeglass.com/classes-events.html?instructor=1908

Holy Frit shared the wild and winsome journey of Carey and Judson Studios as they realize a church's vision to create the world's largest window of its kind. With plenty of human drama, creative travail, and colorful characters, including Narcissus Quagliata and folks from Bullseye Glass Co., it is a must-watch for art lovers in general and glass lovers especially. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Slam Dance Film Festival and winner of Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Florida Film Festival, Holy Frit is described by Monroe as follows: 

"Carey is a talented, yet unknown Los Angeles-based artist. He is also a bit of a jackass, who uses wit and humor to charm you into forgiving his flaws. As a Hail Mary, Tim and the company he works for, Judson Studios, bluff their way into winning the commission to make the world's largest stained-glass window of its kind, beating out 60 companies from around the globe. The problem is, Tim has no idea how to make his complicated design.

"After a desperate search, Tim comes to learn about someone who might have the answer… a world-famous, Italian glass maestro, named, Narcissus Quagliata. From the moment Narcissus arrives, Tim quickly learns that his talent and humor can only take him so far. If he has any chance to make it to the end of the project and potentially achieve greatness, he has to confront his personal demons of self-importance, artistic merit, business instincts and spiritual insecurities. He has to put down his ego and submit to the life and artistic lessons of a complicated master, who has already preceded him in greatness. As this documentary unfolds, the clash of two big personalities slowly transforms into the forging of a lasting friendship. Both mentor and protégé come to realize it will take their combined focus to overcome this 3-year race-against-time, the complications of a $1.2 billion class-action lawsuit, and the many obstacles that emerge when attempting a masterpiece. Even though the story takes place within the niche world of an ancient art-form, it gives a universally fun, heartfelt and sometimes comedic look into the drama of any human endeavor which is greater than the sum of its parts."

Monroe has directed, written and produced numerous projects, both dramatic and comedic, since his career began. His feature film credits include the award-winning comedy, The Rock 'N' Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher (Director / Producer), and the thriller, The Unraveling (Co-Writer / Producer). He has also written, directed and produced a wide variety of short films and client work, striving to achieve a unique aesthetic and a connection to beauty, fun and authenticity in every project he's a part of. After studying film in Oklahoma and Los Angeles, Monroe and his wife decided to trade tornadoes for earthquakes, and headed into a full-time life in the golden west. They reside with their two children in Pasadena, California. 

Carey continues his mission to bring glass to the forefront as an image-making medium through continued exploration of techniques that he and Quagliata developed at Judson Studios. Tim Carey Studio, established in Compton, California, on July 1, 2018, moved to south Pasadena, where the artist currently creates projects and commissions in his hybrid fusing and glass painting process. These include recent works The Cast, Beneath the Surface and work with Judson Studios on the South Pasadena Library windows.

Listen to the full podcast on Carey at https://talkingoutyourglass.com/tim-carey-studio/

Listen to the full podcast on Judson Studios' Resurrection window at https://talkingoutyourglass.com/judson-resurrection-window/

Whether creating her signature Nesting Bowls, a dazzling murrine sculpture Windows of Truth, or an unforgettable glass fashion statement Forbidden Twizzlers, Cat Burns captured viewers' hearts and minds as a contestant on Blown Away 2 – Netflix's glassblowing competition show produced by marblemedia with the support of The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). As runner-up of the competition, she scrambles to keep up with the overwhelming interest of the general public in supporting her art through acquisition.

A defiant artist who uses flamboyant, sarcastic humor to illustrate her internal narrative, Burns touched the Blown Away 2 audience with her honesty and vulnerability. She cultivates her work very slowly and uses it as a visual diary, creating audacious imagery as a way of communicating and synthesizing the often perplexing, manic experience of living with depression. The work explores the delicate strength of glass as a final object, as well as its use as a personally therapeutic tool. By destigmatizing personal demons, her work explores what it means to "go a little crazy."

Some of Burns' glasswork centers around her failing eyesight and how this impacts her world as a maker. She has needed glasses since age two for extreme nearsightedness, and her mother was almost completely blind by age 40, so losing her vision was something the artist understood as a possibility all along. For the past few years, retinopathy has plagued her, forcing a reevaluation of exposing the eyes to melting glass. 

As a production glassblower Burns put herself through school, earning her associate degrees in Glass Fine Art and Glass Craft and Design from Salem Community College, Carneys Point, New Jersey. She subsequently worked as a full-time assistant to other glass artists in the Philadelphia area and at The Studio at CMoG, where she learned from the constant stream of master glassblowers. She says: "I got paid to learn first-hand from people at the top of their field, and I could not be more grateful for the lessons the Museum has taught me."

Aside from making her own work, Burns loves to teach and has helped teach classes all over the country in places like Pittsburgh, Penland, Salem, Corning, Pilchuck, and Snow Farm. A full-time glassblower since 2009, the artist has travelled the world, working for many years with CMoG's Hot Glass Show at Sea team. 

Making work at The CMoG Studio, Burns sells a lot of her glass at The Museum Shops. Though 2020 began with mass cancellations of all of her scheduled work, The Shops presented the artist with the idea of taking a color concept she had developed earlier and reworking it to fit the Pumpkin of the Year. After a few inceptions, Burns landed on the right rainbow for the 2020 Unity Pumpkin. The first order in June was for 50 and by the end of the year, she had made almost 600.

Burns says: "They just spoke to everyone; that need for some color, joy, and unity. The rainbow felt a little defiant and unifying at the same time, racking up millions of TikTok views and totally changing my year. The love the TikTok community had for the Unity Pumpkin was completely unexpected and overwhelming at times, and because of that, I went from losing all my work to growing my business to where it is now in just five months. I will forever be grateful to my TikTok followers."  

Though her one-month 2020 residency at CMoG has been postponed due to COVID-19, meanwhile Burns works hard to keep up with demand for her work. After Blown Away 2 was released, the artist's order limit on production pieces was met in only five days. 

From functional glass bongs to Tits and Glass sculptures that reference the artist being told she was only valued in the hot shop for her tits, to Vagina Sculptures, which allow one to reclaim their sexual past – this is not your Grandma's glass! "Through humor we heal and find strength," says Burns.

Through her art, KeKe Cribbs searches for a peaceful place. Growing up, this self-taught artist moved 24 times in 24 years, and she now prefers to travel in her mind, telling stories of far-away places and exotic characters in a mosaic glass technique she has adapted to her unique style. From her studio on Whidbey Island off the coast of Seattle come boats, Moon Queens, and collage with painted glass, inspiring wonder and delight in all who view them. Her latest works will be on view August 6 – 29, 2021 at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery, Bainbridge, Washington. 

Like her work, Cribbs' life has a fairytale-quality with dark undertones. At age 15, she was one of five children transplanted to Ireland for her mother's graduate studies in Yeats. For the next decade she traveled from place to place in Europe before returning to the United States as a single mother and a stranger to native customs. While working in a Native American art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cribbs discovered the work of the Mimbres Indians and had a show of her adapted renditions of those drawings at Dewey Kofron Gallery in 1980. She was subsequently commissioned to reproduce the images by etching them onto the glass fronts of a suite of cabinets. 

In 1997, in a dramatic departure from sandblasting, Cribbs began firing enamels onto glass in a kiln. She drew on the glass with a quill pen and used sgraffito to further enhance the drawing before firing. Working the entire piece on the reverse side of the glass left the colors brilliant and wet in appearance. The sheets of painted glass were then cut into tiny tiles and reassembled on a three-dimensional surface. Early forms included canteens, baskets, high-heel shoes or more commonly, boats. 

Says Cribbs: "All of these forms represent journeys – the canteen and basket forms are containers which one would carry on a journey to hold water, the very essence of life. The narratives depicted on these forms represent the choices we make in this life; small vignettes into fictional lives that may remind one of a

Through her art, KeKe Cribbs searches for a peaceful place. Growing up, this self-taught artist moved 24 times in 24 years, and she now prefers to travel in her mind, telling stories of far-away places and exotic characters in a mosaic glass technique she has adapted to her unique style. From her studio on Whidbey Island off the coast of Seattle come boats, Moon Queens, and collage with painted glass, inspiring wonder and delight in all who view them. Her latest works will be on view August 6 – 29, 2021 at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery, Bainbridge, Washington. 

Like her work, Cribbs' life has a fairytale-quality with dark undertones. At age 15, she was one of five children transplanted to Ireland for her mother's graduate studies in Yeats. For the next decade she traveled from place to place in Europe before returning to the United States as a single mother and a stranger to native customs. While working in a Native American art gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cribbs discovered the work of the Mimbres Indians and had a show of her adapted renditions of those drawings at Dewey Kofron Gallery in 1980. She was subsequently commissioned to reproduce the images by etching them onto the glass fronts of a suite of cabinets. 

In 1997, in a dramatic departure from sandblasting, Cribbs began firing enamels onto glass in a kiln. She drew on the glass with a quill pen and used sgraffito to further enhance the drawing before firing. Working the entire piece on the reverse side of the glass left the colors brilliant and wet in appearance. The sheets of painted glass were then cut into tiny tiles and reassembled on a three-dimensional surface. Early forms included canteens, baskets, high-heel shoes or more commonly, boats. 

Says Cribbs: "All of these forms represent journeys – the canteen and basket forms are containers which one would carry on a journey to hold water, the very essence of life. The narratives depicted on these forms represent the choices we make in this life; small vignettes into fictional lives that may remind one of a surreal dream or experience, a palpitation of the heart, a frozen moment in the emotional adventure of life."

Eventually, Cribbs found herself seeking more information and attended workshops at Pilchuck Glass School with Dan Dailey, Bertil Vallien, Ginny Ruffner, Klaus Moje, Clifford Rainey, and Jiří Harcuba. She studied ceramics with Yih-Wen Kuo, Keisuke Mizuno, and Sergei Isupov at Penland School of Craft and attended many classes at Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle studying metal techniques. She moved to Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound to be closer to the heart of the glass community. In time, she found herself teaching at both Pilchuck and Penland as well as starting a glass program at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA, which then became Southeastern Massachusetts University (SMU), now UMass at Dartmouth.

Anyone who learns something has to be curious enough to retain the information, no matter where it comes from. In Cribbs' case, her life experiences and fascination with process led to the development of a unique approach to making art work, one in which the mystery surrounding objects from the past creates its own narrative in the mind of the onlooker. Working in many materials including glass and ceramics, she seeks to create an interactive form of storytelling, sculpturally producing shapes with narrative surfaces, bringing the whole work into a multifaceted exploration of the subconscious world of dreams and symbols. 

With a career spanning over 51 years, Cribbs has work in many museum collections both nationally and internationally, including the L.A. County Museum, CA; Corning Glass Museum, Corning, NY; Henry Ford Art Museum, Dearborn, MI; Mobile Art  Museum, Mobile, AL; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; and Hokkaido Museum of  Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan. Each year from 2012-2015 Cribbs was nominated for the Twinning Humber Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, she was awarded Artist in Residence at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; Artist in Residence, Toledo Art Museum; and was a presenter at the Glass Art Society Conference, Seattle, WA.

About her new work, Cribbs states: "I'm really happy with the new work I am producing for the show in August at BAC on Bainbridge Island. Technically I have moved to paintings with painted glass inclusions. Perhaps it is partially the isolation during the time of COVID that has pushed me to isolate each little jewel of glass so it can be appreciated individually as its own micro painting, loved for being itself …. but the departure from creating a full skin of mosaic glass on a form, be it sculptural or flat, has other aspects of elevating these small shards of what was simply float glass and mirror bits, to a placement of honor. 

"In a society that tends to look down on poverty and to isolate those who have less, I am always reminded of the song line diamonds on the soles of her shoes by Paul Simon … and then there is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles …. coal to diamonds to dust to stars where all the good souls go to sing together; these contribute to the access point where I have landed with this new work, and I am in bliss heaven." 

On May 27, 2021, join Artist Trust Board Member Lee Campbell and artist Kéké Cribbs for a virtual house party in support of Artist Trust. This virtual event won't be your typical Zoom call, but will instead provide an exclusive tour of Cribbs' Whidbey Island studio, insight to her artistic process, and a glimpse of her recent work. Come prepared to laugh, think outside the box, and hear more about one of Washington State's talented artists. 

https://artisttrust.cheerfulgiving.com/e/an-evening-with-lee-campbell-and-keke-cribbs

surreal dream or experience, a palpitation of the heart, a frozen moment in the emotional adventure of life."

Eventually, Cribbs found herself seeking more information and attended workshops at Pilchuck Glass School with Dan Dailey, Bertil Vallien, Ginny Ruffner, Klaus Moje, Clifford Rainey, and Jiří Harcuba. She studied ceramics with Yih-Wen Kuo, Keisuke Mizuno, and Sergei Isupov at Penland School of Craft and attended many classes at Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle studying metal techniques. She moved to Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound to be closer to the heart of the glass community. In time, she found herself teaching at both Pilchuck and Penland as well as starting a glass program at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA, which then became Southeastern Massachusetts University (SMU), now UMass at Dartmouth.

Anyone who learns something has to be curious enough to retain the information, no matter where it comes from. In Cribbs' case, her life experiences and fascination with process led to the development of a unique approach to making art work, one in which the mystery surrounding objects from the past creates its own narrative in the mind of the onlooker. Working in many materials including glass and ceramics, she seeks to create an interactive form of storytelling, sculpturally producing shapes with narrative surfaces, bringing the whole work into a multifaceted exploration of the subconscious world of dreams and symbols. 

With a career spanning over 51 years, Cribbs has work in many museum collections both nationally and internationally, including the L.A. County Museum, CA; Corning Glass Museum, Corning, NY; Henry Ford Art Museum, Dearborn, MI; Mobile Art  Museum, Mobile, AL; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; and Hokkaido Museum of  Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan. Each year from 2012-2015 Cribbs was nominated for the Twinning Humber Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, she was awarded Artist in Residence at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; Artist in Residence, Toledo Art Museum; and was a presenter at the Glass Art Society Conference, Seattle, WA.

About her new work, Cribbs states: "I'm really happy with the new work I am producing for the show in August at BAC on Bainbridge Island. Technically I have moved to paintings with painted glass inclusions. Perhaps it is partially the isolation during the time of COVID that has pushed me to isolate each little jewel of glass so it can be appreciated individually as its own micro painting, loved for being itself …. but the departure from creating a full skin of mosaic glass on a form, be it sculptural or flat, has other aspects of elevating these small shards of what was simply float glass and mirror bits, to a placement of honor. 

"In a society that tends to look down on poverty and to isolate those who have less, I am always reminded of the song line diamonds on the soles of her shoes by Paul Simon … and then there is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles …. coal to diamonds to dust to stars where all the good souls go to sing together; these contribute to the access point where I have landed with this new work, and I am in bliss heaven." 

On May 27, 2021, join Artist Trust Board Member Lee Campbell and artist Kéké Cribbs for a virtual house party in support of Artist Trust. This virtual event won't be your typical Zoom call, but will instead provide an exclusive tour of Cribbs' Whidbey Island studio, insight to her artistic process, and a glimpse of her recent work. Come prepared to laugh, think outside the box, and hear more about one of Washington State's talented artists. 

https://artisttrust.cheerfulgiving.com/e/an-evening-with-lee-campbell-and-keke-cribbs

Drawing on the rich traditions of glass blowing, fearless experimentation, and a fascination with glass as both a visual and experiential encounter, Katherine Gray creates work that ranges from blown glass sculptures to assembled installations of found glass. A visitor favorite at The Corning Museum of Glass is her Forest Glass, a large-scale installation comprised of found glass arranged to create the illusion of trees. Whether celebrating a prosaic material through installations or her Iridescent Entities, stylized hearths and campfires, or clouds and orbs, Gray forces us to appreciate glass anew. 

