A Visual Symphony - Works of Optimism by Lino Tagliapietra

This January, as we all miss seeing our friends at the Art Fair in Florida, usually attended with Lino and Lina, we have taken the opportunity to share his most recent works with you in this catalog.

While speaking to Lino recently about the music he listens to while working, he said yes, it does speak to him, and specifically music as it relates to color... it changes the mood.

the essay….

Written by Jeanne Koles

The French art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) coined the term Orphism to describe the musical qualities of the paintings of Sonia and Robert Delaunay. The name references Orpheus, a poet and singer of Greek mythology thought to symbolize the ideal of the mystically inspired artist.

Maestro Lino Tagliapietra is a choreographer in glass whose recent work absolutely sings; the striking colors of his vivacious murrini stretch in dynamic gestures on audacious forms, creating a spectacular visual symphony. Tagliapietra is a master of synesthesia—the confluence of senses in art. In this case, the purely visual creates an auditory response, one by which we can practically hear the colors and shapes.

It is fitting that the universal language to describe musical terms is Italian, the native tongue of an artist who embraces cross-pollination of cultures and whose work is so incredibly expressive. A work like 'Murmansk' is “adagio”—quiet and easy, with colors that evoke the watery environment of this Russian port. As if seen in an aerial photograph, the earthy green and clear blue of 'Murmansk', highlighted in the unusual depression at the top of the vase, undulate like the spectacular fjords for which they are named.

Even the sound of the word Murmansk feels hushed.

Detail of Murmansk.

Works like 'Jalisco' and 'Maracaibo' are “vivace”— exciting and lively with the hot colors, actions, and sounds of Central or South America. 'Jalisco' embraces the entire rainbow of colors in various designs, all culminating in dramatic stripes on the neck. Words like Jalisco and Maracaibo evoke the fiery passion of Mexico and Venezuela just by being spoken. Sound has always been inspiring to Tagliapietra, whose creative process is galvanized as much by hearing a unique word as by witnessing a beautiful place.

The kaleidoscopic exuberance of many recent works by Tagliapietra shows a man with an unparalleled zest for life and creation. 'Florencia' is a smooth and clear canvas for exploration of color—turquoise abuts violet, yellow encases orange, hot pink, royal blue, lime green, and deep red crisscross in varying-shaped murrini.

A set of five miniature 'Fenice' is a thoughtful configuration of related figures and contours, complementary voices in an overall harmony. Negative space between the sculptures creates an infinity of experiences as one moves around the grouping.

In addition to their like forms, color is a thread of connectivity between the distinct elements. Lines of continuity are created as colors seems to extend from one piece to the next, while exciting moments of contrast occur when the colors of one element come in visual contact with the disparate colors of another.

Sometimes the boldness of Tagliapietra comes from melodic juxtaposition of assorted colors, but sometimes it comes from stunning simplicity, like an aria of a single color. The daringly monochromatic 'Cayuga' offers a new perspective on the uniquely sculpted forms he has made in homage to the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York. Instead of feeling limited to water tones in works about this lake region, Tagliapietra introduces an unexpected crimson as the blazing murrine reach an intense crescendo at the mouth of the vessel.

"La Ville de Paris" (1911). Corbis Historical / Getty Images

Of a mural he made of The Three Graces for the 1937 Paris Exposition, Delaunay wrote, “these are based on studies in the transparency of color, whose similarity to musical notes drove me to discover the movement of color.” Tagliapietra similarly believes that musicality in his art specifically depends on the color of the piece, which has a direct relationship to its mood. Tagliapietra’s personal interest in music varies from Beethoven to the Blues, and his artwork can be experienced as an expression of the passion and gusto of masterful musical compositions. He is indeed the Maestro, and his is a visual symphony articulated in an explosion of color. This collection of work by Tagliapietra, mostly executed in 2020, contains an exhilarating spirit of vibrant colors that play a particularly poignant and joyful note in these times of struggle.

STUDIO FOCUS | SIDNEY HUTTER

towards the light

For our first Studio Focus of 2021, we caught up with Massachusetts glass artist Sidney Hutter, who can usually be found in his Boston area studio listening to Bob Dylan or Wilco, researching new methods, and creating new work. The studio is Hutter’s favorite place to be. He used these difficult Covid times to refine his studio practice and cold-working glass methods to create new works, finding a silver lining in the fact that the slowing of the business side of art allowed him to ramp up his creativity.

Sid Hutter in his studio during Schantz Galleries New England Studio Tour.

Hutter is well versed in hot glass techniques but most of his pieces are cold worked. After a fire rendered the hot shop at MassArt unusable in 1978, he began an adaptation to these circumstances that led to his innovative new technological methods for creating glass art. “It is amazing to behold how far the contemporary glass movement has come over 55 years or so,” he says while reflecting on the evolution of his medium since he began this artistic journey in 1974. Over the years, Hutter has never stopped innovating and exploring new ideas, even now through these unpredictable times.

Hutter studies materials and technologies often meant for other industries such as automotive or printing. He then repurposes them for application to his artistic practice. Since many of his vendors and services are deemed essential businesses—like the machine shop that makes medical devices—they have continued to be available during Covid without any significant stumbling blocks.

When Hutter began his long love affair with the cold-working process, there were not a lot of other glass artists using this approach. During college he worked alongside, and learned from, fellow Schantz Galleries artist David Huchthausen. Much of Hutter’s methods are self-invented. His studio space is constantly evolving alongside his work and is as unique as the pieces of art that come out of it. “If I need a tool to make something, I will get it or make it. I am definitely a tool guy. I don’t do as much hand stuff as I used to, but I facilitate and do all the testing and research on equipment to get it where it needs to be.”

A child of two college professors, Hutter is naturally inclined to the pursuit of knowledge. “ If I get interested in something, I start to pursue and research it, then I start making phone calls to source the materials. It’s an itch I have to scratch until I figure it out, then onto the next itch.” Hutter is currently researching and testing new adhesives and materials from 3M. While not all of his research goes according to plan, his successes result in eye-catching pieces that merge new technological breakthroughs with classical ideas of art and beauty.

While Hutter’s innovative work looks modern, it often carries a storied past. He often repurposes salvaged glass in addition to using new plate glass. He tells one story of how he was able to recycle glass from the Hancock Tower in Boston:

 ““When I was at MassArt, a fellow student, Joe Upham, knew Jerry Ellis, the owner of Building 19, who had bought remnants from insurance companies to resell. He had acquired all of the damaged glass from the Hancock Tower, warehousing it in Lynn, MA. We used to take the school truck to get the broken sheets of glass that were unsalable. We then melted the clear glass in a furnace for blowing. Joe was making goblets, which he then took to the Hancock Tower to sell to the building employees. I was using the mirrored glass with a reflective coating for making my sculptures. The Hancock is probably my favorite building in the whole world both because it has so much personal meaning while also it is an amazing architectural obelisk of 1970s construction. Or failure of architectural technology, I suppose, since the reason I ended up with the glass is that they miscalculated the stresses on the windows from the wind factors.”

Examples of Hutter’s Light Works through the years…

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1988 Relaxed Shape Lamp #3

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1989, TriCirc Lamp #14

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2012 Architectural Light Vessel #4

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2020 Ner Tamid, private commission

View Ner Tamid to music by Pink Floyd!

While all of Hutter’s objects, from his functional lighting work to his large sculptural pieces, are interesting and complex, his classic vase forms most often catch the eyes of visitors to Schantz Galleries. They are primarily constructed of cut, ground and polished plate glass which Hutter assembles using pigmented colored adhesives, which results in overlapping planes of color that appear to fill and empty his vessels depending on your viewpoint. Hutter pursues this juxtaposition with intention and thought. “The genesis of the plate glass vases was that I couldn’t blow glass but still wanted to make vases. When I started to work with that concept it became about how a vessel can be reinterpreted as something it isn’t. When people say “that’s a vase but you can’t stick a flower in it”—that’s right, but you are also looking at a volume that is describing an object- classical yet both utilitarian and decorative. My vessels are shaped like an amphora from Greek and Roman times yet they are reinterpreted in many different ways.” Hutter sees possibility in simple origins, saying “My philosophy of art is that there are 3 shapes and 3 colors; there are squares, circles, and triangles, and there is red, yellow, and blue. That is where it all comes from.” Within his obvious appreciation for the foundation of art, his own way of interpreting these simple ideas brings a complexity and interest all its own. This is how he creates such unique works. He says “the thing I pride myself on most is when people say, ‘Wow I have never seen anything like that before’.”

Because the vessels contain overlapping colors, new hues emerge from various viewpoints as secondary colors emerge from primary ones interacting with the planes and bevels in the glass. The science of the eye plays a large role in Hutter’s use of vibrant color, one of the most eye-catching aspects of his work. Amazingly, Hutter is red/green color blind, “ which makes you want to use [bright] colors you can see!” From his days as a glass student at Illinois State, color has played an important role for Hutter as an artist. He remembers how “back in the day at Illinois State they used to unload the annealer of blown vessels and they would have to wear two pairs of sunglasses when they pulled out my pieces because they were wild combinations of colors”. He wears color corrective EnChroma sunglasses at times to see the full spectrum, and describes using color for him as being like a kid in a candy store.

Detail of the White House Vase #6

Among his many accomplishments, Hutter joined the ranks of a rare few American artists and craftsmen when his piece White House Vase #1 was acquired by the White House Craft Collection during the Clinton administration. The piece is now at the Clinton Presidential Library as part of the National Archives, in a collection that acknowledges the important role of glass and other crafts in the echelons of fine art. Hutter explains that there “were many related showings of the collection afterward including one at the National Museum of American Art. It was the first-time crafts were shown in the “big” museum—the Smithsonian.”

Hutter is a fitting choice for the collection, the definition of the innovative American trailblazer. While he never forgets to reflect on the past, he is ultimately a forward-thinking artist and individual. He believes art is a part of how we may heal as a nation from the recent hardships brought on by the pandemic and political upheaval. “When the country rebuilds, I am hopeful a priority will be placed on the arts as a way to move forward” Hutter says. He is always keeping an optimistic eye on the future, both in glass and in life. “I think everyone is going to come out of this with a revitalized hunger for expression, culture, and beauty and all that glass is. We will all have seen the light and that is what I am doing with glass—dealing with the light.” Surely all of us can benefit from following Sidney Hutter into the light.

A short video interview with Sid.

Video created by Charles River Photography

price on request

New Form

Available works.

Middy Polished Plate Glass Vase #26, 2023

12 x 6 x 6”, Cut, and polished 1/4" Opti-White plate glass Circles with 1/2" Starphire glass bars laminated with red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet pigmented adhesive.

Middy Solid Vase Form, 2013

13 x 6.5 x 6.5”, A construction of 1/4” Krystal Klear plate glass laminated with violet pigmented adhesive.

Architectural Light Vessel #3, 2011

22”x14.5”x14.5” , A construction of 1/4” laminated Krystal Klear plate glass with red, yellow and blue dyed adhesive. The glass is suspended in a structure of machined aluminum that has been nickel plated. The core of the piece contains an LED light system designed and fabricated by John Borchard. The light system has a computer controlled program that moves through a sequence of patterns. The piece is on a 12” diameter nickel plated base.

Solid Vase Form, 2009

16.5 x 9.25 x 9.25” , A construction of 1/4” Krystal Klear cut and polished plate glass laminated with red, yellow, blue and fViolet dyed adhesive.

Polished Laminated Plate Glass Vase #36, 2006

16.5 x 9.5 x 9.5, A construction of cut and polished 1/4” and 3/4”Krystal Klear plate glass laminated with yellow, blur, violet and red dyed adhesive in the circles and yellow dyed adhesive in bars.

Polished Laminated Vertical Vase, 2005

18 x 12 x 8” , Polished Laminated Vertical Vase – A construction of cut and polished 1/4” and 1/2” Krystal Klear plate glass circles and bars laminated with yellow, red and blue dyed adhesive in the circles and blue dyed adhesive in the bars.

Solid Vase Form, 2001

16.5 x 9.25” x 9.25” , A construction of 1/4” Krystal Klear cut and polished plate glass laminated with red, yellow & orange dyed adhesive.

Plate Glass Vase #28-93, 1991

14.7 x 7.75 x 7.75”, Cut and ground 1/4” green plate glass circles with 1/2” green plate glass spacers laminated with blue dyed adhesive.

Polished Plate Glass Vase, 1991

23 x 13 x 13”, A construction of 1/4” and 1/2” Krystal Klear plate glass cut, polished and laminated with clear adhesive.

Lunar Lunch, 1977

12 x 12 x 12”, Cut, ground, polished and sandblasted 3/4” plate glass.

___________________

Catalog of Sidney Hutter retrospective at the Sandwich Glass Museum in Massachusetts.

STUDIO FOCUS | KAIT RHOADS

weaving her world with glass

Seattle based glass artist Kait Rhoads is currently customizing the garage of her new home to be her studio, her primary workspace where most of the labor on her pieces occurs. While she customarily uses an offsite hot shop to blow vessels and make murrine, the laborious process of fire polishing and weaving together the elements of her soft sculptures happens in the solitary space of her studio. The murrine are usually hexagonal and open in the center, geometric shapes sculpted together to celebrate organic forms. From its inspiration and meaning, to its execution and final presentation, her work has a sense of the order found in nature, born through the creative process.

Ephyria, 2019, in the artists studio.

Rhoads fits together the conical formed hexagonal murrine like the keystones of a Roman arch and thinks of each bead “as an architectural unit” coming together to form something greater, like how cells come together to form a living organism. Rhoads is fascinated by what she calls the “fractal expansion” that happens in this process. “For me to understand how these units go together to make a form, feels like I am discovering a growth pattern in nature. That sort of biology is very exciting to me.” The combination of an asymmetrical aspect of growth systems found in living forms, with the mathematical geometry often found in the order of nature, is the brilliance within her work.

Within the slow process of forming her structural creations is a repetitive weaving action that incorporates a feminine energy. Rhoads has spent as many as three hundred hours on a single piece, intricately working each small fragment of glass into a larger whole, all the while meditating on nature and striving shed light on, through her art, the destruction humanity has wreaked upon the natural world. Her work is an act of loving healing, but it also honors the traditional, matriarchal act of weaving itself. Historically, weaving was considered the lesser form of “craft” and not “art”. This was because women were often the weavers (and “women’s work” could not be “fine art”). For feminist artists like Rhoads, weaving becomes an empowering act of rebellion that directly challenges the ideas of historical acceptability in the world of art.

Often underestimated or left out of the world of glass because of her gender, Rhoads is no stranger to gender discrimination. She does not let this take away from her passion, instead she uses it as fuel. She embraces the culture of her femininity as something that gives her power, instead of something that takes it, and by extension rebels against those who would marginalize her because of her gender. She takes great inspiration from Eva Hesse (1936-1970), the German-born American sculptor and textile artist.

Detail of Verdant, 2019

Art critic Lucy Lippard, speaks of the process in the work of Hesse:

The most salient features of Hesse’s art can be related to her fascination with repetition: “It’s not just an esthetic choice,” she said. “If something is absurd it’s much more greatly exaggerated if it’s repeated. Repetition does enlarge or increase or exaggerate an idea or purpose. I guess repetition feels obsessive.” The wrapping and binding and layering process is also repetitive and makes the viewer relive the intensity of the making in a manner far from the abstract or didactic way in which process is used by most men.

Women are always derogatorily associated with crafts, and have been conditioned towards such chores as tying, sewing, knotting, wrapping, binding, knitting, and so on. Hesse’s art transcends the cliché of ‘detail as women’s work’ while at the same time incorporating these notions of ritual as antidote to isolation and despair. There is that ritual which allows scope to fantasy, compulsive use of the body accompanied by a freeing of the mind. … Repetition can be a guard against vulnerability; a bullet-proof vest of closely knit activity can be woven against fate. Ritual and repetition are also ways of containing anger, and of fragmenting fearsome wholes.

-Lippard, Lucy. Eva Hesse. New York University, New York, 1976. Pg. 209.

“When you look at my work you see the repetition of my linking the glass together with the copper wire, which I have had to develop my own way of doing and I am constantly refining.” Rhoads began learning to macrame around the age of six, and tied decorative nautical knots as a child, particularly in the six years her family lived on a boat in the Virgin Islands. “When we moved onto the boat, I did utilitarian decorative knot tying for the railings, helped my mother maintain the fish nets.” She learned to sew from her grandmother and began her education in costume design (the fluidity of the textile and the slow methodical process attracted Rhoads to working with fabric) before finding glass. Instead of working only in her studio, she brings her work with her to different rooms in her house—like a seamstress works on a garment. This gives her the benefit of seeing the glass in different lights and spaces, so she can play with light to find the right balance. During her process, she keeps in mind that “when you take a piece home, you don’t place it on a pedestal, it often goes on a shelf or furniture.”

Another beautiful aspect of the natural conservation efforts behind Rhoads works is their unique malleability and adaptability. Because of the way she weaves her works, the glass is very strong, embodying the geometric engineering principals of R Buckminster Fuller. She explains that “they are designed to be indestructible, and if something breaks, I can cut the wire and fix it. It has this repairable quality”. In fact, almost nothing goes to waste in the Kait Rhoads studio. She uses “every single little piece” and says “It is part of the Whole Elk Theory, espoused by Dick Marquis, especially these days with the concept of recycling and zero waste. I really like that I can use every little scrap, and nothing is really a throw away—that makes me feel good.” Aware of the environmental impact of her studio, Rhoads reuses and recycles the plastic bags she uses in her process.

This variability in her technique also means that when Rhoads is not pleased with the direction of a work, she can go back, redo, and repurpose materials. This diverges from the more common method of “trashing” or breaking works an artist may feel are not up to par. Rhoads sometimes spends hours on a work only to turn around and dismantle it entirely and begin again, which offers a good explanation as to why she only creates a few pieces each year.

 In addition to her woven vessels are her blown Peacock Vessels with simple sloping shapes and wild eye-catching patterns. Inspired by traditional Italian patterns done with murrine, Rhoads conceptualized these works in 1999, and they remain among her most popular and sought-after pieces. Rhoads is inspired by Italian glass patterning tradition, but she doesn’t want to copy directly from her inspiration. “I want to create work that honors those that I have learned from and is truly different [from their work]”. In her Peacock Vessels, she plays with color, pattern, and light in ways only Rhoads truly can. The peacock design, which is her signature, moves with fluid grace and is a reminder of undulating aquatic landscape she grew up in.

The healing and protection of the beauty of nature that Rhoads honors in her work is a creative gesture rooted in fierce feminine energy. Rhoads is careful to pay close attention to each part of the work, large and small, to create something extraordinary. As her new sustainable studio evolves, it will be wonderful to see the new and exciting creations to come.

Typhon, 2015

“How does she do that?”

Hollow Murrini Process Demo with Kait Rhoads…

… and A Very Quick Weaving Demo!

All rights reserved. ©2016 Museum of GlassVisiting Artist Residency: Kait RhoadsDirected, camerawork and editing: Derek KleinDates of the residency: November...

Available works

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New Form

Wavelength, 2022

19.5 x 12 x 16” Soft sculpture using hollow murine woven into a bronze armature with copper wire.

Emerald Dream, 2023

33 x 26.5 x 9” ,

Emerald Dream (Detail)

Soft Sculpture, 2023

8 x 8.5 x 7.5”

Wverm, 2022

27 x 13 x 4.5”

Cyanea, 2019

37 x 19 x 32”

Cyanea (Detail)

Sinistra, 2017

18. x 6 x 26”, Blown purple, pink and blue mixed hollow murrine woven onto steel support structure with copper wire and two steel wall brackets.

Kait Rhoads received her BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, and her MFA in Glass from Alfred University, NY in 2001. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, WA, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doug and Dale Anderson Scholarship, The Anne Gould Halberg Award, and a Fulbright Scholarship for the study of sculpture in Venice, Italy. She has worked as an instructor at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine, the Penland School of Crafts, the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Alfred University, and the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, where she was a teaching assistant for Lino Tagliapietra.

Education

 1999-01 MFA in Glass, Alfred University, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred, NY.

1989-93 BFA in Glass, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.

1985-89 Atrium Baccalaureate in Creative Arts, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL.

Public & Private Collections

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA.

Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark.

Museum of Glass International Center for Contemporary Art, Tacoma, WA.

Museum of Northwest Art, LaConner, WA.

New Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, Hollywood, CA.

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA.