She says: "I use a material that we don't generally see. It is often flawlessly clear and colorless, hence invisible in that regard, but it can also be so ubiquitous and banal that it does not register in our psyches either. It is a material that allows us unparalleled connectivity (via smart phones and fibre optics) yet also serves to separate us. To my mind, these two polarities are what set this material apart from so many others, and one of the reasons that I feel compelled to keep working with it as an artistic medium. It is both present and absent, known and unknown, and vacillating between a state of mundane familiarity and otherworldly perfection."

In Heller Gallery's 2020 exhibition, Radiant Mirage, Gray turned her considerable glass-making skills to creating objects that served two purposes: to bring beauty into a dire moment in the world, and to express her frustration over the loss of our collective sense of security and well-being. The common thread was her use of iridescence, an optical phenomenon seen in nature and inspired by unearthed ancient glass. Like natural phenomena that are caused by the refraction of light, Gray's Entities and Tubes emphasized the elusiveness and shiftiness of iridized objects and projected an ephemeral shape and play of color our eye does not fully grasp.

Educated at the Ontario College of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design, Gray serves as the Resident Evaluator on Seasons 1 and 2 of Netflix's reality TV show Blown Away.  Her works are held in the permanent collections of public institutions including the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Museum of American Glass, Wheaton, NJ; the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM; and Toyama City Institute of Glass Art, Toyama, Japan. Reviewed in the New York Observer, Artforum, and the Los Angeles Times, Gray has been nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and has garnered many accolades including the Award of Merit from the Bellevue Art Museum in Washington. 

In addition to making work, Gray has written about glass, curated and juried multiple exhibitions, and has taught workshops around the world. In 2017, she received the Libenský/Brychtová Award from the Pilchuck Glass School for her artistic and educational contributions to the field. She was also honored as a Fellow of the American Craft Council (ACC), a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing American craft. To be named a fellow, an artist must demonstrate leadership in the field, outstanding ability as an artist and/or teacher, and 25 years or more of professional achievement as an American craftsperson. Currently, Gray lives in Los Angeles where she is a professor of art at California State University, San Bernardino.

To Gray, glass is a material of both otherworldly perfection and mundane familiarity. She says: "I'm trying to play off of polarities between usage of material and the sphere it exists in, who makes it, who uses it, who values it, and trying to point out some of the inequalities."

Patience, love of color and an observing mind are the key ingredients of Ruth Shelley's successful kilnformed glass art. For over 25 years, she has been exploring the flow of glass when heated and the reflection and refraction of light as it hits her glass objects. Dropped vessels create an interplay of light, form and color evocative of the natural-world characteristics experienced on the West Coast of Wales. 

Camping in her van in Aberystwyth on Cardigan Bay, Shelley watched an impending storm develop. Its transitioning colors inspired the artist's Stormy Seas collection. Cardigan Bay, an endless inspiration with its craggy cliffs, wide estuaries silted up with spits and bars, and the occasional island also impacted the artist's Into the Deep series, which reflects the changing weather patterns and light experienced there on the coastal profile of Wales. A series was born from and named after a connection to Mwnt Beach, where the artist feels most at home and inextricably connected to the earth. Even during Covid lockdown, Roath Park in her hometown of Cardiff influenced Shelley's Winter Lockdown Walk with its chromatic foliage. 

Although coming from a background of textiles, Shelley has attended many masterclasses including those at North Lands Creative Glass, UK, and Bullseye Resource Center, Portland, Oregon, which enabled the realization of her ideas in kilnformed glass. She was presented with the Glass Sellers Award at the British Glass Biennale 2015 and won the People's Prize from the Contemporary Glass Society in 2017. The recipient of many Welsh Arts Council awards, Shelley is a member of the Contemporary Glass Society and the Makers Guild of Wales. Her work can be seen in many UK galleries including London Glassblowing, Contemporary Applied Art and Albany Gallery in Cardiff, May 6 – 29, 2021 with Maggie Brown.

To find out more about Ruth Shelley's work: https://vimeo.com/160445687

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 Schaechter championed her medium into the world of fine art. The content of her work – some of which gives voice to those who experience pain, grief, despair, and hopelessness – resonates with viewers, leaving a profound and lasting impression.

Schaechter has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited her glass art widely, including in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, The Hague and Vaxjo, Sweden. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hermitage in Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other public and private collections. Schaechter's work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2012, and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow. In 2013 the artist was inducted to the American Craft Council College of Fellows. The Glass Art Society presented Schaechter with a Lifetime Achievement award in 2023, and this year she will receive the Smithsonian Visionary Award.

Schaechter has taught workshops at numerous venues, including the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, the Penland School of Crafts, Toyama Institute of Glass (Toyama, Japan), Australia National University in Canberra, Australia. She has taught courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the New York Academy of Art. She is ranked as an Adjunct Professor at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art Glass Program, both in Philly .

Born in Philadelphia, Stephen Hartley began his craft career working on a variety of historic buildings and monuments throughout the region. In 1999, he moved to South Carolina to attend Coastal Carolina University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in History. He then relocated to Savannah, Georgia, and continued to work in the traditional crafts and conservation fields while attending graduate school. After completing his MFA in Historic Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hartley was employed as an instructor at various colleges within the Savannah area. He earned his PhD from the University of York in 2018 where his dissertation thesis studied the historical and modern frameworks of trades training in the US and the UK. 

Hartley eventually returned to the Philadelphia area and accepted the position of Head of Building Arts at Bryn Athyn College, where he formulated the first Bachelor's of Fine Arts (BFA) in traditional building within the United States. Hartley, currently an associate professor in Notre Dame's School of Architecture, wants his students to have a deeper appreciation for the work craftspeople do to fulfill an architect's vision—by learning the vocabulary of the trades, understanding their history, and, when possible, trying out the tools.

Executive Director of the Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA), Megan McElfresh has dedicated her professional life to community service and the art and science of stained glass. With a background in fine arts and operations management, she joined the Association as a professional member in 2015 and became the Executive Director in the fall of 2017. Growing up in small stained glass studios, McElfresh continued to build on her technical skills in the medium by seeking mentorship opportunities throughout college. Some of the highlights of her glass studies were traveling to Pilchuck Glass School and time spent at the nationally recognized kiln forming resource center, Vitrum Studio. 

Prior to working with the SGAA, McElfresh worked in a variety of roles from operations management at a life sciences firm in Washington, D.C. to IT and web support for small non-profit art organizations. In 2011, McElfresh moved from Northern Virginia to Buffalo, New York, and founded her studio, McElf GlassWorks. With a passion for her professional career as well as her new community, she never turned down an opportunity to collaborate with neighborhood teens and local programs to provide enthusiastic and creative educational enrichment. In her personal work, McElfresh uses her artwork in the advocacy of issues she became passionate about during her time working at a forensics laboratory concerning subjects like domestic violence and rape, and DNA backlogs. Her studio work has been featured in the Stained Glass Quarterly, Design NY, The Buffalo News, and Buffalo Rising.

Find out more about the SGAA's 2024 conference here:

Conference 2024: Sand to Sash | The Stained Glass Association of America

Amy Valuck is a stained glass artist and conservator based in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the current president of the American Glass Guild. She began her apprenticeship in 1998 at The Art of Glass in Media, PA, and in 2014 went on to establish her own studio, Amy Valuck Glass Art, now located in West Chester, PA. Her studio's primary work is the restoration and conservation of historical windows from churches, universities, and private residences. As a conservator she specializes in complex lead work, plated windows, and replication painting. Valuck also maintains a personal art practice, producing autonomous stained glass panels for private commissions and public exhibition, including the AGG's American Glass Now annual exhibit. Her personal work is heavily influenced by the fabrication and painting techniques of historical windows but frequently includes experimental fused glass elements. 

Valuck is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, who earned her BFA degree in jewelry and light metals. Her work in jewelry earned awards including the first annual Cartier Prize, and the MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Silversmiths' Association) Award. She has served on the board of directors of the American Glass Guild since 2017 and has participated as a lecturer and instructor at several of the AGG's annual conferences. Registration is now open for the 2024 Grand Rapids conference, July 9 – 14.

Find out more about the AGG's 2024 conference here:

https://www.americanglassguild.org/events/agg-2024-conference-grand-rapids-mi

For further exploration of panel discussion topics:

The Campaign for Historic Trades Releases First-of-its-Kind Labor Study on the Status of Historic Trades in America – The Campaign for Historic Trades 

Daniel Maher's work serves as a testament to both his diverse aesthetic interests and his firm roots in the traditions of the stained glass craft. A former employee of Boston-based Connick Studio, in 1989 the artist established Daniel Maher Stained Glass in Somerville, Massachusetts, to further explore a variety of design styles. With the goal of accelerating his evolution as an artist and extinguishing the notion of stained glass as an exclusively traditional art form, Maher made it his mission to explore the textural movement inherent in glass. 

In 2007, a reduction in the number of restoration jobs coincided with the exodus of a few of Maher's key employees, and thus he began to wind down his studio's restoration commissions. Currently, residential commissions comprise 75 percent of his studio's new work with the remaining 25 percent commercial or corporate projects. 

Driven by a goal to introduce prismatic effects into stained glass windows, Maher created his first found objects windows more than 30 years ago in a series called Housewares Graveyard Windows. These colorful, textural panels showcased glass that had been rescued from its ordinary life as serving bowls, platters, goblets, lids, jars, and general household utilitarian objects and made the star of his stained glass symphony.

Over time Maher's palette expanded, providing fuel for myriad thematic ideas. Some panels centered around old alcoholic beverage bottles, some antique medicine jars, but each created a unique look. One of Maher's found object windows was featured in Martha Stewart Living's December 2012 issue. His work, Pig with Corn, was made from a number of glass corncob buttering dishes that Maher silver stained and placed in circumference around the bottom of a giant pig's foot jar, imprinted with the words "this little pig went to market." This panel was exhibited at the American Glass Guild Conference in Buffalo, New York, July 2009.

Since 2010, Maher has been incorporating one of the most beautiful glass objects into his stained glass windows. Because none of the commercially available roundels captured the magic he was looking for, Maher decided to learn how to make his own and enrolled in a glassblowing course taught by Jesse Rasid at North Cambridge Glass School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learning to make roundels resulted in an awakening of creative ideas and a move of Maher's studio to Cambridge.

Maher's largest roundel commission was created for the Alfond Inn owned by Barbara and Ted Alfond, Boston, Massachusetts, and Winter Park, Florida. The couple became aware of the artist's artwork via his lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Because Orlando, Florida, is the home to the Morse Museum of Tiffany Glass, the Alfonds wanted a piece for their inn that would speak to the beauty of the ponds, lakes, and gardens of their city while referencing Tiffany's legacy in a unique way.

In yet another approach to enhancing the aesthetic and content of stained glass, Maher's Portrait Windows celebrate specific people and events through their inclusion of photographic imagery. Using a photo-sensitive film, Maher creates a transparency onto which he places the photo sensitive film and exposes it to ultraviolet light. Whether painted and fired in the kiln, etched or sandblasted, the images become a permanent part of the glass and are constructed in the vivid colors unique to stained glass. Photo imaging allows subjects to be rendered that would otherwise be impossible to create by hand painting, traditional sandblasting or acid etching. 

A combination of glass painting and the photo imaging process can be seen in Maher's three-lancet Harvard Lampoon Castle window, a collaboration with designer by Michael Frith. Frith was the art designer for the Muppets and Sesame Street, and Dr. Seuss's book editor and close personal friend. All imagery references the history of The Lampoon, an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University i n Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its secret lingo. In the lead and copperfoil combo window, each of three lancets measures 2 by 5 feet and includes 450 to 600 pieces. "The project was a whirlwind with late changes and groundbreaking techniques, but one of the most rewarding projects I have done in my years of stained glass."

Inspired by the notion of the sun entering prismatic glasses, Maher's Suntrackers split sunbeams into long bands of color, rainbows, or arcs of light. Optically clear colored glass and prismatic objects combine to create patterns that change through the course of the day or season. A secondary image is created when the sun casts light onto the floor or wall after passing through the glass. Works that include prisms project a tertiary image of overlapping rainbows.

After dedicating 49 years to exploring the possibilities of glass, Maher looks back at his pivotal beginnings, when he invited local architects, designers, and artists to a brainstorming session prior to opening his studio. Out of that meeting, he learned to ask himself the question: Is your work something new and different? Is it unique to your studio? – reinforcing the idea that not only can one produce something new and different in the traditional art form of stained glass, but one should. "The greatest compliment I've received," says Maher "is, 'I've never seen windows like yours before.'"

Sculpting and blowing molten glass, Elliot Walker creates still life sculpture inspired by the paintings of Dutch masters. Though exquisite to look at, it was the combination of refined glassblowing skill with the humor and satire of his work that resulted in Walker winning the Netflix series, Blown Away 2. For the moment, prized residencies at both the Corning Museum of Glass and the Pittsburgh Glass Center are on hold due to Covid. But the artist works feverishly on new commissioned works, facilitates a number of creations for several noted designers and artists, and carries out his new duties as champion of marblemedia's glassblowing competition show.

For Walker, getting to know his fellow contestants on Blown Away 2 and watching them work made his participation on the show worthwhile. "It showed me how welcoming and inspiring the global fraternity of furnace glass workers is." 

Messums, London, hosted Walker's inaugural solo show from January 28 through February13, 2021. Plenty, an irreverent look at the culture of excess, presented a new series of sculpture inspired by 17th– century Dutch Vanitas paintings. Employing almost every conceivable technique, the artist transformed classic still life painting objects into ethereal, sculptural cameos that speak both of bounty and its impermanence. Walker's remarkable technical skills include complex and subtle coloring applications, along with cold processes like cutting and polishing, surface decoration and texturing, adding depth and dazzling intricacy to his forms. 

A show statement from Messums Fine Art Ltd, read: "Elliot is an exciting and talented artist bringing a conceptual edge to a traditional craft with all the hallmarks of a mould breaker…We have been watching the seam between craft and art break over the years, and Elliot's work irreverently celebrates glass working whilst engaging with our contemporary concerns and pleasures."

Growing up in Wolverhampton, England, an academic at school, Walker took his A-Levels in science, chemistry and biology. As a boy, he describes himself, as 'out-doorsy,' always creating and making things, mostly with pebbles and sticks, inspired by British sculptor and environmentalist, Andy Goldsworthy. He never thought of being an artist when he was a kid because it wasn't "sensible."

With a BA in psychology from Bangor University in North Wales, Walker discovered glass at university, taking night classes in stained glass windows. Following his MA in applied arts from Wolverhampton University, the artist established a studio in Camden. He now lives and works in Hertfordshire with his life partner, colleague and fellow glassblower Bethany Wood. She is the owner of the Blowfish art gallery, currently selling Walker's works online.

Touted as one of the United Kingdom's finest rising glass stars, Walker has become one of the most active and inspiring artists of his generation. He developed his basic skills and necessary foundations as a creator by studying glass-making in the Stourbridge Glass Quarter, an historic place that has been associated with the glass industry for more than 400 years. He worked for glassblowing legend Peter Layton for about eight years as a part of his London studio team. The artist is also part of a group called Bandits of Glass, where the process of creation is given more importance than the final piece itself. 

Says Walker: "I am a dedicated experimenter with my chosen material and am constantly trying to challenge myself and the audiences of my work to abandon many preconceptions of the material."

In sculpting realistic figures of humans and horses adorned with color and pattern, Ross Richmond demonstrates how an artist can push his medium beyond its normal boundaries. The artist creates beautiful and expressionistic sculpture using gesture to convey narrative. Communication has always been the main source of Richmond's inspiration, whether it be with oneself or between others.  

Richmond discovered glass in 1991 during his time at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received a BFA in glass, with a minor in metals. He is considered one of the top glass sculptors in the field today and has worked with (and for) some of the greatest glass and non-glass artists including William Morris, Jane Rosen, Preston Singletary, KeKe Cribbs, and Dale Chihuly. Richmond studied and taught at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG), Penland School of Craft and the Pilchuck Glass School. The artist was awarded residencies at the Tacoma Museum of Glass, Toledo Glass Museum and CMoG. His work is represented by a number of galleries across the country.

Working as an apprentice in 1997, Richmond became a member of Morris' glassblowing team in 1999 and worked alongside him until his retirement in 2007. Morris encouraged teamwork and working outside the box – lessons reflected in both the surface and shape of Richmond's exquisite horse figures.

All of Richmond's work is blown and hot sculpted, meaning that nothing is casted or mold blown – all pieces are made by hand while hot on the pipe in the glass shop. First, the main shape of the piece is established then allowed to cool. Working it in a colder state affords the artist a more "solid core" to work from. If the piece is too hot, the shape will distort as the details are brought out. A small oxygen-propane torch is used for all of the detail work, which allows for a greater variety of flame shapes and sizes to work with. Heads are typically blown, whereas all hands are solid. With a blown shape, Richmond is able to inflate areas or suck areas in as needed. Hands are made solid so that delicate fingers do not collapse or distort. All colors are applied in layers of glass powders, and the finished piece is coated with an acid to remove the shine for a matte finish. 

The inspiration for Richmond's figures made between 2015 and 2018, was derived from ancient Egyptian sculpture, Japanese prints and Art Nouveau graphics, which all use or are inspired by natural scenes and landscapes. All of these different time periods and genres produced works that were highly ornate, yet simplistic in form and composition. Richmond used color and pattern to decorate and adorn the robes his figures are wearing to create imagery and convey a setting or scenery, to place the figure in a natural environment. Imagery of blossoming flowers or trees convey growth or growing to create the feeling of springtime bliss, awakening after the winter slumber. Carved imagery or applied components provide a bas relief and texture to an otherwise flat and smooth surface.

Richmond says: "The figure has always been a major theme in my work, and in this series, I am breaking down the human form into a basic shape as if it were draped in fabric. This keeps the eye from focusing on the details of anatomy, and lets the viewer follow the sweeping gestural lines of the form. The basic shape of the body along with its quiet contemplative facial features, gives these figures a calm meditative feel." 

In 2016, Richmond and Randy Walker were awarded a collaborative residency at CMoG. Having worked together on the Morris glassblowing team, the two artists utilized well-learned teamwork combined with strengths in form, color, and the ability to push the bounds of the material. Walker created objects that seemed to grow out of and be part of the natural world, while Richmond sculpted realistic figures adorned with color and pattern. Marrying their aesthetic, objects were transformed from natural objects into figurative works. 

Over the last few years, Richmond has been slowly building his own hot glass studio in Seattle. From March 4 through 27, Traver Gallery presents a unique exhibition of works by Jane Rosen and Richmond. Though their influence is always visible in one another's artwork, this is the first time they have shown side by side. This exhibition celebrates and highlights the critical impact of artist friendships and highlights the vital influence each has on the other.    

Looking to expand his artistic repertoire, torch artist, author and entrepreneur Eli Mazet discovered that today's flameworkers were not making one of the world's most collected glassobjects. In 2013 with the support and sponsorship of Northstar Glass, over 40 artists produced more than 70 shot glasses effectively creating the largest handmade contemporary shot glass collection known today. Along with chronicling each piece in his book, The Contemporary Shot Glass, Mazet reviews the rich history and trivia of the smallest drinking vessel. 

One of the most passionate glass artists you will ever meet, Mazet resides in Springfield, Oregon, with his best friend and partner Jessica and their three daughters. Born in Eugene, he is the middle of three brothers all involved with glass. Older brother Josh Mazet graduated with a BFA from the University of Oregon, where he was a resident artist in the university's ceramics department and instructed their Wood Fire Ceramics program for three years. 

When Eli expressed an interest in learning to work with glass, the brothers set up a small lampworking studio in his garage. During the next two years, while working two jobs, Eli logged hundreds of hours behind the torch. In glass, an outlet for his high energy and a passion for creating art was discovered. He travelled to the coast, selling his whimsical glass creatures to galleries and shops. The response was exciting and encouraging, and soon a family business, Mazet Studios, was established including younger brother Tim and mother Tym.  

Since 2002, Mazet Studios has created lampwork glass pipes, sculpture, marbles, paperweights and pendants from borosilicate glass. Recognition and awards included The Eugene Glass School Flame-Off, Sonoran Glass Academy Flame-Off and Glass Craft and Bead Expo Gallery of Excellence. In addition to their studio work, Josh and Eli regularly instructed lampworking from their private studio and at various schools throughout the US. 

Though Josh left the company, Eli continues pushing forward at Mazet Studios. He has published a second book, The American Shot Glass and the Machine, purchased the rights to Homer Hoyt's instructional flameworking book, which he now sells, and was instrumental in the documentary film Pipe Dreams USA, which won five awards including the Seattle Cannabis Film Festival. Currently on its way to London's Cannabis Film Festival, you can watch the film at pipetownusa.com.

Having grown up in the 1960s and '70s, Australian kilnforming artist Margaret Heenan was influenced by the highly stylized graphic designs and patterns of early childhood found on wallpapers, homewares and textiles. From her Perth studio, the artist consistently produces impeccably designed fused glass plates, bowls, wall pieces and sculpture using vibrantly nostalgic colors and patterns. Linear and highly structured and restrained, the final pieces begin as detailed drawings and paintings referenced for cutting the glass, which must be accurate to achieve a seamless fit. An artist with dual aesthetic sensibilities, Heenan is also known for her more painterly kilnformed glass, strongly influenced by the Australian landscape.

Heenan's love of calligraphy and fine lettering led to her discovery and love of glass art. Earning a diploma in these subjects required the completion of a special study, which she carried out with a neighbor who was a stained glass artist. Lettering a couple of large liturgical windows sparked Heenan's passion for glass and resulted in her appreciation for heraldry – how to interpret blazons (armorial bearings) and how to draw and paint coats of arms. She remains a Life Member of the Calligraphers' Guild.

Earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia, 2004, Heenan went on to study glass with well-known artist-instructors such as Richard Parrish, Lee Howes, Judi Elliot, Jeremy Lepisto, Mel George, and Ian Dixon. She worked with David Hay and Holly Grace at Edith Cowan University during the final term of her BFA as part of a cross-institutional enrollment to access hot glass at Hyaline Glass Studio. 

With work in private collections in England, South Africa, Australia, America and China, Heenan is represented by Gallows Gallery, Mosman Park, Perth; Jah Roc Gallery, Margaret River, Western Australia; Aspects of Kings Park, West Perth; and Gallery Aura, Kojanup, Western Australia. The artist's work was featured in the book, Best of World Wide Glass Artists, Vol 1, and three Heenan pieces were chosen by Spectrum Glass catalogue to promote System 96 Glass in the US.

After a career of perfecting both technique and design, Heenan's goal of having her work recognized by its unique and stylized treatment of color, pattern and form has come to pass. 

In 1948 at the age of 7, Irene Frolic arrived in Canada after almost three years in a United Nations refugee camp in Salzburg, Austria. A Jewish child, who had miraculously survived the grimmest of Grimm Fairy tales in the dark heart of Europe, arrived not knowing a word of English into a new world. Trying to make sense of these mysteries remains at the heart of her work in cast glass to this day. 

The little Canadian girl grew into a well-educated young woman. Frolic married, travelled the world, had children, and held a good job before discovering glass in her early 40s, inspiring a sea change witnessed in her evolution to becoming an artist. Almost 40 years later, Frolic continues to infuse her cast glass with knowledge, feelings, history and heritage. 

Working from her Toronto studio, Frolic has been involved in the international Studio Glass movement, helping to develop the art of kiln cast glass as a material for artistic expression by teaching workshops, lecturing and exhibiting world-wide. Past president of the Glass Art Association of Canada (GAAC), which honored her with a Lifetime Achievement award, she is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art (RCA). Her work is exhibited internationally and found in many public and private collections, including those of the Museum of Decorative Art, Lausanne, Switzerland, Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Museo del Vidreo, Monterrey, Mexico, and the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario.

Glass, which surrounds us in our modern urban landscape, is one of the most ancient, seductive and mysterious of materials. The quest to find a way to use it beyond its easy allure has propelled Frolic and has sustained her 40-year art career. By developing and exploring the emotive qualities of glass as a medium, she has explored her personal history, commented on memory, and mused on the interdependence of beauty and decay.

As the Covid pandemic continues, new sculpture is underway at Frolic's studio. Her latest work, She Loves Us Still: Earth, addresses humanity's treatment of our planet and each other. She says: "It goes back to my beginnings and how close I came to be extinguished. On October 13, 1941, in my hometown, Stanislawow, at nine weeks of age I was held in my 18-year-old mother's arms, at the edge of an enormous hastily dug pit at the Jewish cemetery. I understand it was bitterly cold. The thousands of people herded there were all naked. The shooting continued all day – 12,000 Jewish citizens met their deaths that day. The reason I am still here, approaching my 80th year, is that it got dark…too dark to kill. I am full of anguish about the way we treat each other today. If strangers live among you, love the stranger as yourself and do him no harm. Love the stranger, both within and without."

Charles Ziegler Lawrence was a man who could have easily held his own in a conversation with the likes of Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, or Hunter S. Thompson. Whether reflecting on his life as a young artist in 1960s Greenwich Village or reliving the making of five windows for the National Cathedral, all of his stories were replete with an equal amount of psychedelic detail. Though the truth of the tale was never in question, the content was unbelievable.

Lawrence seemed as unlikely a candidate for the priesthood as he did for a life dedicated to liturgical art; however both are his truths. Sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant, the personal history of this "existential iconoclast" blurs the thin line between humor and pathos. His professional success might very well be the reward for having learned how to walk that line.

From his obituary: Lawrence, 83, died on January 1, 2019. He began his career in 1956 as an apprentice to master craftsman Rudolph Henrick Beunz. In the 1960s while attending design school at Pratt Institute, New York City, Lawrence worked in the glass department of the Rambusch Decorating Studio where he perfected skills in glass painting and color selection. In 1968 he went to work for the Willets Stained Glass studio in Chestnut Hill, where he completed prestigious commissions for the National Cathedral, the Temple of the Latter Day Saints, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, as well as the University of Rochester, and Penn State University. In the 1980s Lawrence established his own studio in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, completing additional commissions for the National Cathedral, as well as works for the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, St. Mary's at the Cathedral, Andorra, PA, the Burlington Bridge Commission in NJ, and the Gore-Tex Manufacturing Co., in Cherry Hill, NJ.

Lawrence received The Stained Glass Association of America's faceted glass design award twice, the Interfaith and Forum on Religious Art and Architecture award twice, and the St. Francis Xavier Chapel Award of Excellence. In 1994, the SGAA presented Lawrence with its Lifetime Achievement Award. A senior advisor for the American Glass Guild, he was also an associate member of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. 

There will never be another CZ, as he was affectionately known, partially because stained glass and what it takes to conquer the craft has forever changed. But the art and the artist will be represented throughout the ages by his many bold, gothic revival style masterpieces.

In 1994 Lawrence made his final window for the National Cathedral. This small, two-lancet window is located in the east end of the cathedral in the chaplain's office. In most cases, he didn't bother to make or apply the putty himself, but this time was special. Lawrence combined linseed oil, whiting, and lampblack, the major components, and added one last special ingredient—the ashes of Angus, his beloved dog who had died and was cremated during the making of his previous cathedral window. 

Said Lawrence: "The cathedral was done, and Angus was in a safe place for the coming millennium. After that we will be together again. I am sure God knows how much I've missed him and She will bring us back together. Until then, I know I will always have a friend in the cathedral and so will Tracy, Vanessa, and whoever else comes after them." 

Recorded live at a coffee shop at the 2012 American Glass Guild conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this podcast conversation was created from the TOYG archives. 

The ancient Chinese regarded the dragon as the most potent of all symbols of energy and good fortune. They believed it to be the harbinger of incredible luck, prosperity, abundance, consistent success and high achievement. These are the very gifts Mike Luna's dragons have bestowed upon their creator. A pipe artist, grower and smoker, his love for the cannabis plant is at the center of a successful career designing and fabricating the industry's most beloved dragon headies, pendants and sculpture.

Born in Torrance, California, in 1978, Luna was raised in Santa Fe Springs until age 15 when he moved to O'Brien, Oregon, to start high school at Illinois Valley High. After high school in 1996, he moved to Los Angeles and began working in automotive retail. By this time older brother, Chris, had already started his journey into glassblowing, and in 1999 offered Mike a job back in Oregon. Luna found work in a production shop ran by Gilbert Velosco. There, he met and befriended soon-to-be functional glass legend, Darby Holm, who took him under his wing as an apprentice in 2000. Luna says: "Learning under Darby changed my life! He and the Holms are like family to me. They are a big part of the reason I'm still in Oregon constantly learning and trying different things with glass."

On February 6, 2021, Ziggy's Smoke Shop in Huntington Beach, California, presents Enter the Orb, Luna's current solo exhibition of new work and collabs with the likes of AKM, Ryno, Darby, Justin Carter, and Salt. His work will also be on view September 18 at Lifted Veil Gallery in Los Angeles, and in December at 2Sided Gallery, Stanton, California.

Arguably the hottest show on Netflix, the glassblowing competition series Blown Away–once again featuring expert glassmakers from The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) –returned for a second season on January 22, 2021. The Museum also hosts an exhibit of work made during Season 2, featuring one object from each of the 10 contestants. The exhibit Blown Away: Season 2 opened on the Museum's West Bridge the day the show launched.

CMoG, which houses the world's most comprehensive collection of glass, the library of record on glass, and one of the top glassmaking schools in the world, has served as a key consulting partner for the series since its conception. When the first season of Blown Away launched in the summer of 2019, CMoG was invited into the spotlight, bringing to the program its expertise in an artform that much of the world was discovering for the first time through the show.

"We are so pleased to again partner with marblemedia to put glass in a global spotlight,"said the Museum's president and executive director, Karol Wight, of CMoG's relationship with the Canadian production company behind Blown Away. "Watching new audiences around the world embrace glassblowing because of this series has been exciting, and we look forward to seeing that enthusiasm grow with the release of a second season."

This season introduces a new group of 10 talented glassmakers from around the world as they compete for the title of "Best in Glass." Season 2 is once again hosted by Nick Uhas, with resident evaluator and glass master Katherine Gray.

Artist Contestants

Andi Kovel, Ben Silver, Brad Turner, Cat Burns, Chris Taylor, Elliot Walker, Jason McDonald, Mike Shelbo, NaoYamamoto, and Tegan Hamilton.