Toyama Institute of Glass Museum, Toyama, Japan.

Selected Exhibitions

2019 Salmon School Ambassadors, Schack Arts Center, Everett WA.

Solo Show, Scheipers Gallery, Hasselt, Belgium. 2018

Glasstastic, Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA.

NO GLASS Ceiling! Women working in Glass, Part 1 Palm Springs Art Museum, CA.

Making our Mark, Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA.

2017 Selections from the Anne Gould Hauberg Collection. Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA. Revering Nature, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bainbridge, WA.

Into the Deep, Tacoma Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA. 2016 LifeForms

2016, Pittsburg Glass Center, Pittsburg PA.

LifeForms 2016, Ceder Gallery, Corning, NY.

Into the Deep, Tacoma Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA.

The Nature of Glass, Chesterwood, Stockbridge MA.

2015 All Natural, Curator and participant, The Schack Arts Center, Everett, WA.

Sculpture Walk – Wandering Diatoms, Temporary public art, Seattle Center, Seattle, WA

Game Changers: Fiber Art Masters and Innovators, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. 2014 Lake Effect, Saugatuck Center for the Arts, Saugatuck, MI.

Tidal, Chihuly Collections, St Petersburgh, FL.

Shattered: Contemporary Sculpture in Glass, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, MI. Accreted Terrane, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA.

2013 The Cutting Edge, Racine Art Museum, WI.

Fluid Reformations, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY. 2012   50 Years of Studio Glass, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY.

2011   Contemporary Glass, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA.

2010   Transformation 6: Contemporary Works in Glass, Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN.

2009   12th Annual Whidbey Island Glass Invitational, Museo, Langley, WA.

           BIGG:  Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass Exhibition, OSU Urban Arts Space, Columbus, OH.

           As Below, So Above, Northwest Museum of Art, LaConner, WA.

           Beautifully Crafted, National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK.

           Selections from the Permanent Collection, Museum of Northwest Art, LaConner, WA.

           Transformation 6: Contemporary Works in Glass, Western Gallery at Western

           Washington University, Bellingham, WA.

2008   Transformation 6: Contemporary Works in Glass, Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA.

           Beautifully Crafted, National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK.

           Glorious Glass: Translucent and Opaque, the Arts Center, St Petersburg, FL.

           A Clear Mind: Glass Invitational, Figge Art Museum, IL.

  2007   Shattering Glass, New Perspectives, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY.

           Transformation 6: Contemporary Works in Glass, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA.

           Viva Vetro! Glass Alive! Venice and America, 1950-2006, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.

           Behind Glass:  Creativity and Collaboration, The Arts Center, St Petersburg, FL.

           Glass Lover's Weekend, Milleville, NJ.

           SOFA Chicago, New York and PB3.

2006   Brilliant: Celebrating Pilchuck Glass, Sea-Tac International Airport, Seattle, WA.

2005   Brilliant: Celebrating Pilchuck Glass, Sea-Tac International Airport, Seattle, WA.

2004   Italian Influence in Contemporary Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY. 

           Vetri. Nel mondo. Oggi, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arte, Venice, Italy.

2003   20/20 Vision, Museum of American Glass, Millville, NJ.

2002   Peacock Vessels, Vetri International Glass, Seattle, WA.

           Under 40, Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti, Murano, Italy.

2001   Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, Alfred University, Alfred, NY.

           Visionary Women, Bausch & Laumb, Rochester, NY.

           Distractions, 171 Cedar Arts Center, Corning, NY.

2000   Solo Show, Northwest Museum of Art, La Conner, WA.

Studio Focus | Dan Friday

offering gratitude through creativity

Dan Friday, with a blown glass canoe paddle.

A member of the Lummi Nation, Dan Friday has grown up around traditional Native American and Lummi Tribe artistic practices his entire life. In his own work he immortalizes these traditional artistic practices in the new contemporary art format of glass, making his work both of the moment and grounded in the past.

Having studied under the very best at Pilchuck, Friday moved to work at the highly established Chihuly Boathouse Studio, Pilchuck Glass School, and Tacoma Glass Museum Teams. In 2007 he began his own studio, Friday Glass, in Seattle’s historic Fremont district, a fitting home for this lifelong Washington State resident. Here in his studio he creates his own work often influenced by his Lummi tribal roots and artistic family traditions.

“Creativity was fostered in me by my family from an early age. Living without TV and knowing our rich cultural heritage of the Lummi Nation, meant that making things with our hands was a regular activity.” 

In Friday’s studio, these long practiced traditional tribal art forms are adapted; totem poles and baskets take on new meaning and form along with animals of importance to the Lummi Tribe. All now made to last for generations in the medium of glass and creating a new method of storytelling. Much of Friday’s work also memorializes his family in making these pieces and are full of history and personal meaning.

“My great-grandfather, Joseph Hillaire, is a pretty well renowned totem pole carver, and he is a large influence on me. I do some work in totems...obviously they are not the same because of the nature of working with glass. That is one of the things I really enjoy quite a bit about glass - being able to explore these forms and ideas. I say it is a contemporary medium, but also that in this area, (Seattle), it also has such a long history. “…Like when I studied at the Corning Museum of Glass for my recent residency, you go in there and look at a 4000-year-old face of Cleopatra that looks like it could have been made yesterday. Even though glass is considered fragile, it has such a resilience. Many of my grandfather's totem poles have returned to the earth just through decay, that is just the nature of artwork of native people in this area.”

Joe Hilliare with some of his totem carvings.

Going on to explain, “it is exciting to think these glass creations I make will live on for quite a while. Whether or not they break or come apart, they will not deteriorate. There will be a glass totem thousands of years from now with my name scratched on it and that is an interesting feeling.”

 Friday’s great-great-grandfather was also an influential Lummi tribal artist. He established a popular dance troupe in the 1930’s who went on to perform at the World’s Fair in 1962, where he also had a Totem Pole commissioned and displayed.

Xa-Tel-Ek, Frank Hillaire

The Setting Sun Dancers

Dan’s aunt continued the tradition of artistic expression through her baskets and was a Lummi Master Weaver, some of her blankets can now be seen featured in the Smithsonian in DC. In Friday’s own work, a series of woven glass baskets forever pay homage to his aunt and are known as Aunt Fran’s Baskets Series.  

Aunt Fran James with some of her baskets.

“The Basket Series is something I started after my Aunt, Fran James, passed away about 6 years ago. I really wish she could have seen them, because she was so paramount to me when starting my career.” Dan says of his Aunt’s encouragement to make his pieces and explore his own creativity (instead of following a career as a hired hand on various glass teams). “She was paramount in saying “you have got to find your own voice” and I can’t thank her enough (for that).”, he says with fondness.

Likewise, his statuesque bear figures stand as shining glass symbols of his family. “We are the bear family.” He told us, “Named for my great-grandfather Frank Hillaire, it is the “Hillaire Bear”. He was not a chief, but a very prominent member not just in our tribe but the whole region. As he got older, he would say ‘keep my fires burning’.”

 

Keeping those creative fires burning is something Friday takes to heart in his molten works of bear and other animals significant to the tribe such as owls and ravens. These pieces dance with of color and patterns, often in unexpectedly delightful ways.

“A lot of it comes from my time working with Dale.” Friday says of his inspirations and the way he has come to see color. Friday has been a glassworker at the Chihuly Boathouse since 2000, helping bring to life Dale Chihuly’s designs and working with one of the largest teams in glass. “He (Chihuly) is famously quoted for saying ‘there is no color I don’t like’ and he uses all of them within the color palette. And that has definitely broadened my appreciation of just the large spectrum of color.”

Going on to explain the lessons he has picked up from working with Chihuly, “...part of the trick is how to apply colors so they complement each other, I used a load of colors and I like to use a lot of vibrant colors, but I also like them to have harmony to them too... Sometimes it isn't even a color combination that initially you think will go together, but you have to look at the proportion of a color. Like 98% of something, then just a pinstripe or accent of another color. You can get colors that may not mesh well together to find a way to fit if you are patient enough.”

 

This riot of color, which can be as seamlessly free flowing as the aurora borealis or a precise pattern of caning work, is what so often attracts viewers to Friday’s pieces. All of which have a certain soft, circular simplicity to their silhouette, which acts as the perfect form to showcase all that color.

Owl Totem

In addition to paying tribute to his roots in his work, Friday makes sure to include a little piece of himself in each work. In addition to his signature which he signs each piece, Dan has added his own personal symbol somewhere on each. One circle inside of another, it is an abstracted eye he considers his mark.

“It is a symbol I have been drawing since I was a little kid, and it has been drawn since my first carvings as a kid. It is an eye and it is typical in north west coastal works. I like to think of them as planets too. I enjoy how all things want to be round, especially when you work with glass, things spinning, that centrical force.”

As new life is breathed into tradition inside the walls of Friday’s glass studio, a new type of Native American relic is created to be passed down and tell the stories and traditions of the Lummi Nation for many years to come.

~Katy Holt

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Lightening Bear, 2022

5.75 x 9 x 2”

Sage Basket, 2018

8.5 x 9 x 9"

Polar Bear, 2022

Merletto Cane, 7 x 10 x 2.5”

Aurora Bear, 2022

7 x 11 x 3”

Clam Bowl, 2022

4.75 x 15 x 12”

Lightening Bear, 2022

7x 12 x 3”

Small Owl Totem, 2022

5 x 6 x 3”

Working at the Museum of Glass

STUDIO FOCUS | ADAM WAIMON

carving moments of natural beauty…

The artist conversing with nature.

Each piece of Adam Waimon’s glass art has a life of its own. “I create a relationship with my work, these pieces - believe it or not - travel with me. They will come from the studio with me to my home, so they can sit on my table, so I can look at them and really connect with them.” Waimon told us in our recent Studio Focus interview “It just allows me to spend more time with them. And seeing them in different settings and in different lights, that allows me to really find the right balance of the engraving and how I want to carve it.”

Adam Waimon is a young glass artist living and working in Rhode Island. Inspired by nature and often the majesty of the Rhode Island coastline, Waimon creates abstract pieces that recreate the fleeting moments of beauty he finds in nature through flowing shapes of color and texture.

Adam Working in Josh Bernbaum's Studio.

Waimon can be found in his studio space blowing glass with an assistant (or more recently solo due to COVID-19 circumstances) about once a week and spending most of the remainder of his time in the engraving studio painstakingly working on the surface of a piece. Going into the first stage of his process, the glass blowing, with an abstract and broad idea in mind and a few simple and loose sketches, he begins to create his ongoing dialogue with each glass piece.

“I have a good idea of what I want the final work to look like” he tells us “but the glassblowing portion of the process….it is so alive. There is so much movement that occurs and you have to adapt through the process.” Once a work is begun Waimon sits with it in a clean white studio space to sketch on it and study its shape before beginning his engraving process. Each work is carved uniquely to relate back to a balance within its own individual form. “That is really where a majority of the time is spent; I am taking lots of time removing the surface and trying to get a lot of depth into the surface of the piece”. Often cutting as much as half an inch of a silica soda lime glass away (which is much harder than leaded glass, and as a result much more time consuming and difficult to carve into). “There is always going to be some variation in the design” he tells us of his carving process “and I am open to that variation in the process”.

Golden Hour, 2020, (Detail) Blown and Engraved

“Instead of trying to push it into what I want it to be” He goes on to explain the dialogue he has with each work,  “I try to work with the piece and learn how to make those uncertainties in the process work to my advantage. I think that is really coming through in my most recent work at Schantz Galleries. Though they are very much a series of work and cohesive, they are all a bit different. That comes from the variations of what comes in the process. And it can be as simple as using a certain color with a different working property, so I try to use those uncertainties to my advantage and see what comes of it.”

In his pieces currently on display at Schantz Galleries Waimon is moving into a new stage of his work, the use of color. “I always tried to use a minimal amount of color because I was always studying the glass blowing process and focusing on the form. And to do that I decided it would be best to keep my color palette very simple. As I have improved, and my artistic practice has become stronger I found it was time for me to start adding color” he told us. “You have to be an artist and a technician” he went on to say of the new challenges adding colored glass has presented to his work. There is an emotional charge to this new layer of dialogue presented in Waimon’s pieces on display at the gallery. The glowing colors and depth and emotion behind the textured surface that has been sandblasted then fire polished to mimic in both mood and visual presence of the shimmering glossy yet rigidly sharp surface of waves rippling over the ocean.

This is showcased exquisitely in Waimon’s piece Golden Hour, 2020 where the cascades of ocean blues and sunset orange dance together perfectly to capture the feeling of that moment where we all look our camera ready best and feel the soft glow of the beauty held in our own dialogue with nature. His other works in the gallery swirl with magnificent sea blues a viewer could get as easily lost in as an ocean. While color may be a newer theme in Waimon’s work, it is something he has been studying his whole life.

Born in Connecticut to a family of artists, few people have spent as much time in an art studio as Adam Waimon. His mother is a painter and printmaker, his father a ceramicist, and his grandmother a painter and all of them exposed him to art and creativity from an early age. Prints and paintings by Waimon’s mother surround him at home giving him daily inspiration in color use. In fact, his family's artistic eye for color goes back many generations “my great grandfather worked at a hardware store in Harlem in the 1930’s that sold only a few paint colors but he would mix custom colors for customers before this was a common thing. Our family’s fascination with color spans nearly a century.” He told us. And it was on a family trip to Italy just before he entered high school that he found his love for glass. On this trip Waimon made his first visit to the island of Murano, known internationally for its time-honored traditions of glassmaking, and was instantly mesmerized with the malleability of the molten medium.

Some of Adam’s photos illustrate his source of inspiration, derived from his time spent at the edge of the land and water where they meet the sky.

In his own work Waimon draws stylistic inspiration from his mother's use of atmospheric coloring, his grandmother's abstracted depictions, and his father's use of 3D sculptural forms to create a style that is his own culmination of their influences to depict moments in nature that spark interest and inspire him. “I am interested in how land, water, and the atmosphere interact” seeking to depict a balance in each of his works that he finds in this natural relationship. Most often finding strong inspiration on the coastline of Rhode Island. Waimon finds inspiration in the colors and textures created by these fleeting moments of natural beauty that wash in and out with the ocean tides.

It was also Waimon’s family that introduced him to Schantz Galleries. Years ago, his family took a then young Waimon to visit the gallery on day trips to the Berkshires. Little did he know one day he would find his way back to the gallery as an adult, this time to showcase his own work.

Katy Holt for Schantz Galleries

_________

AVAILABLE WORKS BY ADAM WAIMON

ADAM WAIMON BIOGRAPHY

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Sea Pods, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 13 x 14 x 6”

Shallow Waters, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 20 x 7 x 3”

July Waters, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 16 x 6 x 6”

Golden Hour, 2020

Blown and engraved glass, 15 x 8 x 3”

Arial Seascape, 2019

Blown and engraved glass, 15 x 8 x 3”

STUDIO FOCUS | JASON CHRISTIAN

Growing up in a small town on Whidbey Island in the heart of the Puget Sound of Washington State, Jason Christian was almost destined to fall in love with glass art. Originally he believed he was bound for a blue-collar career; he was a truck-driver and worked various odd jobs until the age of 21 when, after following a suggestion from his mother, who read about hot shops in a magazine, Christian found and fell in love with the medium that would become his trademark – glass.

As Christian came of age in his 20’s, so did the glass art movement around him. He was surrounded by the biggest and best names in glass art while at home in Seattle, Washington. He began his training and subsequent career as a batch charger, ensuring the raw materials enter the furnace correctly and result in the desired batch of glass. The glass art scene in Seattle was in full force and becoming a destination for artists and collectors, evolving right alongside Christian himself.

During that time, Jason learned via his assistance to artists including Lino Tagliapietra, Martin Blank, Preston Singletary, and Nancy Callan. He has been a part of Chihuly’s team for almost a decade now, where he has had the opportunity to work alongside other skilled artists, including Jim Mongrain and the late Pino Signoretto.

Green Reticello Vessel, in the gallery.

Christian also honed his skills through residencies, at the Corning Glass Museum, the Pilchuck Glass School, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, as well as sharing his expertise through demonstrating internationally in Turkey, and Finland, as well as in the United States at Pilchuck, Urban Glass, and the Penland School of Craft. While he has become familiar with many of the best hot shops in the United States, it is in his own Seattle studio next to his home where he creates commissions for other artists as well as his own unique works.

While the normally bustling city of Seattle turned into what Christian described as a “ghost town” during quarantine he was able to keep busy. Christian works in his studio, which he built slowly over several years, inside what was once a detached garage. Residing in a small section of the large “Best Family Farm”, Christian has put much of his own time into improving and personalizing the home over the years.

As he is currently getting back to his role in the Chihuly Studio, Christian can see things changing actively throughout the glass medium as he works “we are taking extra measures to distance as much as we can and we’re all wearing either a face shield or a mask and the team is much smaller than before … maybe half the size” Christian remarks. “It’s weird, because I started blowing glass at the height of what we know as the Seattle glass scene, now we are seeing it change along with the city itself, and it is all (changing) dramatically.” Going on to explain the way he learned just over 20 years ago, by riding his bike into downtown and showing up in Seattle Studios (which were in abundance at the time due to low rents in the city of Seattle and the booming success of Pilchuck) taking whatever available spot he could to learn from experience or observation, “wouldn’t be possible today”.

Detail of reticello.

In Christian’s work, we see the result of years of practice and technical study under Italian masters combined with the spirit of a modern American boldness which runs through the heart of Seattle. The Italian influence can surely be found in Christian’s work with his use of the classical Venetian technique of reticello. Two separate bowl forms with cane-work, combined hot, one inside the other, trapping hundreds of tiny bubbles of air, one between each crisscrossed cane. Christian most notably uses the technique to develop a series of work referencing 18th century Fabergé imperial coronation eggs, objects known for the intricacy of their small, ornate adornment.

Christian’s eggs are scaled up to be large, blown forms carefully rounded, embellished with sculpted shapes. Jason says that creating the reticello egg is some of his most challenging work, and a “labor of love”, tested by getting the reticello tight and consistent, the proportions correct, and the gold leaf clean and level. Many of Christian’s works are clear or white, leaving the viewer with the impression of a lace-like pattern. When he incorporates color, it is with obvious intention, resulting in a stunning, modern boldness. The effect is a tribute to the inherent beauty of classically designed glass originating in Italy centuries ago, beautifully juxtaposed with a contemporary, innovative creativity.

Video of Yo-yo.

In a recent conversation with the artist, he told a heartwarming story about his newest series, Yo-Yo. It is about the small gestures, which make big impressions, that we carry with us…

Growing up on in a remote town on Whidbey Island, Jason lived with his father due to the divorce of his parents. His mother lived in Manhattan, and as a young boy, the first time he visited her in the city, he was completely taken with everything there, as you can imagine. He met his step-father for the first time, who bought him one of those two toned yo-yo’s, and taught him how to work it. That memory has stayed with him throughout his life, and with the approaching birth of his own, first child this past August, he has titled one of the sculptures, Around the Corner. It’s a nice circle of reflection, not only in regard to the birth of his own son, but also a nod to the fact that his mother gave him the impetus to try his hand at glass!

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Volpe, 2022

20 x 9 x 9"

Piccolo, 2022

6.5 x 8 x 7"

PROVENANCE 1995 - 2016 Featuring a Selection of Works from the Archives of Lino Tagliapietra

We are very pleased for this special opportunity to present these works from the archives of Maestro Lino Tagliapietra.

Several of these works represent the few remaining in a particular series. Some of these works have been included in museum exhibitions during the past two decades. These include the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Museum of Glass Tacoma, WA; the Flint Institute of Arts, MI; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the three museum exhibits which Schantz Galleries helped support, include the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah WI; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL, and the Morris Museum of Art, Morristown, NJ. It is true, that it would take another museum retrospective to bring the full oeuvre of his work to date into the broadest possible perspective, however, we have made this effort to share a collection of works from 1995 - 2016. We are honored to represent Lino Tagliapietra and hope you will enjoy this presentation.

Jim Schantz and Kim Saul

October, 2020

view works currently at the gallery…

Hopi, 1995 13.75 x 13.75 x 13.75

STUDIO FOCUS | DAVID HUCHTHAUSEN

no risk, no reward…

David Huchthausen embodies the figure of speech “no risk, no reward.” He doggedly preservers in everything he does, driven by an internal motivation to explore, learn, invent, push. From an early age, he wanted to figure things out, work hard, and pursue his passions. His artwork, which references his interests in architecture, astronomy, history, and the curiosities of humanity and the spirit, is a deliberately enigmatic invitation into a universe of ever-shifting perspectives and synergetic forces.