Guest Evaluators

Episode 1: Alexander Rosenberg – Season One Competitor; Episode 2: Benjamin Write – Pilchuck Glass School; Episode 3: Kathryn Durst – Animator and Illustrator; Episode 4: Heather McElwee – Pittsburgh Glass Center; Episode 5: Bobby Berk – Interior Designer "Queer Eye"; Episode 6: Michel Germain – Perfume Designer; Episode 7: Stepheen Weatherly – Defensive End, Carolina Panthers; Episode 8: Sunny Fong – Fashion Designer, VAWK; Episode 9: Deborah Czeresko – Season One Champion; and Episode 10: Robert Cassetti – Corning Museum of Glass.

In the season finale the Museum also provides the two Blown Away finalists with the expert assistance of its Hot Glass Demo Team—Eric Meek, Jeff Mack, Helen Tegeler, Catherine Ayers, George Kennard, and Chris Rochelle. A blockbuster ending to a 20-year career at CMoG, shortly before his retirement from the Museum senior director Rob Cassetti served as the final guest evaluator, helping to select the winner of the competition.

"It feels like I've come full circle," said Cassetti, who developed the Museum's hot glass programming. "When we first launched our demo at the Museum, we called it the Hot Glass Show, and put our makers on a stage. We knew glass was inherently exciting, and we wanted to bring that to our visitors. So now for the Blown Away series to capture that magic, bottle that energy, and to share it with the world through Netflix it's really unbelievable, and it was a joyful honor for me to be part of it."

As part of the prize package, the winner of the show will receive the coveted Blown Away Residency at CMoG. In 2019 the Museum hosted Season 1 winner, Deborah Czeresko, for three week-long working sessions. The residency takes place in the Museum's Amphitheater Hot Shop where a live audience can meet the winner and watch the artist make new works. CMoG will host the Season 2 winner as soon as COVID restrictions allow.

"We are thrilled that Blown Away returns for a second season, available to Netflix's global audiences to stream on January 22," said Matt Hornburg, executive producer and co-CEO of marblemedia. "This show's success is due in part to our valued partnership with The Corning Museum of Glass, and their unwavering support and guidance. Their contribution to the grand prize, offering a prestigious residency to the winner, raises the stakes that much more. We are thrilled that the Museum is showcasing the exceptional work done by these esteemed glass artists from season two. Seeing these pieces on display, representing the true essence of this show, is very rewarding."

This special episode of TOYG podcast features interviews with Hornburg, Cassetti and artist contestant Mike Shelbo in this behind the scenes look at Blown Away Season 2.

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 when discussing the deeply personal experiences reflected within his art, Emily Zaiden, director and curator at Craft In America Center, Los Angeles, offered the artist a solo exhibition. She states: "I was drawn in by Takizawa's metaphorical use of the material to articulate new themes through new forms and new applications. He is dealing with subject matter that has been untouched and under-represented, particularly in his medium, and sharing this vital message through compelling sculptural works of beauty is perfectly in line with our mission."

For Takizawa's 2017 Craft in America exhibition, Catharsis Contained, the artist designed and fabricated another unique installation, creating an aural experience produced by suspending colored glass bulbs enclosed in a swaying metal structure. The rocking motion of the work, entitled Breaking the Silence II, caused the blown bulbs to gently bump into one another, producing a soothing, tinkling sound inspired by the artist's visit to a temple in Thailand. Takizawa combined a sonic atmosphere with the rich visual experience of repeated glass forms in various subdued hues to inspire a conversation about a topic rarely addressed in art – suicide. The work was inspired by the artist's struggles to support his brother who has wrestled with mental health issues and suicidal ideation. 

https://www.kazukitakizawa.com/breaking-the-silence-2?pgid=j6vrle9h-71bf472c-84df-4a19-b456-59e74a495e43

As an artist who himself lives with bipolar disorder, Takizawa uses glass as a means to explore his inner reality and destigmatize mental illness. With an aim to give the invisible shape, Takizawa crafts elaborate vessels and installations, each with a unique story. Universally rooted in a dialogue around mental health, his series examines broad themes such as attaining minimalism among chaos as well as his personal narratives around the topic of living with Bipolar Disorder and suicide prevention. Takizawa has traveled to numerous communities in and outside the US to share his work and act as an advocate for mental illness. His practice offers an uncommon and inclusive space to increase awareness and start a conversation. 
 
Takizawa is a Japanese glass artist based in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a BFA in glass art in 2010 and owns and runs KT Glassworks, LLC in the historic West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Takizawa's work was exhibited in Monochromatic, which opened at Duncan McClellan Gallery (DMG) in St. Petersburg, Florida, on February 10 and included his latest Minimalist series. A few pieces from his Container series can be seen at Hawk Galleries, Columbus, Ohio, and additional sculptures are on view in an exhibition called The Optics of Now: SoCal Glass at Palos Verdes Art Center, curated by Zaiden from Craft in America Center. The show runs through April 13, 2024. From November 1 through December 25, Takizawa's work will be exhibited at the Glass Invitational exhibition at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. In 2024, the artist endeavors to offer more artist talks with a focus on his perspective on mental health. 

Says Takizawa: "I started speaking about mental health including my experience living with bipolar disorder and suicide prevention back in 2015, wondering if I would ever regret this decision. But the entire journey since then has been nothing but empowering, and I don't regret this at all. I just wanted to be someone who could freely speak about things related to mental health without the stigma. And I felt the need to do something about helping someone who had suicidal ideation at the time. Since then, I have continued to make new work to support my story and to continue speaking."

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

We can all help prevent suicide. The 988 Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. Just dial 988.

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Micah Evans blew people's minds with his fuctional flameworked glass sewing machines that balanced clean traditional craft form and personal sculptural work. Referring to his glass obsession as "a disorder," Evans was the first flameworker to receive the glass residency at Penland School of Craft, which he served from 2012 to 2015. 

He says: "Lately I seem to be describing my work falling into two categories, things I love to make and things I have to make. The first category is easy; I am in love with the material. Like many glass artists I am a slave to the substance, the way it behaves and looks, the way it demands and gets my full attention whenever I work with it. I love to work with the material, therefore whatever I am making brings with it a genuine feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. The second category is harder to define but equally important. The work I can't help but make are the ideas that won't let me sleep, the ideas that have me drifting off in conversations to my own world of redesigning and problem solving. It's the repeated execution of the simple shape that seems to inhabit every page of my sketchbook at the time. It's exploring ideas over technique and the struggles that come with that process. These two worlds often interact, and I bounce back and forth constantly."

Born in Cashmere, Washington, in the eastern foothills of the Cascade mountains, Evans moved to Seattle in 1996. He attended The Art Institute of Seattle, focusing on computer animation and illustration before he started flameworking at Stone Way Glass in 1999. After relocating to Jacksonville Beach, Florida, in 2000, the artist opened his first glassblowing studio two blocks from the beach. Five years of workshops and hustle in addition to the struggles of coping with the federal crackdown on pipe making inspired a transition to making more traditional craft objects and personal work.  

Upon resettling in Miami, Evans became a studio assistant to William Carlson, chair of the Art Department at the University of Miami. Shortly thereafter he began working with ceramic artist, Bonnie Seeman, combining glass and ceramics. Through working with both of these artists he was introduced to SOFA and Art Basel.

In 2008, Evans relocated to Austin, Texas, where his personal artwork and pipe designs began to mature and develop a symbiotic relationship. His friendship with pipe maker and sculptor SALT pushed both artists in new directions. A 2011 class at Penland with Carmen Lozar inspired a big shift in Evans' career. He describes his subsequent Penland Residency as "the most wonderfully brutal four years" of his life, where he learned to balance the dynamic of pipes and fine art in more than one way. 

In 2016, Evans began designing full time for GRAV Labs, a product design company based in Austin, Texas. Working with glassblower, designer and engineer, Stephan Peirce, Evans has learned the language of industrial and product design. This opportunity presented him with a window into glass manufacturing that changed the way he thought about the material and how it can be used. He regularly visits glass studios and factories in China to research new ways of working and designing in borosilicate glass, with a current focus on engineering and adapting small-scale manufacturing processes observed in Asia to his studio practice. These events inspired a "paradigm shift" in Evans' understanding about borosilicate glass and what can be done with the material.

Currently building out an expanded studio space at GRAV Labs focused on both R&D and his own work, Evans travels, teaches and lectures at schools and universities around the world about flameworking, design and glass subculture in the United States.

Therman Statom – sculptor, glass artist, and painter – is most notably known as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement for his life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, constructed box-like paintings, and small-scale houses; all created through the technique of gluing glass plate together. Sandblasted surfaces become a canvas for spontaneous vibrant colors and line work, which take nuances from Abstract Expressionism and concepts of Minimalism, while simultaneously incorporating a twist by using blown-glass elements and found objects. 

Born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1953, Statom spent his adolescence growing up in Washington, D.C. His interest in the arts grew from a fondness of painting and he began to investigate ceramics at RISD. However, after an experimental glassblowing session with Dale Chihuly, he was soon hooked on the spontaneity of hot glass and its limitless possibilities. Statom went on to pursue studies at Pilchuck Glass School during its inaugural year, completing a BFA in 1974 from RISD, and later studied at the Pratt Institute of Art & Design. 

Throughout his career, public artworks have been permanently installed at prominent locations including the Los Angeles Public Library, Corning, Inc. Headquarters, the Mayo Clinic, San Jose Ice Center, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Jepson Center for the Arts in the Telfair Museum, Savannah as well as several hospitals across the country. 

Statom's artwork appears in numerous exhibitions annually, including solo and group shows around the nation and internationally. Over the span of his career, he has completed over 30 large, site-specific installations. Most notably in recent years, his 2009 solo exhibition Stories of the New World, at the Orlando Museum of Art, which spanned over 5,000 square feet, has been his largest installation to date. Exploring themes related to Juan Ponce de Leon's 1513 search for the fabled Fountain of Youth as a point of departure, the installation referenced historic and contemporary themes of hope, discovery, ambition, and destiny. Visitors traversed the gallery space consisting of a mirrored maze, panoramic glass wall mural, a room-size structure built entirely of glass, and video projections. In conjunction with the exhibit, Statom partnered with the educational department of the OMA and the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Eatonville to work with over 80 young students to create a work of art titled "Glass House," which was a large, walk-though structure built from glass boxes designed by the children. The piece was later displayed at the annual summer community festival. 

Much of the latter half of Statom's career has been focused on the importance of educational programming within the arts. He has taken a deep interested in employing workshops as a catalyst for social change and in affect, positively impacting a community. Working directly with the artist himself, adults and children alike share a combined experience of exploring art making via a hands-on experience. Inhibitions and limitations are left by the wayside, and the practice or act of "doing" becomes a journey of self-discovery, creating an opportunity for the participant to go to a new place within themselves.

Says Statom: "I believe art can be understood both conceptually and intuitively. I think there is a need for the general public to come to an understanding that to appreciate art and creativity they must trust his or her self; that extensive education is not a prerequisite for understanding art. Much of what I do is seeded in what is more of an intuitive process; a large portion of my work is exploring these processes within people and their environments.

"The fact is, I believe that creativity is a part of all aspects of what people do; my studio and educational efforts via workshops and the support of outside programming, general educational and cultural institutions, are a reflection of this belief. I feel that art is tool for empowerment and education. It's also a viable tool to investigate positive change and engage a culture through exploration."

Through their Ultra-Baroque polycultural work, Einar and Jamex De La Torre tackle topics of identity and contemporary consumerism. Influences range from religious iconography to German expressionism while also paying homage to Mexican vernacular arts and pre-Columbian art. They don't consider themselves glass artists per se, but treat glass as one component in their three-dimensional collages, one that interacts with a multitude of chosen – not found – objects. Einar recalls their mother's fondness for puns as a likely source for the brothers' own interest in multiple layers of understanding. 

Collaborating since the 1990s, the De La Torres were born in Guadalajara, México, in 1963 and 1960. They moved to the United States in 1972, transitioning from a traditional catholic school to a small California beach Town. Both attended California State University at Long Beach. Jamex earned a BFA in Sculpture in 1983, while Einar decided against the utility of an art degree. Currently the brothers live and work on both sides of the border, The Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. The complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities, as well as their current life and practice on both sides of border, inform their narrative and aesthetics. 

Gussie Fauntleroy wrote in the July 2009 issue of American Craft: "Similarly, in their art the brothers intentionally disregard conventional borders between dichotomous pairs such as high and low art and sacred and profane, and between deluxe objects and the detritus of everyday life. Virtually every assemblage and installation incorporates blown glass or cast-resin elements in sumptuous colors that shimmer, juxtaposed with an array of … objects, including plastic toys, snack food wrappers and old tires."

https://www.craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/de-la-torre-brothers-and-border-baroque

The De La Torres have been honored with The USA Artists Fellowship award, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and The San Diego Art Prize. They have had 18 solo museum exhibitions, completed eight major public art projects and participated in four biennales. Their work can be found in the permanent collections of Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; Museum of American Glass, Millville, New Jersey; The Kanazu Museum, Kanazu, Japan; Frauenau Glass Museum, Frauenau, Bavaria, Germany; GlazenHuis Museum, Lommel, Belgium; and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington, to name a few. Private collectors include Alice Walton, Cheech Marin, Elton John, Irwin Jacobs, Terry McMillan, Sandra Cisneros and Quincy Troupe.

Guest instructors at Penland, UrbanGlass, the Pittsburgh Glass Center and Pilchuck, the De La Torre brothers have shared their multifaceted knowledge of glass technique including blowing, bit work and flameworking with students worldwide. In the last 15 years they have been creating photomural installations using Lenticular printing as a major part of their repertoire. 

"If ever there were a case where materials and their masterful use provide a perfect match—and metaphor—for an artist's concepts and themes, it's in the art of Jamex and Einar de la Torre," wrote Fontleroy. "How better to convey the rich complexity and alchemic intermingling of border cultures than through mixed media creations as multilayered, thought-provoking and engaging as the cultures themselves?"

Using optical crystal, Karsten Oaks cold works sculpture that bends light and color via its unique forms. Often a discernible object appears from a momentary perspective creating a vision that allows the viewer to connect on a more personal level with the piece. This mystery inspires a deeply personal relationship between viewer and object and sets Oaks' work apart from that of his coldworking contemporaries. 

He says: "When working on the design within the piece I'm using elements of dynamic symmetry such as spirals and ratios. Using different shapes in the sculpture while staying consistent with the proportions I can create a sense of harmony within what would otherwise be a disorganized form. Even after all of the major reductive cuts have been made, I leave some of the design to be laid out when the rest of the piece is almost complete. I feel that this mild sense of chaos through the work's creation gives each piece its personality and character when it is finished."

Born and raised in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Oaks took an interest in the arts at an early age. He started playing music when he was 10 years old and went on to play a variety of instruments. As the son of a trained chef, Oaks grew up learning an appreciation of working with his hands in a creative way and enjoys cooking to this day. When he was 16, a friend introduced Oaks to glassblowing as a medium, and he traveled to Tennessee to take his first classes. This sparked the beginning of Oaks' love of glass as a means to express his artistic vision.