A wire saw in Huchthausen’s studio.

Huchthausen sees his 50 years in glass in an arc, one thing building upon the next. His first love was architecture, but early on he predicted the waning of the one-man architecture firm and set his sights elsewhere. While a work-study student in the ceramics department at the University of Wisconsin, Wausau, Huchthausen discovered an old glass furnace. He had always been fascinated by glass in architecture, so he blew the dust off the furnace and learned how it worked. Huchthausen knows how to weld, is a good woodworker, and in general subscribes to the philosophy that if you want to know how to do something, you put in the work and figure it out. Soaking up the sparse glass knowledge of those around him, he taught himself the basics. He melted 475 glass marbles developed by Dominic Labino for pulling fiberglass strands, for lack of access to other materials. Soon, he was teaching a night class and selling at fairs. In the early 1970s, he became one of Harvey Littleton’s graduate assistants at University of Wisconsin, Madison, helping to build his first electric furnace, revitalizing equipment, and rebuilding the coldworking shops. Huchthausen has since become a pioneer in coldworking techniques—complex processes that he developed “by the seat of his pants over a long period of time” which suits his hardworking and tenacious disposition. In 1974, at the invitation of glass innovator Joel Myers, Huchthausen went to Illinois State University to finish his MFA then take over their glass program while Myers was on sabbatical. In 1977, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in the J&L Lobmeyr Studios in Vienna. After Vienna, Huchthausen served as Design Director for Milropa Studios in New York and as a university professor in Tennessee.

Huchthausen has been a collector since childhood, and as soon he as could he started accumulating. He acquired copious amounts of material—like Vitrolite (a commercially-produced glass made as an inexpensive substitute for stone in architectural facades), grid glass made by the Corning factory in the 1930s for fluorescent light diffusing screens, palettes of C-grade stock from Schott Optical, and three tons of thick black glass tabletops from an Art Deco restaurant in the Buffalo, NY train station. The sculptures he makes today, often using a dozen types of glass, are a history lesson and homage to the variety of glass produced over the past 80 years. His love of architecture and collecting led him to purchase, among other buildings in Seattle, the extraordinary 150,000 square-foot Bemis Brothers Bag Building, which he redeveloped into artists’ lofts, office, manufacturing, and warehouse space. His two-story loft there is a visual panoply of 20th century decorative arts and glass items that fascinate and influence him. He is also drawn to primitive sculptures, ritualistic objects that embody a spiritual realm he feels complements the metaphysical space of his own, technologically modern, hard-edged glass art.

….the final polish of an Asteroid Sphere in the studio.

Even during the pandemic, in a large studio about one mile south of his loft, Huchthausen and his assistants continued their tag team operation, devoting countless hours to individual pieces. To begin the labor-intensive process, colored glass fragments are thoughtfully arranged then placed atop or within carved optical glass. Through careful lamination—then repeated cutting, sawing, machining, polishing, buffing, and curing— pristine and riveting sculptures slowly emerge. Light rays passing through the fractures and lenses of the sculpture are halted and redirected. Embedded color patterns either bend in hard-edged distortions inside the sculpture or reflect in diaphanous pools of color around it.

Kristin Elliot working at Huchthausen’s Studio.

In 2019, Huchthausen’s long-time studio manager, Kristin Elliot, moved to Tacoma to set up her own studio. A recent hire, Nathaniel Gauthier (who turned out to be great), took over the position. Both to facilitate Nathaniel’s training, and in sensitivity to the economic turndown during the pandemic, Huchthausen chose to create smaller works at a more accessible price point. Enter the Asteroid series, a fully volumetric, 360-degree experience of visual transformation unfolding as the viewer moves around or shifts the piece. While these works resonate visually and metaphorically with the infinite expanse of outer space, at certain angles the inner reflections take the form or architectural elements such as stairs and windows (a nod to Huchthausen’s background), as though the viewer is traveling both beyond and within.

A few years ago, Huchthausen acquiesced to the persistent encouragement of Susan Warner (then Director of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma) to do a residency in their hotshop. There, and later in the studio in with works such as Stardust Reliquary and Birth of a Star, he experimented with combining cast and blown pieces, embedding spheres, and adding figures cut from Spectrum sheet glass to the surface (a full-circle orbit back to his early Fantasy Vessels, in which thick glass forms were decorated with layers of abstract landscapes, and floating figures cast shadows onto the backgrounds). According to Scientific American, “A star is born when atoms of light elements are squeezed under enough pressure for their nuclei to undergo fusion. All stars are the result of a balance of forces … As long as the inward force of gravity and the outward force generated by the fusion reactions are equal, the star remains stable.” It is an apt metaphor for the work and life of David Huchthausen, who balances the historic with the cutting-edge, the ethereal with the material, vibrant color with translucence and clarity, physical labor with the joyful respite of vintage cars, old wooden boats, and trips to the Philippines (where he owns a small resort). Lastly, there is the balance of control over the creative process with the release of sharing the work. Huchthausen has said:

“Creation is a continual and evolutionary process, constantly digesting and reevaluating past experiences and current perspectives … I constantly strive to generate a strange and curious quality that both tantalizes and challenges the viewer to develop his own response system. The work must have an existence of its own to have any real significance.”

David Huchthausen’s Echo Chambers

This 2004 PBS DVD shows the technical details of David’s sculptural process. Craig Sawchuck Productions.

Available Work by David Huchthausen…

Asteriod Series, 2020

Each sphere is 8” in diameter.

Horizon Line, 2017

Constructed glass sculpture , 10 x 10 x 10"

Jupiter Sequence, 2014

Cut, laminated and polished glass, 10" diameter

Matrix, 2001

Constructed glass sculpture, 15 1/4 x 7 1/4 x 6"

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About the Artist…

David Huchthause in his studio. M Stubblefield photo.

David Huchthausen was one of the first artists of the Studio Glass Movement to emphasize cold working fabrication techniques such as cutting, sawing, laminating, and optical polishing.  Within his crystal-clear geometric forms, Huchthausen integrates complex shapes, concave lenses and intricate color panels, refracting light as it hits the shapes and reflecting colored glass patterns in the fractures and lenses below and around them.  The colored glass patterns occasionally include dichroic glass, a composite non-translucent product made by stacking layers of glass with micro-layers of metals and oxides which, depending on the angle at which they are viewed, can cause an array of colors to display. Huchthausen’s sculptural narrative has always been enigmatic by design, challenging the viewer with its curious and unknowable quality.

With hundreds of one-man and group exhibitions on his resume, Huchthausen is considered a leader in the field. His work is represented in over 75 public collections, including: The Corning Museum(NY); The Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); The Detroit Institute of Arts (MI); The High Museum(Atlanta, GA); The Hokkaido Museum (Sapporo, Japan); The Los Angeles County Museum (CA); The Metropolitan Museum (New York, NY); The Museum of Fine Art (Dusseldorf, Germany); The Museum of Fine Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland); La Musée de Verre (Liège, Belgium); The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); The Tacoma Art Museum (WA); and many more.

STUDIO FOCUS | PAVEL NOVAK

working with the 4th dimension…

An interview with Pavel Novak by Schantz Galleries Associate, Katy Holt.

SG: Tell me about your studio space?

PN: My studio is attached to my home. It is an intimate space packed with machines and raw glass. I tend to work in a whirlwind, and have many pieces in various states of being made at any given time.

  SG: Where do you get inspiration from?

PN: My work is inspired by clean lines and vivid colors. I work hard to create complex, kaleidoscopic reflections within a seemingly simple outer shape. My work has a geometrically architectural feel that often contains a surprisingly complex interior, and changes as the viewer moves around the piece.

SG: Can you tell me a little bit about your process? Do you design everything ahead of time? How much do you improvise? 

PN: I keep a sketchbook of ideas, and oftentimes, I make a 3 dimensional model in Styrofoam before I even touch the glass so that I can ensure the finished piece  will be balanced before I waste any material finding out the hard way that my idea will not work. I like to say that I know exactly how my pieces will turn out before I start, but in reality, I’d say that I start with 80% of the idea, and leave myself some room for experimentation. Often times a new direction comes to me while I’m working with the glass in my hands that couldn’t have come to me in any other way.

SG: At what point in your career did you start working with these reflections in your work? What was the process of learning how to do that like?

PN: I choose to work in the manner that I do because, I realized early on in my glass education that the type of glass that I use, optical glass, is the only material with 4 dimensions. The first three are obvious, but I consider the reflections to be the 4th dimension. I try to exploit the reflections to their limits because, to me, it is the most important quality of my materials, and no other material can produce the same effect.

After working with optical glass for almost 30 years, I’ve come to embrace the angles and geometry that go into the creation of the reflections I so desire, but in reality, there is always a small element of surprise when I see the finished piece.

SG: You still have a lot of family and ties to the Czech Republic and visit often correct? For our Studio Focus we like to highlight the ways each artist lives have been affected by the current Covid situation and the ways it has impacted the world our gallery readers may not be as aware of… I was wondering if you know how things have been in the Czech Republic? How is your family overseas?

PN: The truth is that the Czech Republic had a much earlier start in prevention. Mask wearing was mandated almost from  the very beginning, so the rate of transmission was not nearly happening in the same numbers that we see here in the US. They returned to a somewhat normal version of life, and the numbers spiked again, and starting this Sunday, they will be on a nationwide 30 day lockdown.

At the moment, my main focus is my family here. I have a 11 year old son who is attending the 5th grade virtually. While this has certainly been a challenging period of time, it has brought my family closer and given us time together that we wouldn’t have had in any other situation. 

A sampling of works by Pavel Novak:

Helix, 7 x 7 x 2.5”

Pinnacle, 14 x 8 x 8”

Chroma, 7 x 7 x 7”

Red Horizon, 6 x 10 x 6”

Chimera, 6 x 6 x 6”

Golden Aura, 6 x 6 x 6”

Golden Apex, 9.5 x 7 x 7”

Infinity, 7 x 7 x 7”

Obelisk, 9.5 x 4.5 x 4.5"

The cold-work glass by artist Pavel Novak stands out for its stunning reflections and planes of color that shine prismatically. Using lenses in his laminated, optic crystal glass work, Novak’s pieces often cause the viewer to question what is physical, and what is reflected. Through his lenses the inner corners of the sculpture, colored planes, and/or etched patterns all reflect each other to create a unique composition that is revealed through the lens. This optical illusion is a hidden secret waiting to be revealed to viewers in each work that makes Pavel Novak’s pieces truly extraordinary.