Now one of the most respected and trusted cold workers in the glass sculpture world, Oaks received his BFA at The Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Technical University under the mentorship of Curtiss Brock. There Oaks realized that the necessity of working quickly with glassblowing or hot sculpting did not give him the creative time needed to fully think through his sculptures. After graduating, the artist relocated to Seattle, surrounding himself with leading artists in the field of glass. His first cold working client was Martin Blank, who convinced Oaks that he should open a cold working studio to offer his services to other artists while continuing to formalize what would eventually be his own body of work.

Oaks was cold working for a list of respected artists when he met Lino Tagliapietra and was selected as the only artist to cold work and finish the maestro's sculptures made in the US. This steady supply of work allowed Oaks to finally open his own studio, and as time permitted, develop his own artistic vision. In September 2014, Bender Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina, began to represent his work at the gallery as well as SOFA Expo Chicago, Art Palm Beach and Wheaton GlassWeekend with great response.

Lucy Lyon: Every Gesture Tells a Story

In these pandemic days of limiting contact with others and contemplating the dangers of simply being with another person in a shared space, Lucy Lyon's ambiguous figurative works take on new meaning. Using a stunning combination of technical prowess and a sculptor's eye, the artist transforms cast glass into atmospheric settings whose characters' stories, stances, and placement are open to viewer interpretation. Whether solitary or in groups, the figures reflect their state of mind through gesture.

Lyon says: "Even though we are all meeting up with each other and interacting in twos or threes or crowds, each of us is essentially alone. That brings up a bit of melancholy, but it also makes the individual unique and therefore very important."

An only child, Lyon was artistically inspired at a young age by perusing her mother's art books that depicted works by Edgar Degas, Francisco Goya and Thomas Hart Benton. Later, in her early twenties, the artist became aware of Edward Hopper's work. Though Hopper's were painted and Lyon's are cast in glass, their figures convey a shared sense of being alone, isolated, even in the company of other figures, reflecting that people have private thoughts in public places.

Born in 1947 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Lyon graduated in 1971 from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, earning a BA in philosophy. Further educated at Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, she has taken a number of workshops across the country from well-known glass artists. Working with glass since 1979, for the past 26 years the artist has been creating breathtaking tableaus from her Jaconita, New Mexico, studio.

Lyon's work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums including Imagine Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida; Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida; Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan; and the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, Wisconsin. Public commissions include the Sandy Hook Memorial; Night Read for Glencoe Public Library, Glencoe, Illinois; and Waiting Room for Western New Mexico University, Silver City, New Mexico. Recent exhibitions include Divergent Materiality, at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Narratives in Glass, held at Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California. Lyon is represented by Habatat Galleries and Lewallen Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As with many artists, the seductive quality of glass, along with its ability to be sculpted, attracted Lyon to her medium. In much of her work characters read in libraries, places where one can be in a private and public space simultaneously. Settings or environments have been pared down over the years to simple geometric forms. Walls present opportunities to explore color and blending. For Lyon, the greatest challenge and satisfaction is born of sculpting her figures using subtle gesture - a turn of the head or twist of the hips- to express the figure's state of mind. The refined figure is the cornerstone of Lyon's sculpture.

Jon Kuhn: A Matrix for Eternity

Inspired by metaphysical studies and a couple of out of body experiences, Jon Kuhn developed an aesthetic language for expressing the architecture and light of the non-physical world. Though his life as an artist began in ceramics, interest in spiritual studies influenced the artist's move to glass. Because similar to mediation where we go inside ourselves, glass can hold information and light within.

Regarded as one of the leading glass artists in the world, Kuhn has work in over 45 international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Carnegie Museum, the White House Permanent Collection, National Museum of American Art and hundreds of private residences and public spaces. In 2006, the artist was presented with an Honorary Doctorate for Life Achievements from his alma matter Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and the son of a political science professor, Kuhn briefly attended Shimer College, then moved on to Washburn where he received his BFA in 1972. Although still uncertain about pursuing a career as an artist, he had learned a great deal about the vocabulary and processes of art and pursued these ideals via ceramics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, receiving his MFA in 1978.

Interested in metaphysical studies from a young age, Kuhn read his first book on Zen Buddhism at age 12. In college he studied the I Ching or "Book of Changes" - an ancient Chinese divination manual and a book of wisdom which interprets hexagrams formed by tossed coins to form answers to questions about the future. The I Ching is a cornerstone of Chinese philosophy, describing the basic elements of the way to enlightenment (happiness, inner healing, holiness, in God living). He also read many works written by Edgar Cayce, who founded The Association for Research and Enlightenment in 1931 to research and explore subjects such as holistic health, ancient mysteries, personal spirituality, dreams and dream interpretation, intuition, philosophy and reincarnation.

Early explorations in glass revealed themselves in blown, irregularly shaped globes with crusty exteriors. Kuhn cleaved off slices of the raw-looking exterior to reveal the sparkling glass within,

providing us with a window onto our inner selves. But it was his personal involvement in a meditation group on healing that led him to express the qualities of light and architecture only experienced in the non-physical world. Through his sculpture so readily recognized today, the artist began to convey an interior life or central drama with a powerful pull on our imaginations.

After moving to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1985 Kuhn began focusing on his signature processes - cutting, grinding, polishing and laminating - which put him on the map and has delivered consistent acclaim ever since. At last, expressions of the light and architecture of the spiritual realm could be reflected in his cubes, columns and monumental works meticulously crafted in the purest glass fabricated on earth. If light is life, Kuhn's sculpture is the stage on which the possibilities of this world and others can be pondered.

Of cold glass artists, Kuhn's work stands out for its complexity, its geometric forms and above all, for its presence, which conveys a spiritual quality. Kuhn says, "The goal of spirituality is perfection. Striving for perfection has never been more evident than in what I do. Perhaps my glass sculpture could become an architectural model of a vision for a better world."

Born into a working-class family in the industrial town of Lancashire, England, Simon Howard designs and fabricates traditional stained glass through meticulous craftsmanship and sensitivity to architectural surrounds. In demand as a skilled glass painter and restorer for other studios, the artist endeavors to create new contemporary commissions for domestic, private or public spaces. 

Some of Howard's notable works include his Beddoes Window, a commemoration of an 18th-century physician and his tragic Romantic poet son, full of playful symbolism; his Laura Ashley Windows, a full suite of windows for a remodeled Arts & Craft home (previously owned by Laura Ashley); the artist's Talog series, created for clients who gave Howard creative free reign in their beautiful traditional Welsh farmhouse; Whitland Circles & Milo Stripes, his personal favorites; and his commission for Oldham Royal Hospital, a 3 metre tall panel in the hospital's mortuary chapel. 

Howard's history reads like great novel. He writes: "Oldham was one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution, a cotton spinning town with incredible pockets of wealth, beautiful civic buildings, rows upon rows of worker's houses that supplied the brick mill with labor and a skyline full of tall chimneys pumping out smoke. My family were mill workers for generations and these 'dark, satanic mills' (as William Blake called them) and the rows of blackened Victorian terraced houses formed the background to our family stories. 

By the time I came along in 1970 the region was well into a crippling decline, and my parents had a series of disparate jobs passing each other on the stairs to our '60s maisonette as they swapped shifts in working and looking after me and my older brother and sister. My mum was a seamstress and a district nurse and my dad began work in a large glass supplier. My very early memories of visiting my dad at work are of huge A-frames of green-edged slabs of polished plate and of feeling proud that this was my dad's arena. He'd be there, in darkened leather wrist guards, calloused fingers in plasters. I'd watch him effortlessly pick up these enormous sheets and carry them to his cutting bench and watch him making quick pencil notes on his list of sizes, working out what he could get from the sheet with minimum waste. T-square, the sing of the cutter, and the snap…all with speed and confidence…and the swift clatter of the thin strips of waste shattering in the cullet. I never had any ambition to work there, but I loved the magic of it. 

The funny thing about my dad, and I still wonder now where the impulse came from, was his love of art, the art of the old masters and the Modernists. He was a Grammar school boy, so his education was good, and he was a lifelong reader, later a merchant seaman, but I can't think where his love of art sprung from. I mention this as it's because of him that I became an artist; as a young kid I would spend hours looking through his art books, and it became apparent early on in school that I could not only draw, but that art was where my curiosity lay. I tell people now that I never really wanted to be anything else (apart from a rock star in my teens. But don't we all?). From 5 or 6 I knew that was part of my identity and what I was going to become. My parents were always very supportive. I heard other kids speak of their parents' resistance to them studying art, but mine were right behind me even when they didn't have a clue what it was I was making. 

Through school I was a painfully shy kid. My family and I moved town just before starting secondary school so I arrived without friends; I do wonder whether that had a huge influence on me. But I became well-known through my ability to draw. I was bullied early on at school (I'd eventually dress quite outlandishly, which the other boys hated me for because the girls liked it!), but I'd draw on demand in order to not get beaten up. Like a lot of kids, art and music were everything to me (it's still pretty much the case). 

I went on to Art School in London, the Byam Shaw School of Art, a wonderful independent school (founded by John Byam Shaw, one of the Arts & Crafts/Pre-Raphaelite group), where I went on to make minimal installation based work, which often used the body (my body) and its relationship to its environment as a way to examine metaphorical space, the gaps in language/communication, thresholds, the in-betweens, the space where one thing becomes another. I'm still very proud of the work I did then and would happily still show it now. My intention was to stay in London and try to make my way as an artist but in reality, I think I'd realized that I wasn't a natural networker and didn't have the confidence in fighting for funding or for the spotlight. 

I left and spent a year or so volunteering for art galleries back up north until I was offered work with my brother who had spent the previous 10/15 years working with my dad. Mark had left school, began work as a glass cutter, but had decided to set up a decorative glass business within my dad's place. It was a real family business, my sister ran the office, and on the shop-floor were a few cousins. Also, a natural artist, his talent rose to the surface and needed an outlet. He spent these years learning new skills, researching any technique he could find in mainly American books and magazines to broaden his knowledge. He became the only person we knew back then who was creatively sandblasting, engraving, deep reverse-carving, glue-chipping, kiln-forming, fusing, casting, painting, and enamelling. He became well- known for it across the north west, until he eventually began making traditional stained glass. 

Whilst I was still at art school, I'd spend my holidays working with Mark where I'd learn all these techniques from him. He'd exploit my time there by giving me larger projects that he saw needed my artistic input, and I'd watch the panels get made up by him and the guys that worked for him. I'd go on to start making my own pieces, but even then I really only saw it as work, a chance to earn some money before heading back down to London. 

The next few years, I really was at a loose end. My long-term girlfriend had gone to teach English in Japan and life had seemingly hit a wall. I took the money I'd been saving whilst working with Mark and went travelling. I spend around 18 months going around the globe, across America, Australasia, South East Asia, India. I had the best time and felt some changes. But, back home I fell back into working with Mark; by this time my dad's company had been hit by recession and closed, my dad had swallowed his pride and had gone back to glass cutting for a company he'd left, and Mark had set up his own place. I worked there for a few years, still thinking that it was only a stop-gap for me until I figured out what it was I wanted to do. I started really delving deep into the international architectural glass books that Mark was buying (they were as rare as hen's teeth) and realizing that there was something for me here (remember, this was pre-internet days, knowledge of what was happening creatively elsewhere was still found in traditional sources….it also helped that Brian Clarke was an Oldham born artist and his largest piece, in the world at the time, had just been installed in Oldham's newly built shopping center). I still didn't really know if architectural glass fitted me yet, but it was a huge step up from what I'd understood the discipline to be. 

I spent a long time thinking about the separate polarities of art and craft and their overlaps until I reached a point where I felt comfortable setting aside the kind of art I'd previously made and seeing that glass craft had a value and could also be enquiring and expanding. Mark emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, around this time, and I had a few months to consider whether I would take over his business and continue on my own. Eventually I decided to and spent a couple of years slowly shedding what was previously Mark's and pushing forward what was mine. I needed to do this. I needed to know if the decision was right, if I really could spend the foreseeable future as a glass craftsman and not an artist. 

One thing I found necessary was to streamline the business; my time was being taken up with commissions that involved processes I had no love for. I realized that I could make interesting, contemporary work using just traditional stained glass techniques. It was all in the design. I slowly started guiding the small commissions I was getting into the kind of work that satisfied me. I began being more constructively critical of, not only other's work, but of my own, until I started getting a portfolio of work together that I was reasonably comfortable with. It was still early days, but I saw potential and felt the discipline begin to take ahold of me, get into my veins and become part of my everyday consciousness. I started looking at images produced by other artists, not only stained glass, but printmakers and textile artists and wondering if I could do something similar with glass. I was consciously pushing what I saw as possible, trying to make what I hadn't seen elsewhere. Looking back on some of those early pieces I'm still surprised by the odd unexpected detail or the ambition in such a small, unimportant piece. 

Around this time, I met my wife and we started a family. Helen is from rural Wales, a first-language Welsh-speaker, and it felt natural that we would decide to relocate to her home town to bring up the boys. Llandeilo is a beautiful place, an old, hill-top market town that has a surprising wealth of creative folk below its surface. We moved here around 14 years ago and, after previously occupying huge studio spaces, I now work from a small garden workshop. The major change from the work I did up north is due to the almost total absence of traditional period glass locally. When we first moved I was horrified. Much of my work up north had been in restoring and repairing period pieces, and here, there wasn't that kind of showy decoration, even the chapels were plain glazed. As it turned out though, in hindsight, due to the explosion of social media, I began to get more and more small, interesting commissions from clients who didn't have an automatic association with the period work I was doing up north. 

My current practice is an ongoing search for what interests me visually and technically. I'm a bit of a purist and, despite my experience and knowledge of a wide range of practices I like now to only use mainly mouthblown antique glass, lead and vitreous paints. I acid-etch flashed glasses, I don't use enamels. If I need to I plate glass, I don't use laminates or glues. It's a personal choice; I like the restrictions that the traditional practices give me. 

My work tends to flip between apparently simple abstract, pattern-based pieces where any reference to subject is restricted or absent, and playful, painterly, heavily stylized naturalism. It depends on the commission. I was told in art school that my art practice didn't seem to have a recognizable fingerprint; I would be using whatever was needed in order to make suggestions and connections within each piece. I sometimes wonder if my work is still the same; one can often recognize a fellow maker's work. They have a particular style. I'm not sure whether I do. I've been told otherwise, but I still don't know what that fingerprint is. Again, it's down to the commission. It took me a while to feel comfortable with commission-based work, comfortable with the inevitable compromises that are made when meeting the client halfway with a design. But I'm getting better at dealing with it now. I think having a body of work behind you gives the client trust in you if you feel compelled to push a piece in a certain direction."

As a queer person of mixed race, Corey Pemberton often feels other. Knowing nothing about his African roots and very little about his European heritage, the artist considers lineage and the idea of connectedness in his glass art, paintings, and other works on paper. Pemberton's vessels, blown glass baskets based on those of his presumed ancestors, are made in a European style that borrows forms and patterns from the sweetgrass weavers of South Africa. He says: "I use color and pattern as vehicles to describe situations where society has used a person's uniqueness against them; where people have been labeled or categorized based on physical characteristics in an effort to hold them back. Can we, as a society, find a way to unite in our otherness?"

Born in Reston, Virginia, in 1990, Pemberton received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012. After graduating and relocating to Augusta, Missouri, he worked as a production glassblower under Sam Stang and Kaeko Maehata. Subsequent travel through Norway and Denmark exposed the young artist to both country's rich design history as he worked with fellow glass artists. Upon return to the US, Pemberton participated in a Core Fellowship at Penland School of Craft, Bakersville, North Carolina.

Currently residing in Los Angeles, Pemberton splits time between production glassblowing, his painting practice, and Crafting the Future (CTF), an organization he co-founded with furniture artist Annie Evelyn in early 2019. CTF partners with organizations across the country such as Louisiana's Young Aspirations/Young Artists, known as YAYA; Kentucky's STEAM Exchange; North Carolina's Penland School of Craft; and Maine's Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, with the goal of increasing access to education and opportunity for underrepresented artists in order to help them develop thriving careers. In 2019, CTF raised more than $8,000 to send two young New Orleans students, Tyrik Conaler and Shanti Broom, to Penland School of Craft. 

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, a growing number of artists have banded together to fundraise for student scholarships. The CTF membership page went live in February 2020, and in the next three months culled around 50 members and $2,000. Following the killing of George Floyd and several other innocent African Americans, and the ensuing protests that raised awareness of racial injustice, membership increased to more than 1,200 by late May. Over the next few months, CTF raised over $175,000 for scholarships and other programming, though more is needed to affect lasting change.

If you're interested in joining or donating to Crafting the Future, visit:

https://www.craftingthefuture.org

Striving to bring together people of all backgrounds and identities, Pemberton breaks down stereotypes and builds bridges, not only through his work with CTF, but in his personal artistic practice. In the artist's recent solo show creature, comfort at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) of Raleigh, North Carolina, painting, photography, and hand-blown glass came together to create visual environments that depicted subjects in both real and imagined homes. Pemberton's goal was and is to make his subjects relatable and intriguing, so that viewers consider those subjects fully and are able to see themselves in the work. 

Join Corey Pemberton next spring at the Chrysler Museum of Art's Perry Glass Studio for a lecture and free demonstrations during the 2021 Visiting Artist Series. Next summer, the artist is scheduled to teach at Pilchuck and in the fall at Penland with Cedric Mitchell.

On the morning of September 8, a dry brush field north of Ashland, Oregon, caught fire along Almeda Drive. The National Weather Service called for a red-flag wind warning that day, predicting gusts upward of 50 mph, which was bad news for Oregon fire officials. The state was already battling more than 10 other major fire incidents, exhausting state resources. Strong winds from the east pushed the fire north, parallel to Interstate 5, resulting in the complete destruction of the towns of Talent and Phoenix, Oregon.

Before it stopped, the Almeda fire burned more than 3,200 acres, destroyed 3,000 structures, including one of Fire District 5's three firehouses, and killed 3 people. It stopped south of Medford, a city of 82,000 residents, when the winds eventually shifted. Police said the Almeda fire had two points of origin, the first in Ashland and one later in Phoenix. Michael Jarrod Bakkela, 41, has been charged with starting one of the fires.

Artist studios destroyed by the fire include DoJo Glass Studio, Phoenix, including glassblowers Big Country, Jay (birddog) Harrower, Amani Summerday, Mia Shae Williams and Doug (Taco) Williams. Other glass community members affected by the Almeda fire include artists Ron Regan, Adam Kissinger, Bernie Rodriguez, Jenay Elder and Gabe Arafai; glass collectors Shawn Thompson and Benjamin. Two dispensarys burned to the ground, and those employees are also being helped by the Southern Oregon Glass Community Relief fund, to which over 350 people have donated so far.  

On September 13, birddogart posted on his Instagram:

As most of you have already heard or seen, several miles of our beautiful little Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon burned down on September 8th due to a catastrophic wildfire. Over 3000 homes burned, countless businesses burned to the ground, and many lost everything. Our shop was one of the businesses lost that day. As with any disaster, many have risen to support those affected. We have local efforts as well as the national support of the glass and cannabis industries, which has been phenomenal. I know there has been some confusion as to which GoFundMe is which and who gets what help. None of us has ever been through loss like this before, and there is no handbook, so we've done our best, and we are supporting each other as well. 

The support and love from this community has been overwhelming. There is a team of us making sure that the disbursement of funds is equitable, and that people have their needs met. My vision is that we will be made whole very soon because you all rock, and then we can be pillars in our community and help those who don't have access to the amount of amazing people and resources that we do. We will get through this together, and I can't express enough how much you all have meant to us during this trying time, whether it be shops, collectors, or other artists. Thank you so much!

In this conversation, Lacey St. George Walton, aka LaceFace, discusses the fire and its effects on her local glass and cannabis communities. Talking Out Your Glass podcast and all of its sponsors, along with Mountain Glass and Lampwork Supply, have made donations to Southern Oregon Glass Community Relief (SOGCR). Click on the link below to donate now!! Follow @LaceFaceglass on Instagram for the latest on the recovery.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-glass-fam-in-southern-oregon?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&rcid=0b877f45487743f690cf1a046d2fbcba

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 Australian landscape, affect us. I am fascinated by the unreachable space. The view we look upon, but can never reach. In this minimal landscape, all elements are stripped back, light becomes the landscape, and I am left looking at space, the space between here.…and there. This viewed distance is a place we can never reach, never get to, for as we move towards it, it moves away from you. Is this a real place or is it a projected space of the imagination. My work does not aim to represent this landscape directly but rather induce a state of looking inward and outward simultaneously."  

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Loughlin is a graduate of the Canberra School of Art under the tutelage of late Stephen Procter. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the National Gallery of Australia, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh GB, and the Musee de Design et d'Arts Appliques Contemporains in Lausanne, Switzerland. A studio artist for over 20 years, Loughlin has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2020, she was only the second Australian to have work selected as a finalist in the Loewe Craft Prize. In 2018, she was awarded the Fuse Glass Prize, and in 2004 and 2007, the Tom Malone Art Prize. She is represented by Sabbia Gallery, Sydney, Australia, and Caterina Tognon, Venice, Italy.

A committed and passionate artist who is highly regarded both in Australia and internationally, Loughlin combines her thoughtful and instinctual approach with extraordinary technical skills. With a gentle color palette of soft muted hues, her work often explores ideas of evaporation, space and distance, all inherent in the Australian landscape.

Loughlin's work was on view in late 2023 in a solo exhibition near | far at Sabbia Gallery, Sydney, and her piece of light is on national tour as part of the Jamfactory Icon series, accompanied by a monograph of her art Jessica Loughlin: from here published by Wakefield Press. In 2024, Loughlin was selected for and will participate in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, March 29 through June 2.

Celebrated for her innovative, colorful blown glass and flameworked Amulet Baskets, Laura Donefer is also known for artwork that pushes boundaries by exploring memory, assault, bereavement, joy and madness. The artist has been using glass as the primary medium in her work for over 38 years, all while teaching, producing unforgettable glass fashions shows and promoting the glass arts worldwide.

Born in Ithaca, New York, but raised in rural Quebec, Donefer studied sculpture for a year in 1973 at the National Art School of Cubanacan in Havana. Back in Canada, in 1975 she graduated with honors in Literature and Languages from Dawson College and in 1979 with honors from McGill University, both located in Montreal, Quebec. After traveling the world and working with many interesting people, Donefer trained as a glass artist at Sheridan College, Ontario, graduating in 1985. 

A tireless promoter, Donefer lectured extensively on Canadian contemporary glass in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Australia, including the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C.; the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona; the University of Honolulu, Honolulu, Hawaii; and during AUSGLASS in Sydney, Australia. She curated a number of exhibitions in the United States to showcase Canadian work. In 1985, as president of the Glass Art Association of Canada (GAAC), Donefer was instrumental in uniting glass artists across Canada by publishing a quarterly magazine, The Glass Gazette, which developed into the major voice of Canadian glass artists. In 2006, GAAC awarded Donefer its first Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her tireless efforts in the advancement of art glass in Canada. 

By conducting countless workshops worldwide, Donefer has influenced students from Red Deer College, Alberta, to Penland School of Crafts, Bakersfield, North Carolina, to the Sonoran School, Tucson, Arizona; and beyond in Japan and Australia. She served on the staff in the glass department at Sheridan College and was permanent faculty at Espace Verre, Montreal, for over 18 years, helping to mold the school with her dynamic classes. She continues to teach regularly at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, and at the Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, where she has served on the International Council for 17 years. 

Since the mid-1980s, Donefer's work has been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions, including shows at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in Japan; the Art Gallery of Western Australia; the Hammelev Arts and Culture Centre in Denmark; the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston; the Museo del Vidrio in Mexico; and the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, China. Her sculpture is included in many public and private collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass; the Tacoma Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington; the Museum of Art and Design, Manhattan; Imagine Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida; Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida; Barry Art Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan; and the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. She is currently represented by Habatat Gallery and Sandra Ainsley Gallery. 

A past board member of the Glass Art Society (GAS), in 2008 the organization presented Donefer with its prestigious Honorary Membership Award. Donefer has produced 15 of her unforgettable glass fashion shows, many for the organization. In 2018, her ground-breaking event included 33 glass costumes in 12 gondolas gliding through the canals in Murano, Italy. Her next glass fashion show is slated for GAS 2022. Donefer has also been awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award from Craft Ontario; the International Flameworking Award for "extraordinary contributions to the glass art world"; and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass award for her role in the glass community.

On hiatus due to the Covid 19 pandemic, Donefer spends her days near Harrowsmith, Ontario, with her amazing husband "The Mighty Dave" and her dachshund Mr. Lance. She has become a mushroom detective, searching for and photographing these living sculptures and their unique forms and colors while exploring a new body of Covid Anxiety paintings. Donefer's collaboration with glassblower extraordinaire Jeff Mack is currently on view in a ground-breaking exhibition curated by Tina Oldknow and Bill Warmus, Venice and American Studio Glass, at Le Stanze del Vetro Museum in Venice. 

Public art projects present many technical and aesthetic challenges including, first and foremost, how the artist conveys her concept to a broad swath of the general public. When considering the Multnomah County Central Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, Lynn Basa took on the challenge of translating the principles of hope for users of the new building.

She says: "The American justice system is ultimately based on hope – hope that if you do something wrong and get caught, that you'll get a fair trial; hope that if you go to trial you won't get convicted; hope that if you get convicted, you'll get a light sentence. Judges hope that they will be fair and impartial. Underpinning all of this is the hope for rehabilitation, to re-enter society, to lead a productive life."

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) selected Basa to create a 25' x 71' glass artwork for the lobby of the new 17-story Multnomah County Central Courthouse. Designed by SRG Partnership / CGL Ricci Greene, the new courthouse is located at Southwest First Avenue and Madison Street. The artist chose Bullseye Studio to fabricate her 1,775-square-foot work – a series of 120 5′ tall x 3′ wide panels composed entirely of kilnformed glass. The panels required more than 200 firings and three years to complete.

Basa's design for the two-story artwork—viewable from the lobby, the second and third stories of the building, and from the building's exterior—was inspired by conversations with the project's Artist Selection Panel, courthouse judges and employees, as well as formerly incarcerated community members. The focus of the artwork is a landscape that reflects the rippling passage of behavior, through redemption and rehabilitation, that is sought in the community justice process.

Basa says: "The composition reads from left to right. It starts out hot and in turmoil then becomes cooler and calmer. The crime and the criminal run hot. The job of the justice system is to treat that heat with cool rationality, to calm the waters. On another level, the artwork is a landscape. Living in the Pacific Northwest means living with the constant awareness that you're on top of a volcanic chain, contrasted by being surrounded by water. The Wilmette River runs next to the courthouse and, of course, Portland's famously rainy climate."

Throughout the country, Basa has completed numerous public art commissions in mosaic, glass, steel, terrazzo, and light. In her studio, she paints with an ancient medium called encaustic that is a mix of beeswax and oil pigment. She is the founder of the Milwaukee Avenue Alliance, a community organization dedicated to the equitable cultural and economic reawakening of three blocks of the vintage, working-class main street where her storefront studio is located. With an undergraduate degree in ceramics from Indiana University, the artist earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and an MPA in public art policy from the University of Washington. Basa's book called The Artist's Guide to Public Art: How to Find and Win Commissions, is based on a class she developed and taught at SAIC.

In order to create effects similar to those of encaustic painting, her primary medium, Basa elected to use glass for the Multnomah County Courthouse project. Bullseye Studio developed a process for translating between the mediums, then executed the work in colored crushed glass on canvases of opalescent white glass. She chose to work with Bullseye Studio to translate her imagery from encaustic to glass based on the success of her prior work with Bullseye's team creating mosaic columns for TriMet's Orange Line stations. 

Funded by Multnomah County Percent for Art and managed by the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), Bullseye Studio worked closely with SRG, RACC, Multnomah County, Hoffman Construction, and the engineering firm KPFF to realize this massive project. Installation of the artwork was performed by Artech.

In a time of darkness, Julie Conway relies upon her studio practice for survival, but also as a means of sharing sparkle, beauty and light with the rest of the world. A glass artist and lighting designer, she founded Illuminata Art Glass Design LLC to offer bespoke, luxurious custom lighting designed to amplify molten glass and its abilities to refract and reflect light. Named in homage to the Italian Renaissance thinkers and artists who expanded public consciousness, Illuminata currently offers a new version of enlightenment for the masses. 

Says Conway: "We are dealing with grief, emotions, change, and finding life routines. There have been some solitary days in the studio. I put my time into some deep designing and launching new content on my new readymade website. My team and I have returned to blowing glass in limited capacity with a few extra juggling steps, but I am so happy to be back producing glass and installing new commissions. For me, it has been so important to have my studio practice. Getting lost in creative projects has now become a mode of survival. I feel that we must continue to find things that inspire us. The only way through is through. Feel the light. It is here for us." 

A passionate collaborator, Conway works closely with architects, designers and clients to create extraordinary hand-made, illuminated glassworks. She conceives all site-specific original designs and executes their fabrication in the hotshop with her team. Crafting the suspension systems, creating the blueprints for armatures, and integrating the technical electrical components are all part of her process. By communicating and coordinating with teams of electricians, installers, architects, designers and clients, her artistic vision is achieved. Merging concepts of art installation with functional design, spaces are transformed by light.

She says: "Light is fascination, attraction, a beacon, it is life. Light travels for eons before our existence. We see it after the millennia have past and the fleeting moment is gone."

Beginning in 1997 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Conway took her first steps on the pathway to glass working as an apprentice for three and a half years alongside a glass production artist. From 2003 to 2011, she served as a class organizer, teaching assistant and Italian translator for various glassmaking classes on the island of Murano. Subsequently, she spent years teaching glassblowing and flameworking herself at Public Glass, San Francisco, and Pratt Fine Arts, Seattle. In addition to lighting, Conway creates glass jewelry, small sculpture and Christmas ornaments from her workspace within Seattle's Equinox Studio, a nexus of collaboration where artists often contribute to each other's projects and have renter equity in a collection of industrial buildings. 

Recent awards include Conway's selection as the 2017/ 2018 Visiting Artist for Motif Seattle, a hotel that blends its identity to the vision of an area artist on a rotating basis. In 2018, the artist participated in LuxLumen, an art glass lighting exhibition for Berengo Studio and Gallery, shown during the Venice Biennale in Murano.  Her work FracTur(ed), exhibited at Glasstastic, the Bellevue Arts Museum Glass Biennial exhibition, won the global lighting award from Light in Theory.  In 2019, she designed, created and installed chandeliers at SeaTac Airport and Din Tai Fung in Seattle.  