Novak works with the “coldworking” process, which begins with a large piece of optical glass he then grinds and cuts away at to create his work using different grades silicon carbide. His next step is to polish the work using a felt wheel with pumice and cerium oxide, before finally coloring etching, sand blasting and/or laminating the glass to achieve his result. This type of glass work is traditional in his home country of the Czech Republic, where Novak began his education and subsequent career in glass at the age of 14.

Novak was introduced to glass by a family friend, who gave him a tour of the glass factory he worked in as part of Pavel’s search for a career (young adults chose their career after completing middle school in, what was still at that time, Czechoslovakia). Instantly drawn to the medium, Novak began studying at Glass School in Novy Bor, widely famous for its exquisite glass. It was there that a school aptitude test showcased his skills in geometry and math which lead him to the cold-working process of glass sculpting that is now his trademark.

After a short stint working at one of the largest glass factories in the Czech Republic, Crystalex, Novak went back to the Novy Bor to teach. A year and a half into his time teaching, he met Vladimira Klumpar who hired him to be an assistant to her husband Michael Pavlik here in the US on summer breaks from teaching. It was Michael Pavlik who then introduced a young Pavel Novak to Martin Rosol, his long-time friend and fellow Czech glass artist. This time working in the US sparked an interest in Novak to move to the states where he could work more freely and be better recognized for his talents. Something he eventually achieved after years of six-month long stints in the United States. A full American citizen as of 2012, Novak still has many ties back home in Czech Republic and carries in his heart and his work a love for his home and its long-standing glass working tradition.

Now able to develop his own body of work and fully explore his creativity, Novak is constantly playing with the effect of light and reflection. His pieces often feature lenses, beautifully illustrating how glass has the unique ability to create optical illusions and compositions that change with perspective and light. Novak has seemingly endless possibilities for his planes of color and never-ending corridors of kaleidoscopic geometry.

IN THE GALLERY:

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Carnival, 2020

Cut and laminated glass, 7 x 8.5 x 8.5"

Solstice, 2020

Cut and laminated glass, 6.75 x 9.5 x 9.5"

STUDIO FOCUS | PRESTON SINGLETARY

a precious piece of culture…

Known for his distinctive style, Preston Singletary simultaneously elevates studio glass art and interprets Tlingit design to create innovative works. A Tlingit tribal member, he began exploring their aesthetic to connect deeper with his roots. Through his glasswork, he has brought attention to his ancestral art. Traditionally stylistic Tlingit drawings are carved into the glass, depicting different moments and characters from mythological stories handed down for generations within the tribe.

Like all of us, Preston Singletary is adapting his life to Covid-19, but his glass work never really took a break. His band, another extension of his creativity and reflection of his tribal culture, was set to begin recording several new pieces right before quarantine. They had to put their musical practice on hold, but plan to reunite virtually and perform in October. But during quarantine, the glass studio kept working. Singletary’s process occurs in several stages (blowing, shaping, sculpting, drawing, applying the drawing, carving, and more), which made this adaptation relatively easy. He had some pieces that had been blown and were waiting for the cold-working process, so he was able to finish those. Then, Singletary and his team produced work from home, with each individual working on their part before passing the piece on, either sending the work from person to person or taking turns in the studio.

Singletary explains: “It worked out pretty well, we were able to be fairly productive during this time. It was … a different experience because I usually work very closely with my team.”

Now that things are opening back up, he has once again fired up the furnace in his studio. With 3,000 square-feet space, Singletary’s studio is relatively large by Seattle standards. Singletary inherited the former art school and metalwork foundry from Schantz Galleries artist Sonja Blomdahl, who worked in the space for 20 years before Preston took over. The space encompasses a showroom, office, and peaceful drawing space on the second floor for Preston, in addition to the hot shop and cold work areas on the first floor. For the past 15 years, this has been the place where Preston Singletary brings his stories to life.

Preston Singletary at the bench, with Ross Richmond assisting in the hot shop.

As part of our focus on Preston Singletary we wanted to highlight his unique storytelling abilities and his connection to the Tlingit culture. His great grandmother on his mother’s side, Susie Johnson Gubatayo, brought the Tlingit spirit into Preston’s heart and family through the spiritual connections she kept to her tribe after settling in Seattle (where Preston’s mother then Preston himself were raised). A strong presence and true matriarch, Susie carried warm affection for her people, and as Preston explained “…was very proud, Tlingit was her first language, and she was a very strong woman who lived to be 100 years old”. Below, is a wonderful video that illustrates the idea to create a totem for the Pilchuck School, which led to the conception of a large cast glass totem which pays homage to his grandmother and her pet bear. To see more images, go to Preston Singletary’s page on our website.

Singletary at his solo exhibition, Raven and the Box of Daylight.

Storytelling and Tlingit mythology are hallmarks of Preston Singletary’s work, but his immersive museum exhibition Raven in a Box of Daylight (which began in 2018 at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, traveled to the Wichita Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institute, and will close at the Chrysler Museum of American Art in Norfolk, VA), pushes the limits of storytelling, tribal art, and glass art in general. (Please note show dates have been extended and/or changed in some cases due to quarantine).

The Raven is a popular and central character in Tlingit stories, and for the Raven in a Box of Daylight exhibition Singletary wanted to explore the many traditional ways—and experiment with his own new ways—of telling this origin story. According to the legend, the Raven brought daylight into the world by releasing it from Naas Shaak Aankáawu’s (Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River’s) box where it was kept hidden. Many of Singletary’s glass works depict mythological stories from the tribe, but in Raven in a Box of Daylight, he adds light, sound, and video elements to bring the viewer into an immersive experience with the story. This show has been getting well-deserved attention not only for its expertly crafted glass but for innovative approach.

Medicine Woman (Raven Woman)

“The work I do is inspired by traditional objects and over the years I have figured out ways of creating modern interpretations of using the traditional design work. So, it is influenced by modern art, abstract art, and yet the overlying driver behind all of that is the mythologies themselves because they all relate back to a particular aspect of a story.

Any one action of a story could be represented in an art piece, the Raven show in particular, really takes that to a pretty far degree. In analyzing the entire story and having it complete as an experience and as intact as it could be as far as the way it was told traditionally.

All of that was trying to immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of the Alaskan coast as well as showing them these objects that represent aspects of the story.”

Preston still lives in Seattle, which is outside the traditional territory of the Tlingit people, but he ventures up to the southeast region of Alaska to visit several times a year. While there, he spends much of his time working with a cultural arts organization strategizing how to proliferate education around all aspects of Tlingit culture, arts, language, and history. This year, the challenges of Covid-19 have heightened the challenges the Tlingit people face in raising cultural awareness. They did find success in an online adaptation of their bi-annual Celebration Festival, an event which usually gathers together different tribes from across southeast Alaska to preform clan songs and dances, showcase traditional clothing and regalia, and participate in an annual art competition. As Preston explains: “It’s one of the only times you are able to see these songs shared with the public outside of the traditional ceremonies. It has become a virtual event and they have put in components of the festival, such as the art competition, and that was one way of adapting to this moment in time that came off pretty well. Not quite the same, but how it had to be.”

While the stories that Preston Singletary tells through his work arise from generations of history, he brings his modern perspective to bear on tradition. The stunning results have the qualities of a precious piece of culture, immortalizing Tlingit traditions and stories for generations to come.

Preston Singletary talks with correspondent Lilia Luciano about his traveling exhibition, "Raven and the Box of Daylight", while it’s at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. until January 29th, 2023. This traveling exhibition tells the story of Raven and his transformation of the world - bringing light to people via the stars, moon, and sun. It will travel next to the Chrysler Museum, March 3, 2023 — July 2, 2023.

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WORKS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE.

Tin.áa, 2021

23.75 x 17 x 1”, Kiln cast and sand carved glass. Provenance: Exhibited at the University of Montana Western Winter 2022

Amulet, 2020

Blown and sand carved glass, 31.75 x 3.5 x 11”

Eagles Offering, 2014

in collaboration with Ross Richmond, hot sculpted glass, 15.5 x 8 x 11"

Raven's Eye, 2014

in collaboration with Ross Richmond, hot sculpted glass, 16.5 x 9 x 9.5"

Raven's Offering, 2014

in collaboration with Ross Richmond, hot sculpted glass, 14 x 7 x 8.5"

Fog Woman, 2018

Blown and sand carved glass, 29 x 6 x 4"

Warrior Raven 2014

in collaboration with Ross Richmond, hot sculpted glass, 19.25 x 9 x 9.75"

Village Under the Lake, 2012

in collaboration with Dante Marioni, blown and sand carved glass, 18 x 12.5 x 4.5"

Shelf Basket, 2015

Blown and sand carved glass, 8.5 x 9.5 x 9.5" (4139)

Tea/Cedar, 2021

5 x 6.5 x 6.5”

Cobalt/Blue, 2022

B22-50, 7.25 x 8.75 x 8.75”

Tlingit Basket, Sky Blue/Grey , 2016

B18-96, 8 x 9.5 x 9.5”

Cobalt/Blue, 2022

B22/55, 4.5 x 6 x 6”

KILLER WHALE TOTEM

KILLER WHALE TOTEM, created with colored 15% lead crystal, approximately 106” x 33.5” x 22” overall. Weight of the Killer Whale Totem is approximately 2,400 lbs. Contact Jim Schantz for more information.

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STUDIO FOCUS | DEBORA MOORE

The onset of fall…

Debora Moore has spent a lot time in the 2 ½-mile span between her home of 20 years in the Mt. Baker District of Seattle, near Lake Washington, and her studio in the International District. In fact, many of the most meaningful moments of her life occurred within a 3-mile city circle, from her beginnings as a glassblower 30 years ago at Pratt Fine Art Center to her 2015 exhibit Glass Orchidarium at the Northwest African American Museum (NWAAM). Her studio is in a turn of the century building that at one time was a Baptist Church, but also once housed a brothel upstairs. In the back of the building, in the hotshop she shares with her husband (artist Benjamin Moore), there are two work benches, a large furnace that holds about 600 pounds, two glory holes (one for larger and one for smaller works), and a pot furnace for color. All that shut down early in 2020 when the pandemic hit, but Debora had just finished a few years of demanding work on her exhibition Arboria at the Tacoma Art Museum, so the rest was welcome.