In 2007, Conway founded BioGlass, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the efficiency of glass studios and glass making practices, and disseminating the latest information on the best practices to lower energy usage in glass studios. On a recent trip to Mexico, the artist began a collaboration project for her new LUMI Collection, making products from recycled glass and using a biofuels furnace with zero carbon footprint.

Conway's work evolved outside of the gallery scene due to the functionality of glass lighting. Instead, her illuminated installations adorn luxury hotels, bars, restaurants, award-winning homes and museum exhibitions. The Illuminata collection is an intentional juxtaposition of elegant blown glass forms and industrial elements surrounding patterns of light and shadow unique to Conway's artistic expression, merging concepts of art installation with functional design. The result is the transformation of space via light.

The 1950s and '60s marked the heyday of kinetic sculpture with Alexander Calder's mobiles and Jean Tinguely's junk machine that destroyed itself in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. But to glass lovers, Bandhu Dunham put himself on the same map with his 2016 Rube Goldberg-esque Escape Room created for Arizona State University as a reflection of how sports could evolve 24 years into the future.

Dunham says: "Nature inspires me, the interplays between art and science always interest me, and glass merges these fields like no other material. After many years, fanciful steam engines and other kinetic sculptures represent a full turn of the circle, back to the colorful, magical mysteries that captivated my childhood self. He's still in there, and he wants you to come play, too. I think that people like watching kinetic gizmos with gears and pulleys and crankshafts because, in a paradoxical way, these machines re-connect us with nature."

Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1959, Dunham began to teach himself lampwork technique in 1975 while still in high school. As an undergraduate at Princeton, he received informal training from the University's glassblower before completing his apprenticeship under American and European masters at Urban Glass, the Pilchuck Glass School and the Penland School of Crafts. The artist regularly teaches workshops at craft schools and private studios around the United States and internationally including the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, The Penland School of Crafts and the Pilchuck Glass School. A visiting foreign instructor at Osaka University of Arts in Osaka, Japan, Dunham has presented his work at numerous international conferences including The Glass Art Society, Ausglass, The International Festival of Glass, Kobe Lampwork Festa and Glassymposium Lauscha.

An internationally respected glass artist, author and teacher, Bandhu's work can be found in the permanent collections of numerous museums in the US and abroad, and his Contemporary Lampworking books are the authoritative, standard instructional texts in the field. In addition to fabricating one-of-a-kind glass sculptures and goblets, Dunham supervises his apprentices in creating unusual gift items and decorations of his conception from his studio, Salusa Glassworks, Prescott, Arizona. In 2018, he designed a groundbreaking kinetic sculpture fabricated by Ryan Murray, GANESHA (Guard Against Negativity; Express Sane Healing Attitudes), for The Melting Point Gallery, Sedona, Arizona.

He says: "The effect on the viewer is a playful mix of contemplative fascination with bursts of excitement as the marbles make their way up and down the track. I enjoy seeing how much viewers of all ages and backgrounds are engaged by the simple drama of marbles circulating through a kinetic system. The key elements of art-as-experience are brought to life in this complex yet simple theatre. We are reminded of life's magic when we allow ourselves to be captivated by the colorful story unfolding before us. In the best case, the world looks a little different after we have spent some time watching one of my machines."

Dunham has established a Patreon page to support the creation and dissemination of his informative, inspiring and amusing videos about glass art. 

Visit http://www.patreon.com/bandhu

Exploring themes of birth, death, animal-human relationships and parallel worlds suggests that Christina Bothwell is a magical realist. Her work conjures scenes from fables or children's stories in which something impossible is happening quite naturally and spontaneously. 

Bothwell says: "Since I was very young, I have been fascinated with the concept of the Soul… the idea that the physical body represents only a small part of our beingness. I am always interested in trying to express that we are more than just our bodies, and my ongoing spiritual interests and pursuits have run parallel to the narrative in my pieces."

Bothwell studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia before teaching herself how to work with ceramics and cast glass. The artist lived and worked in Manhattan until 1994 when she and husband, artist Robert Bender, relocated to rural Pennsylvania – along with their three young children, eight pets, plus a snake named Lucy. Nature, the main source of inspiration for her work, helps Bothwell maintain an awareness of the interconnectedness that exists among all of life.

By the late 1990s, Bothwell was having some success making doll-like figures out of clay, found objects and cloth. But a perceived "disturbing quality" sometimes made the work a tough sell. A 1999 glassmaking workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass provided the breakthrough she needed. Realizing glass could do all the same things as clay but with an added element of delicacy and lightness, Bothwell has been combining the two materials ever since – a pairing that has become her aesthetic signature.

Since those early days, Bothwell has won numerous scholarships and grants including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Virginia A. Groot Foundation award for excellence in sculpture. Additional awards and honors include the 2018 Artist of the Future Award for Most Compassionate Artist, Imagine Museum, Saint Petersburg, FL; The Haven Foundation grant, Brewer, ME; and the Craft Emergency Relief Foundation grant, Montpelier, VT, to offset damages and loss of artwork caused by a devastating studio fire Bothwell and Bender suffered in August 2018.

Bothwell's work is held in permanent public collections such as the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Shanghai Museum of Glass Art, Shanghai, China; Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL; Palm Springs Museum, Palm Springs, CA and the Alexander Tutsek – Stiftung foundation, Munich, Germany. She is represented by Heller Gallery, NY; Habatat Gallery, Royal Oak, MI; and Austin Art Projects, Palm Desert, CA.

With an exhibition at Heller Gallery scheduled in February 2021, Bothwell contemplates new work. "My subject matter includes babies, animals, and children as they embody the essence of vulnerability that is the underlying theme in my work. Currently I am exploring metamorphosis as a topic, and have been incorporating figures within figures in my pieces. Within each glass figure there is a smaller figure seen through the surface of the glass. I think of these pieces as souls, each being pregnant with their own potential, giving birth to new, improved versions of themselves."

In this special AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode of Talking Out Your Glass podcast, patron and co-producer Anthony Cowan participates in interviewing one of his favorite glass artists, Bothwell, as a reward for his support of the podcast via Patreon. If you're interested in supporting the continued documentation of glass and glass artists while earning extra episodes and other rewards, visit 

www.patreon.com/TalkingOutYourGlass

Creating under the pseudonym 2-Stroke since 2013, Christopher McElroy constructs one-of-a-kind pipes and rigs adorned with his colorful, psychedelic, textile-inspired patterning technique known as Heliocoileh. His current body of work includes polychromatic water pipes, dry pipes, cups, marbles, and beads, created with the philosophy that the ornamentation of daily objects serves to elevate an experience from mundane to mystical.

McElroy earned his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA from The University of Washington, where he studied under Mark Zirpel. His early glass mentors Emilio Santini, Sally Prasch and Rick Schneider encouraged him to forge his own path from the very start of his relationship with the medium. His sculptural and functional works have been exhibited at The Henry Arts Gallery (Seattle, Washington), Anderson Gallery (Richmond, Virginia), Traver Gallery (Seattle, Washington), Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, Montana), Dampkring Gallery (Amsterdam) and Pismo Fine Art Gallery (Aspen, Colorado). 

Teaching has played an important part of McElroy's history with glass and includes flameworking instruction at Kyoto University of Art and Design in Japan, Penland School of Crafts, the Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel. 

Growing up in Southwest Virginia's scenic rolling hills and farmlands shaped McElroy's affinity for agrarian and wilderness landscapes. Informed by color relationships in plants, animals, lichen, and minerals, the artist studies and examines how colors convey information of biological purpose. Lessons of age, nutrition, fertility, and danger are communicated among entities that speak the language of color.

Informed by avant-garde contemporary fashion, ceremonial objects of pre-columbian South American cultures, and textiles from around the world, the artist cites artistic influences to include Robert Irwin, El Anatsui, Kelsey Brooks, & Tom Sachs. Color, collection, and craft have always been and remain at the core of his studio practice.

In early June 2020, the artist exhibited new work in a four-person show, A Time for Passion, held at Stoked, Connecticut, and will be a part of Mins, a group pipe show held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 16, 2020. 

From his studio in Hudson, New York, McElroy discusses the transition from sculpture to pipes, and how art school training affects his approach to functional glass.

More than a decade ago, Tanya Veit was a bartender living and working in Chicago, Illinois. While on vacation in Florida, a psychic predicted she would one day own an arts related business. Back home in the Windy City, Veit attended a glass exhibition with her husband John, after which she immediately applied for a business license, knowing that her company would one day dedicate itself to glass art. 

The Veits established AAE Glass in Cape Coral, Florida, along with John's brother, Mark Veit.  Their 22,000-square-foot facility is a Bullseye Resource Center and distributor and also offers two classrooms, a retail store, cold working shop and shipping warehouse for their large e-commerce business. Some of AAE Glass' offerings include products and equipment from Coatings By Sandberg, Olympic Kilns, Gemini Saw Company and many popular fusing supplies. Classes are offered almost daily by world-renowned glass fusing instructors from the U.S. and by international fused glass artists 10 to 15 times a year.

At an early age Veit was inspired by her grandmother, who provided pastels and chalks from the art supply store where she worked. Since that time, the artist has explored myriad mediums including PMC, art clay, wood, metal and glass. Constantly experimenting with new techniques, Veit has redefined what is possible in fused glass jewelry. A self-taught artist, her work has been published in many periodicals. 

An energetic and "spicy" instructor, Veit developed a unique talent for assisting others in tapping into their own creativity to further their craft. Her students lovingly refer to her inspiring classes as "The Tanya Show." The artist has travelled the US and Europe extensively, teaching her signature techniques and has expanded those offerings into highly anticipated online video tutorials. 

AAE Glass currently offers more than 50 online tutorials by fusing experts worldwide. Two recent videos include Veit's Creating Depth & Drama in Fused Glass Jewelry, which has become her most popular online offering to date. She says: "Being able to review instruction at your leisure in your studio is priceless. Referring back and watching repeatedly will also spark something new. Life gets in the way, so being able to have that resource when you need it is invaluable." Look for Veit's new release, Scenic Layering and Color Blending in Jewelry in the fall along with Kiln Casting by Nathan Sandberg. 

Investigating a range of issues from equity and privilege to materiality and labor, Nathan Watson's artwork addresses complex social issues through a combination of monochromatic glass and compelling form. After directing San Francisco State University's small glass program for five years, the artist, designer, and educator became Executive Director of Public Glass, the city's only public access glass making facility. As the director of an arts non-profit and in his life as an artist, Watson's current practice continues to move intuitively between community building and art making as a way to examine and imagine how we might offer each other the same attention and regard as we do the object. 

A Kentucky native, Watson received a BA in history from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where he also began investigating glass as a way to transform storied narratives into a visual medium. Before pursuing his graduate studies at California College of Arts in 2004, Watson received grants and awards from the Rhode Island Foundation and the Rhode Island Council for the Arts for his work concerning local crafts, identity, and immigration. Often formed by constructed architectural interventions and poetic imagery, Watson's work in glass has been the subject of exhibitions at the Noma Gallery and Refusalon in San Francisco, POST in Los Angeles, and numerous surveys of contemporary artists using glass as an element in their practices.

Watson has lectured and taught nationally as a visiting artist at the Massachusetts College of Art, Centre College in Kentucky, UC Fullerton, San Francisco State University, and at conferences addressing issues surrounding arts education, youth programming and social justice. As a curator, he has contributed to exhibitions at Southern Exposure, Google, The Reclaimed Room at Building Resources, and directs the gallery and artist in residence programs at Public Glass. 

In 2012, Watson co-founded Light A Spark, a glass-focused arts program that provides rare opportunities and resources for youth in the underserved communities of San Francisco. He's also a member of an artist collective called Related Tactics, which brings together artists and cultural workers to collaborate on projects that deal with the intersection of race and culture.

Days before the most recent issue of GASnews was set to publish, the organization received a letter from Watson and published it in its entirety. 

Watson wrote: "In this moment when all communities must ask, how did we get here, I think that it's a meaningful statement in itself to say that I am one of two African Americans leading nonprofit glass organizations, and one of three helping to guide University glass programs in the entire United States. After sitting back and watching our glass community respond to the lynching of brown people and observing the social media-based processing of our complicity through inaction and a pervasive lack of inclusion, I've decided to put my heartache aside to share what it feels like from my perspective. With all of the wealth, privilege, and supposed progressive elements within our arts community, how could we let ourselves fall so far behind when it comes to supporting equity and opening doors for everyone? 

Even when compared to the lack of representation across the art world as a whole, the glass community looks really bad. No words, propping up of black faces, or sudden unburying of works by black artists will solve this. We were wrong all along to be content amongst ourselves, content to peddle in shiny things with little connection to the realities of the world that is burning our eyes open now. We as artists, who are tasked with interpreting our collective condition, did not do our jobs, and the industry that supports us did not do theirs. The glass galleries did not look toward and support our futures, and our institutions looked to the past and the same sources for self-congratulation again and again until last week. 

In the last few days my projects, my body, and the images of my black and brown colleagues have become all too popular in the social media posts of the many glass companies and organizations around the country who are trying to make a statement about how "woke" they are. If you use our bodies in your catalogues, in your posts, and in your applications for larger grants, YOU are responsible for helping to create a way forward for the many who have not been offered a seat at your table. 

The leading nonprofit glass organizations from coast to coast who have been working on issues of access and diversity, lifting new voices, and supporting emerging artists for years with little to no contribution from our industry's biggest donors and institutions have joined together to create the Give to Glass Campaign. We've united due to the devastating financial impacts of COVID-19 on our programs and studios, but also because our own glass community has never fully appreciated the value of what we've been working for all along. In this moment when everyone has
something to say about social justice, I ask….Do you see us now?! 

If you as an individual or an institution have made a declaration about where you stand, then it's your moral obligation to support change in our glass community. Words raise awareness, but contributions provide the resources for REAL CHANGE! Donate to Give to Glass, to Crafting the Future, or to any organization that is versed in fighting for those whose lives are compromised and voices muted, and for God's sake, please VOTE! 

If there is no action behind your statements, then please stop using our names, our black bodies, those of our youth, and the objects made from our alienation and pain, and step aside to let us build our own house."

Talking Out Your Glass podcast and all of our sponsors have made donations to Give to Glass.

Give to Glass is a fundraising campaign created by and for Glass Impact, a nationwide coalition of nonprofit, community-focused glass organizations who are dedicated to equal access and uplifting diverse voices and ideas through glass. Each of the member studios is supported primarily through public programming, making the economic fallout of COVID-19 and social distancing particularly devastating.

By supporting Glass Impact through the Give to Glass Campaign, you are making a statement:

A diverse and accessible glass community is the best way that we can move the industry forward, and we cannot afford to allow COVID-19 to eliminate the studios that are fighting for inclusivity.

Glass Impact is:

​

Firebird Community Arts | Chicago, IL | ​@firebirdcommunityarts
Foci- Minnesota Center for Glass Art  | Minneapolis, MN | @focimcga
GlassRoots | Newark, NJ | @GlassRootsinc
Hilltop Artists | Tacoma, WA | @hilltopartists
North Carolina Glass Center | Asheville, NC | @NCGlassCenter
Public Glass | San Francisco, CA | @PublicGlass 
STARworks Glass | Star, NC | @STARworksglass
UrbanGlass | Brooklyn, NY | @UrbanGlass_nyc

Visit

https://www.givetoglass.org

Early exploration of flameworking and its applications play out in Elliott Todd's diverse body of work that ranges from functional glass pipes to glass drawings to breakthrough video presentations on Instagram, such as the 2019 demonstration of musical instruments made at his torch. For his BFA show at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Todd aka et_glass, drew Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map using glass rods and his torch. 

Todd says: "I make work based off of repeated geometric patterns. These patterns are often made up of many little parts. Eventually I can assemble it all to make a much larger piece than the individual components could ever be. When you put the earth on a 2D scale, it distorts the sizes and the relationship of the continents. What I like so much about the Dymaxion Map is it uses geometry to make a more fair map of the world. And it creates this really interesting perspective where we're all connected instead of all being separated by our different continents."

A native of Boone, North Carolina, Todd visited Penland School of Crafts as a boy with his father and attended community open house events. As a teenager, he started making flameworked beads at home with a simple gas torch and rods of glass. Upon graduation from high school and unsure of his direction, the young artist attended Penland classes beginning with a hot glass intensive taught by Ed Schmid and followed by further glass studies taught by Dave Naito and Scott Benefield. More recently, he attended a workshop with one of his favorite torch artists, Micah Evans, and served as teaching assistant for Carmen Lozar.

After earning his BFA from Tyler in 2016, Todd returned to his hometown and established a studio where he designs and creates a line of functional glass combining reticello in contemporary forms, networked and framed pieces that are sold through Gallery 42 and direct to galleries. In 2020, he was looking forward to serving as teaching assistant at Penland and having his first solo exhibition in four years in Asheville, both events cancelled because of Covid. However, thanks to his presence on Instagram, et_glass is coordinating on a project with a glassblower from Kuwait who is the lead artist at the first school for glass in the Gulf region, Yadawi. He's also recently donated proceeds from the sale of some beautiful Sherlocks and bubble sculptures to Crafting the Future.

Through constant experimentation, et_glass blends non- functional forms with the objects he loves to use and turns mistakes into great pieces just by being open to the idea. 

A process that involves creating a model, pouring a mould, and carefully applying very thin layers of powdered glass within that mould, pâte de verre has historically been associated with the matt/frosted, translucent vessel forms of Lalique and Daum. Enter Alicia Lomné, who has not simply redefined the techniques, but pioneered the acceptance of radical new non-traditional forms created with paste of glass. Her glorious plant/ underwater creature hybrids are a wonder to behold with their rounded bellies, spikey spines, and stunning color gradations and values.  

Born on the island of Corsica, France, to two working artists, Lomné was exposed to life as a maker from the beginning. Her mother, well-known glass artist KéKé Cribbs, introduced her to the glass community at large and gifted her with the Pilchuck workshop where she fell in love with glass casting. Lomné studied the techniques under the tutelage of Clifford Rainey, Daniel Clayman, Jeanne Ferraro, and at The California College of Arts and Crafts. 

Having recently relocated from Whidbey Island to Tacoma, Washington, Lomné has spent the last 21 years exploring and developing her own unique style of pâte de verre. She has exhibited her work nationally and participated in shows at The Kentucky Museum of Art and Design, The Museum of American Glass, Figgie Art Museum, National Liberty Museum, Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, and The Muskegon Museum of Art. 

For the last 17 years, Lomné has invested more of her time in teaching, enthusiastically sharing her knowledge of pâte de verre with others at Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts, The Corning Musuem of Glass, Bullseye Glass resource centers across the country, as well as in Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, England, and Germany. Though she never thought of herself as an educator, sharing knowledge has resulted in a genuine love and an enthusiasm for teaching which she describes as one of best experiences of her life. One of a few artists who have inspired a resurgence in pâte de verre, Lomné has also released four educational videos, the first with Bullseye Glass Co. and three others with AAE Glass. https://www.aaeglass.com/video-tutorial-exploring-pate-de-verre-w-alicia-lomne-1.html?noforce=1

https://www.aaeglass.com/video-tutorial-exploring-pate-de-verre-w-alicia-lomne-1.html?amp=1

Currently on a self-imposed hiatus, Lomné takes a much-needed break from teaching, traveling, and juggling many jobs. She says: "I need a reboot. Time to explore and expand my own techniques, time to rethink how to function as an artist in this world, time to build a new website and diversify myself." Future goals include creating a line of greeting cards and fleshing out book ideas. In 2020, Lomné's work will be featured in a new book about pâte de verre by Max Stewart and Tone Ørvik. And of course, explorations of new work to push the technical and aesthetic limits of pâte de verre continue.

"The pieces I made in the Alluvial series, which I will still be working on now, are about the flow of water, sedimentary layers, a reflection and recording of time. So much of what I do is wrapped up in my process. There is a love and calm in the making that I find nowhere else in my life. Each line laid is a loving meditation and a small record of my time past. Time is, I believe, the only thing we really have in life." 

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, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb…I began to question my own existence. How do I fit in to what I see?"

Inspired by this wonderment and interest in perspective, glass artist Josh Simpson embarked on his own exploration of the cosmos. Born on August 17, 1949 and educated at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York (1972), much of Simpson's career in glass has been dedicated to communicating his fascination with the earth and its role as our planet, first through entertaining demonstrations for middle schoolers, then with art lovers worldwide. He has enthusiastically shared his glass art in much the same way the astronauts shared their experiences – with any man, woman or child whose heart fills with excitement just thinking of the possibilities.

Since the 1980s, Simpson has been hiding his glass Planets all over our Earth. In 2000 he launched the Infinity Project, which invites people around the world to hide Planets in exotic, mysterious, and sometimes even seemingly mundane – but personally meaningful – locations.

Simpson's space-inspired glass art includes Planets, vases, platters, and sculpture. The artist has dedicated more than 50 years to inventing new glass formulas and making unique objects that embody his fascination with color, form, light, pattern, complexity, and the working of the universe. His iconic Planets evoke imaginary worlds that might exist in distant undiscovered galaxies. His New Mexico Glass suggests star-filled night skies and swirling blue seas, while Corona Glass evokes deep-space images captured by the Hubble Telescope. 

Simpson's work has been exhibited in the White House and numerous international museums. Select pieces are currently on permanent display at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, Yale University Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many more.

Says Simpson: "I am moved by the beauty of the night sky and other astronomical phenomena. Physics and cosmology fascinate me, as does high temperature chemistry, powered flight, and all things mechanical. I am mesmerized by color, form, contrast, iridescence, tessellating patterns, and complexity."

Located in the rural hills of Western Massachusetts, Simpson's studio can be found in a converted dairy barn beside his home. Every night, the last thing he does is walk from the house to his studio to check the furnaces. Seeing an aurora borealis, watching a storm develop down the valley, or looking at the sky on a perfect summer night, compels him to translate some of the wonder of the universe into his glass. This process doesn't happen in any planned way, but gradually and unpredictably. He never tries to replicate what he sees around him, and in fact often doesn't recognize the source of inspiration until someone points it out later. 

Simpson states: "Molten glass consists of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat. The result is a material that flows like honey. When it's hot, glass is alive! It moves gracefully and inexorably in response to gravity and centripetal force. It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that make it simultaneously one of the most rewarding and one of the most frustrating materials for an artist to work with. Most of my work reflects a compromise between the molten material and me; each finished piece is a solidified moment when we both agree."

In his most recent book, Josh Simpson 50 Years of Visionary Glass, 500 beautiful photos and informative (and humorous) narration by the artist, reveals the evolution of Simpson's evocative glass art over the past 50 years. In-depth looks at his several signature series and experimental works illustrate how the artist has continually explored new ways to express—in glass—his fascination with outer space, the natural world, and the workings of the universe. Text and photo spreads narrate the story of Simpson's glass, details of his life and process, and his contributions within the craft world. Text by experts in the glass world, including William Warmus, Tina Oldknow, Nezka Pfeifer, and others, supplies additional views. In addition, strategically placed comments from numerous museum curators, along with insights from astrophysicists and space flight professionals, present a unique perspective on the meanings and broad appeal of his unique glass.

From playing the spoons, to winning story slams and flying high performance planes to the wrong number that resulted in him marrying astronaut Cady Coleman – enjoy this fascinating conversation with Josh Simpson.

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Silvia Levenson brings the black humor of the survivor into the domestic arena with a wit that tempers what might at first glance be shrugged off as simple, more caustic feminism. Hers is a tango danced by twin outsiders of the Venetian glass community: female artist/ kilcast glass. And to further insult the traditionalists, she concocts her iconoclastic cakes with American glass. – Lani McGregor, director, The Bullseye Connection. 

Razor blades embedded in wedding cakes. Knives hanging precariously above recliners. Shoes pierced with nails. Empty chairs. Silvia Levenson does not claim her work is universal, but rather an intimate reflection of her own feelings about childhood, domesticity, travel and exile. Though she lives and works in Italy, her work cannot be defined by the usual Italian glass parameters. There's nothing shiny or exclusively beautiful about her cast glass; rather, it is raw, emotional and unforgettable.

Levenson is a survivor, a descendant of Russian Jewish fugitives from the 1904 Revolution, herself an exile from Argentine repression. From 1976 to 1984, during the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla, 30,000 people known as "desaparecidos" disappeared in Argentina, including members of Levenson's own family. People who were identified as terrorists were abducted or murdered outright in their homes or safe houses, at their jobs or high schools. When one of Levenson's cousins and her aunt were killed, she emigrated to Italy with her husband and two children, Natalia and Emilano. She was only 23 years old at the time.

Coming to art as a painter and graphic artist, in 1987 Levenson read Glass Fusing I and discovered that artists were able to work in glass independently. At this time, she also attended Bertil Vallien's exhibition of stunning new work in cast glass and was again surprised by the potential of the medium. This attraction and excitement led to her early glass studies at Creative Glass, Switzerland, and Sars Poteries, France. She says: "I was fascinated, not only with the beauty of glass but with the fact that glass is a material used in our daily lives. I do not believe the more complex the material, the better the result. I think that a good piece begins with a good idea. I don't like virtuosity in art. I love feelings, pathos, intuitions. Being a slave to technique is boring."

In 1995, Levenson served an artist residency at Bullseye Glass Co., where she created work for her first U.S. exhibition Il Viaggio: Selected Works, held at Bullseye Gallery. In 2004, when she was awarded the Rakow Commission from the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG) for her work It's Raining Knives, the first congratulatory e-mail was from McGregor. Her relationship with the company, which is both personal and professional, continues today.

Through iconic objects such as tea pots and wedding cakes, pink hand grenades and empty chairs, Levenson's work reflects the fragility and vulnerability of humankind. The sculptures symbolize myriad painful truths including the inability of parents to protect children and the repetition of parents' mistakes by their offspring. One might believe collectors would shy away from such intense or painful content to focus on the decorative quality of glass, on its beauty. But, when Levenson created her Little Bad Girl dresses made in glass and barbed wire, she sold them all. Levenson explains: "If you look at what is happening in a contemporary art context, my work doesn't look so aggressive."

Though the Covid 19 pandemic altered Levenson's teaching and exhibition schedule, the artist currently offers online workshops, including a sold-out class for Warm Glass UK, and future class for Bullseye in August 2020. She is scheduled to teach August 3 – 8, 2020 at CMOG, https://www.cmog.org/class/shifting-boundaries. Check the websites for updates. The artist is also providing one-on-one online tutoring. Find out more at www.silvialevenson.com.

Fall 2020 exhibitions include Punto sull'arte Gallery, Varese, Italy, September 29 and Argentinean Embassy, Rome, October 29, with Levenson's daughter, Natalia Saurin. Post pandemic, Levenson will install new work at the Art Applied Museum at Sforzesco Castle, Milan. A travelling exhibition, Missing Identity, addresses her experiences as a survivor of Argentina's Dirty War. The show has been exhibited at the American University Museum in Washington DC, the Argentine Consulate in Barcelona, the Galerie Argentine in Paris, the Murano Glass Museum in Italy and Bullseye Projects, Portland, Oregon. Recovered Identity, Levenson's 130-piece collection of glass baby clothes, was acquired in 2018 by the Alexander Tutsek Fondation in Germany. The work will be exhibited some time in 2021.

Ellen Mandelbaum creates environments in stained glass that inspire connection between the viewer and the serenity of the spiritual world. Painting with light not only allowed her to transcend art glass limitations, but offered a broader concept for expanding artistic vision in the medium.

After receiving her MFA in painting in 1963 from Indiana University, Mandelbaum worked for several years as a painter, educator and lecturer before developing an interest in stained glass. In 1975, her studies in leaded glass began in earnest at the now defunct Stained Glass School in North Adamas, Massachusetts. By the mid 1980s, Mandelbaum had studied in workshops with such well-known masters as Ludwig Schaffrath, Johannes Schreiter, Jochem Poengsen, Albinas Elskus, Ray King and Ed Carpenter. 

Having learned the basic skills of leaded glass, Mandelbaum found herself wanting more fluid motion and softness in her work. The pathway to breaking free of rigid lead line confines was to paint on the glass, techniques she learned from Elskus, who encouraged her to paint in a more personal way. Becoming a member of the Glass Painting Society, founded by John Nussbaum, introduced her to other glass painters with new ideas and approaches, and pushed the artist to further explore free expression using glass paints. 

From the beginning, Mandelbaum's primary interest was the architectural use of stained glass, though throughout her career she designed and exhibited exquisite autonomous pieces, such as Martinique. She says: "I sat on the edge of a dock, plein air painting like Monet. This piece was painted from life with special glass paint and glass I'd brought from Queens, New York, wrapped in newspaper and nestled in the clothes in my suitcase. Miraculously it made it home unbroken where I could fire it in the traditional way – in my kiln at 1200 degrees." Bold, often geometric designs appeared in concert with expressive free-hand use of paints, stain or enamels. Mandelbaum made use of clear and light tints to enable what was beyond the stained glass to play a role in her designs. Her aesthetic signature, painted elements interacted with what was occurring in the view beyond. 

Exhibited internationally, Mandelbaum's autonomous panels have been featured in several one-person exhibitions at the Queens College Art Center in Flushing, New York, and in a couple of one-person shows at Gallery35 in Manhattan. A member of the Women's International Glass Workshop since its inception, in 2016 the artist participated in the group show La Grange Aux Verrieres- Lumiere Visible, in Saint-Hilaire-en-Lignieres, France.

Mandelbaum is internationally recognized for her innovative stained glass commissions including installations for the Queens College Art Center, the Marian Woods Retirement Facility in Hartsdale, New York, and a 30-foot high window for the South Carolina Aquarium, Charleston, South Carolina. Liturgical projects include: Temple Beth Shalom, Annapolis, Maryland, 2014; Kol Shalom Synagogue, Rockville, Maryland, 2012; and Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, Minnetonka, Minnesota, for which she was presented with the 1997 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Religious Art Award.

In 2014, Mandelbaum was accredited as an Artist/Designer by the Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA). Two years later, she was appointed Senior Advisor for the American Glass Guild. Other awards include the Ahavas Sholom Honorable Mention Award for Design Excellence, Newark, New Jersey, 2014, and the Williamsburg Art & Historical Society's 16th Anniversary Grand Harvest Award for Excellence, 2012.

In 2019, Mandelbaum received the SGAA's Lifetime Achievement Award for Education. Her teaching experiences include the instruction of glass painting at the SGAA Stained Glass School, Raytown, Missouri; and in New York at Hunter College, Pace University, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2020, the artist will teach long weekend workshops at her Long Island City Studio. A class including Bruce Buchanan, this year's James Whitney Scholarship recipient, was rescheduled, hopefully for September 4, 5, 6. Check her website, ellenmandelbaum.com for the latest updates.