Debora loves Seattle, finds the temperate rainforest climate perfect for her sensibilities, loves the green moss, lichens, and spongy woods, and everywhere you go there is water. She also gets creative inspiration from the rain; when the air is crisp and clean, everything is heightened—especially in the woods where she really absorbs the essential energies of the forest. She went to Costa Rica once to study the flora and fauna, and while she is inspired by tropical travels in her work, it was hot and humid and there were way too many snakes.

In her quiet time these past few months, Debora and her husband have enjoyed cooking, listening to audio books, watching shows, and reading to each other (a tradition that goes back to outings to the beach during their early years together). They love Italian food, inspired by their honeymoon in Italy, and Benjamin is fluent in the language. Cooking Italian reminds Debora of being newly married and being picked up at the train station in Venice by Lina and Lino Tagliapietra for a visit with them in Murano. Lina taught her how to make gnocchi. This spring, Debora and Benjamin also spent some time in their glass cabin in the woods on the rugged Pacific Northwest, taking long walkson the beach. When Debora was stressed preparing to design the 2,500 square feet of gallery space for her 2015 show at NWAAM, her husband promised her a glass cabin in the woods, which he built himself from old wood sash windows which he collected.

Since its closure in February, Debora has barely been in her studio. As a deeply feeling empath, the stress of the pandemic has hampered the joie de vivre she needs to lose herself creatively. But something shifted in August when she went to Tacoma to break down her Arboria exhibition and she was reacquainted with the work after 9 months. She started going back to the studio again, using the knowledge she gained from Arboria to think about a new series on foxgloves and some new pieces from her Host series. (She is fascinated by the fact that orchids use rocks and trees as hosts, yet they are not parasitic because they draw their water from the air). While she carefully packs Arboria for its next stop at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute, and braves her fears of pandemic-era travel to be on site for the unpacking and installation of all its glorious parts, she looks to the onset of fall as a hopeful time for creative inspiration and global well-being.

Installation images from Arboria at the Tacoma Art Museum from January 2019 – March 2020.

Enjoy this PBS Profile on Debora Moore…

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Works by Debora Moore…

Cherry, 2019

Blown and sculpted glass, found stone, 90 x 28 x 20”

Image from installation at the Tacoma Museum of Art, currently on exhibition at the Renwick in July, 2020. Used with permission from the artist.

Wisteria, 2019

Blown and sculpted glass, found stone, 93 x 86 x 36”

Winter Plum, 2019

Blown and sculpted glass, found stone, 72 x 101 x 23”

Magnolia, 2019

Blown and sculpted glass, found stone, 104 x 112 x 30”

Magnolia Tree

About the Artist…

Debora and her husband, artist Benjamin Moore, enjoy a night gondola ride. The Moores were recently in Venice to celebrate his Lifetime Achievement Award.

Debora Moore has been an instructor at Pilchuck, Pratt, and the Hilltop Artist-in-Residence Program in Tacoma, WA.  In 1998, she was accepted as a member in the African American Design Archive at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.  Her work was included in the Artistry of Orchids exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in 2000. Her solo exhibition, Natural Reflections, opened in 2005 at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, followed by a residency at the Museum. In 2005, she was also awarded artist-in-residence   at the Abate Zanetti School in Murano, Italy.

Debora was awarded the Rakow Commission in 2007, with inclusion in the permanent collection at the Corning Museum of Glass and participated in Corning’s Meet the Artist podcast series. In 2009 she was selected to exhibit at the 9th Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum. She participated in a group show, Flora, at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark, in 2010. Her work was exhibited in the group exhibition, Convergence Zone, at the Bellevue Art Museum in 2011. Debora installed a solo show, Collectanea Botanica – Orchidaceae, at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio, and exhibited at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. The April 2012 opening coincided with a residency awarded to her by the museum. This year the Northwest African American Museum opened a solo exhibition of Debora work in Seattle, Washington. In 2019, the Tacoma Art Museum feature, Debora Moore: Arboria, the artist’s new monumental sculptures exploring the beauty and awe of seasonal changes.

STUDIO FOCUS | PAUL MARIONI

Light is the Magic…

In 1983, Paul Marioni fell in love with Mexico. His work had been monochromatic (black, grey, white, clear, and mirror glass) but five months in Mexico City at the invitation of Felipe Derflinger, working in the Feders Glass Factory and traveling Felipe’s exhibit around the country, introduced him to the richness of five cultures and caused an explosion of color in his work. He was drawn to the passionate art of Frida Kahlo long before she was a household name, bribing a guard with $5 to sit on her bed and read her diary before the Blue House became a museum. When in 1990 UNESCO declared Guanajuato, Mexico a Living Treasure (the 3rd city after Venice, Italy and Valenica, Spain to receive the honor), he went to see it. He was there about five days when his ridiculously cheap bid to buy an extraordinary but long-neglected house with a billion-dollar view was accepted.

Marioni spent years rebuilding the five-story adobe house, transforming its 2,500 square-foot garden into a jungle paradise. For 27 years, he worked in Seattle, but he lived in Mexico. In 2019, he closed his Seattle house and studio to be in Mexico full-time. Marioni is a politically active person (when he was 11 years old, he wrote Bertrand Russell a letter asking to join the Ban-the-Bomb movement), but his interest in politics is more philosophical than partisan. Rather than taking sides (right or left, right or wrong), he is fascinated with how politics is an exaggeration of the best and worst in human nature. The Mexican approach to politics better suits his way of seeing (he says “if someone brings up politics, everyone bursts out laughing and that is the end of it” because “they quit believing in politics one hundred years ago after the last Revolution”). He also loves the Mexican approach to family and community (among his myriad accomplishments, he takes a lot of pride in having raised two children as a single parent).

View from Marioni’s home and garden in Guanajuato and his spectacular view of the city.

Now, his greatest joy in life is tending to the hundreds of flowers his booming garden and getting into his small unequipped studio to tackle nagging creative ideas. In December 2019, he went to Derix Studios in Germany to build 3,500 square feet of glass walls for a new Light Rail Station in Bellevue, WA called The Main Station (it serves Microsoft and Boeing). This November, he plans to be on site with his daughter, Marina, to execute the terrazzo floors of his design. He has completed more than one hundred commissions (more than half of which were public art projects) in his fifty-one years as an artist, a challenge he loves because making art for someone else means learning and trying new ideas and materials. His gallery artwork is about his life as a human being. He is careful not to tell the viewer what to think but hopes to inspire the viewer to think for themselves (and he has gotten an enormous variety of responses). He also gets excited about his collection of over 300 Mexican masks, and the fact that he has made over 200 masks as artwork. The duality of masks fascinates him; they can conceal identity or transform you into another character such as a wolf, owl, or jaguar. And the irony is not lost on him that in these days of COVID-19, he is required to wear a mask when he goes into the bank!

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Marioni poses with some of his 300-mask collection.

Marioni and a portion of his glass walls for the Light Rail station in Bellevue, WA.

Of his career in glass, he says:

“I consider myself an artist, rather than a glass artist. I use glass solely for its ability to capture, manipulate, and magnify light. Glass is the only material to do that. Plus, look at all those translucent colors. I am just as happy drawing and painting, but Light is the magic that brings glass to life. My kinetic sculptures rock, causing the light to move within the piece, bring it to life. Some sculptures make noises as they rock, thus also speaking. Most artwork is asleep hanging on a wall or sitting on a pedestal.”

Marioni has spent his career defying common notions, not the least of which is the one that dictates: “don’t touch that, it’s glass.” He loves living, he loves working, and each piece of art he creates inspires a similar engagement with life, so go ahead and touch it!

This magnolia, golden datura, and some passion flowers are just some examples from Marioni’s thriving Mexican garden.

Meet the Artist in this series of videos…

All rights reserved. ©2011, Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency.

By John Forsen

Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend and Paul Marioni talk at the Craft in America Center March 21, 2014.

Available Works by Paul Marioni…

La Belle Creole / For My Father, 2011

Terrazzo, 50 x 38”

Blue Bagman, 2016

Blown glass, enamels, 13 x 7 x 6.5"

Faunus, 2016

Kinetic Sculpture: Cast glass, enamels, 5 x 12 x 10"

Jade Mask, 2009

3.5 x 15 x 10”

Jaguar Vase, 1992

Blown glass, 19 x 9 x 9"

Night Rider, 2005

Blown glass, 19 x 9 x 9"

Prisoner of Conscience, 2009

16 x 10 x 4”

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About the Artist….

Paul Marioni is a founding member of the American Studio Glass movement and in love with the medium for its distinct ability to capture and manipulate light. Techniques have been explored and mastered but always in service of ideas about the complexities and foibles of being human. No subject seems off limits to this artist-renegade-philosopher-humorist.

PAUL MARIONI BIOGRAPHY

STUDIO FOCUS | VLADIMIRA KLUMPAR

a studio visit to the Czech Republic!

“Glass offers many secrets to unlock. You experiment, learn something new, and constantly educate yourself. But you can never be overconfident about what you know – about glass, or new cultures.”

photo: Jim Schantz

“I grew up in the town of Potštejn [east of Hradec Králové]. As a child, I would roam along the banks of the local river. I had my own world, a microcosm of a family life, which, until I was fifteen, played out across an area of just a few kilometres.”

From Prague….

…to the studio in the north-eastern Bohemian town of Železný Brod, is a beautiful drive.

As a young woman, Klumpar worked as a jewelry designer for a glass maker, before joining the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She studied at the Stankslav Libenský Studio, where she learned her craft and found inspiration from the famous glass artist Jaroslava Brychtová.

“For me, she was a model strong woman. Libenský taught us students in Prague, drawing and sketching designs for the couple’s architectural work, while Brychtová was in Brod working in glassworks, modeling, talking to the people in the factory, which was otherwise a man’s world. I really admired her.”

It was 1985 when Klumpar moved to the US with her infant son, Matyas, and her then husband, Michael Pavlik, also a glass artist. After learning how to adjust to the different working conditions in the States, the family moved to Massachusetts from Delhi, New York. “We purchased a house there with a large barn, where we built some studios, a superb cutting room, and we even built some glass melting furnaces.”

At the Novotny casting studio.

“From the individual parts of the process: creating a mould, through to the quality of the molten glass batch, through to setting the correct melting and cooling curves, all the way to cutting and polishing – all of this requires a team of people.”

Klumpar begins by creating a drawing, followed by a small mock-up in paper or other material.

This is a clay model in progress…

…and here is a sculpture partially removed from the plaster cast.

“…sometimes this [scale-model] is from clay, other times I use plaster. These models are then used to make a mould from a mix of glass sand and special plaster, which is then baked. For large models, an armature, wires and mesh are used to fortify the mould. The mould needs to be properly dried before placing in the furnace. Sometimes the process takes weeks. Afterwards, the mould is filled with molten glass, and thus begins a long process of computer-assisted melting and cooling.”

“The sculpture heads to the cutting room, where it is refined for weeks, or even months – until it is completed to my satisfaction.”

Klumpar works with the Novotný Studio, a highly respected casting and coldworking studio in Železný Brod.

After the piece is removed from the plaster cast, it is ground and polished in the cold shop.

Over the years, Vladimira has lived in Mexico and Portugal, and continues to visit those places still. However, she has returned to her mother-land to live and work. “The more of these kinds of workshops and studios are founded here, the greater the chance that cast glass sculpting will be preserved for future generations”, insists Klumpar, whose son, Matyas Pavlik, also a glass sculptor, is helping to preserve the future of cast glass techniques learned in the Czech Republic.

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Thank you to the Kuzebauch Gallery in Prague for permission to share this video.

Video seriál magazínu Material Times o doteku ruky a matérie ::: 4. díl ze 4. série POD RUKAMA Video seriál magazínu Material Times o doteku ruky a matérie. ...

Works currently available at Schantz Galleries

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SELECTED COLLECTIONS

• Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
• Lannan Foundation, Palm Beach, FL
• Wustum Museum of Art, Racine, WI
• Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
• American Arts and Craft Museum, New York, NY
• Museum of Art, Liberec, Czech Republic
• North Bohemian Museum, Jablonec and Nisou, Czech Republic  

AWARDS and GRANTS

 • 1991 New England Artist Foundation Fellowship
• 1991 Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship
• 1997 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

COLLECTIONS

 Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Czech Republic
Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, CT
Mikulově, Mikulov, Czech Republic
Glass Museum, Nový Bor, Czech Republic
North Bohemian Museum of Liberec, Liberec, Czech Republic
Museum of Glass and Jewelry, Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic
The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
Lannan Foundation, Palm Beach, FL
Racine Art Museum of Art, Racine, WI
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
American Arts and Craft Museum, New York, NY
Cafesjian Museum Foundation, Yerevan, Armenia

STUDIO FOCUS | BALDWIN GUGGISBERG

please, think Summer!…

It's a special privilege to hold an exhibition against apparently considerable odds in such a wonderful and magical location. Thanks to Jim and Kim both for sticking with our shared plan (laid out over a year ago) and remaining so enthusiastic in spite of the vicissitudes.

Jim advised us, please think Summer! People need cheering up! Indeed they —we all—do. It was with this in mind that we have composed this exhibition, drawing on our long history of exuberant use of color, as well as, increasingly, a somewhat expanded and more extravagant sense of form. The Novae Species series begun a few years ago intend to embrace whimsy as well as foible, a kind of mirror of humanity and our environment embracing both dignity and caricature all at once. Not mocking, rather honoring all these things, while seeking to expand on our own sense of the joy of life.

The work in this exhibition celebrates two particular techniques we have used for a very long time: incalmo, the joining together of two blown pieces while hot, and cold-worked batutto cutting, which has been our signature for more than 25 years. For the first time, for this exhibition, we have incorporated the Swedish overlay technique in the Novae Species, cutting through multiple layers of color in the body of the pieces.

Working under lockdown in preparing for this show, we invited our two French assistants, Philomène and Léon to live with us on our old farm, thus allowing us to continue working normally. We have been very privileged to do so, and we are most grateful for the opportunity to share some of the results with Jim and Kim, and you.

Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg
Hares Green, Wales
August, 2020

Ten major works were installed in 2018 at Canterbury Cathedra for Baldwin Guggisberg’s exhibition Under an Equal Sky, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War.

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Here are some of the process’ the artists use in their hot-shop and cold-working studio, located in the Dutch barn which Monica and Philip converted in Wales.

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Available Works by Baldwin Guggisberg

Bal Tropical, 2023

Blown and wheel cut glass

14.25 x 12 x 12"

Beacons of Autumn, 2021

Blown and wheel cut glass, 20.5 x 12 x 6.75"

Charyrbidis, 2022

Blown and wheel cut glass, 23 x 8 x 8"

L'African Bleu, 2022

Blown and wheel cut glass, 26.75 x 8.25 x 8.25"

Nuit Ambré, 2022

Blown and wheel cut glass, 27 x 8.5 x 8.5"

Scylla, 2022

Blown and wheel cut glass, 24 x 7.5 x 7.5"

The Library of Friends, 2023

Blown and cut glass, wood, LED panel, 63 x 16.5 x 5.5"

The Library of Friends, (detail)

The Magic of Seven, 2021

26" x 39.25 x 15.75"

Veronese Dreaming, 2017

Glass and metal, 78.75 x 35.5 x 4.5"

Visitors from Afar, 2023

Blown and cut glass with overlays, metal & rocks, 47.25 x 47.25 x 8"

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About the Artists

A Multicultural Celebration, 2018

Philip Baldwin (1947) and Monica Guggisberg (1955), have been a collaborative team for over forty years. They share an instinctive appreciation for the subtle blending of art and design, functionality and abstract expression, combined with a love of material – especially glass. Over time their work has developed its own distinctive signature, based in Italian cold -working battuto combined with the Swedish overlay process for layering colors. They have been pioneers in adapting these techniques and in creating a distinct expression of their own. Color, light, texture, pattern, and shape together reveal an undercurrent of meaning and value, adhering to the simplest of forms and clear lines. Over the years they have become more sculptural in focus, while seeking to imbue their work with a deep connection to archetypal forms and shapes, and striving for the highest level of craftsmanship. They address eternal symbols of human culture and history, while embracing contemporary evolution in form and meaning. In recent years large installations and major exhibitions in public spaces, such as Canterbury Cathedral in 2018, and more recently The Glasmuseum Ebeltoft in Denmark 2020-2021) increasingly reflect their concerns for the shared world of our times, highlighting some of the challenges while continuing to express their love for beauty in form and object. They now live and work in rural Wales.

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Click below to view catalog and read essay…

PHOTOS: Mary Van Cline (Portrait); Alex Ramsey, professional studio shots.

STUDIO FOCUS | THOMAS SCOON

a contemplative environment….

These days, sculptor Thomas Scoon feels especially grateful for the amazing and protected property he purchased in 1996 in southeastern New Hampshire. Here, most everything required for his creative pursuits lies right outside his doorstep—granite from nearby quarries, massive studio space for working with stone and metal, five large-scale glass casting kilns he built, a 100-pound bronze casting furnace, access to all tools of his trade, and a contemplative and safe environment to work. He continues to do what he has done for the past 25 years, spending most of his waking hours creating sculpture.

There is something innately comforting about Scoon’s combination of stone (representing the fundamental grounding of the earth) and the human figure (representing the archetypal expression of humanity). Figures often set in dialogue with each other allow us to ponder the very nature of our relationships and interpersonal communications. Each piece by Scoon is unique because every stone has its own characteristics and gestures, and the artist prefers to keep the stone’s natural and organic form instead of manipulating it with a heavy hand. Stylistically the integration of glass in the sculptures provides a contemporary complement to the ancient stone. Like the illumination of the soul, light passes through the glass to express a sense of the spiritual.

The concept for the bronze Entwine pieces came when Scoon was doing black and white photography of the winter night sky—taking long exposures of the stars and moon through the trees. Metaphorically, the works speak about the lineage of humanity and the generations that precede us, as well as the idea that we must nourish the continued growth of human life. 

Thanks to the videos from the artist, we too can meander down the driveway of the many acres he calls home, and glimpse into his multi faceted work shop and studio. Follow along as Scoon demonstrates a few of the many aspects of his sculptural process against the backdrop of his beautiful environment.

Available Works by Thomas Scoon

Atlantis, #3+4, 2024

29 x 7 x 10”

Companions, 3+4, 2024

Left 38”h x 9”w x 4”d  , Right 36”h x 9”w x 4”d

Dialogue, 2022

17.5 x 3" Base is 5"h x 14"l

Emergence, 2021

38 x 28 x 12”

Generate, 2000

63.5 x 18 x 8”

The sculptures of Reflection pose for their portrait.

About the Artist

Thomas Scoon received his Masters of Fine Art from Massachusetts College of Art in 1990 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Illinois State University in 1988. He has taught sculpture at University of New Hampshire, Massachusetts College of Art and Pilchuck School. He was a recipient of a NEA Grant in Sculpture in 1999.

From quarries and fields Scoon chooses stones in shapes of heads and torsos to create abstract figurative sculpture combined with cast glass. They can range from pedestal to life size works. These figures are often grouped to create dialogue between them and often as family or generational relationships.

Thomas Scoon’s work is in numerous museum, corporate and collections including the Art in the Embassy Program, US State Department, Washington, DC

ALBERT PALEY: GLASS + STEEL

Gesture, Movement, and Vitality….

Paley working at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

Artist Albert Paley investigates form, explores material characteristics and technical processes, and forges abstract masterpieces—all in service to the notion that art provides access to the intangible facets of the human condition such as emotion, intellect, memory, and aspiration. Paley manipulates material, form, color, and light to create an environment of heightened consciousness where our singular perspective encounters the universality of common experience, and where our imagination is unleashed on the yet-to-be-explored. His abstract assemblages are particularly agile at accessing raw emotion because the narratives are less prescribed; therefore, the discourse between artist and viewer broadens and the layers of meaning deepen.

Paley is most widely known for his forty-year career creating monumental outdoor metal sculptures, each one carefully designed to play off its environment and invite passersby into contemplation. While he is steadfast in his intention for his work—that it be “a sensual and intellectual dialogue”—he also believes that through research and experimentation he can push the limits of his medium, and through aesthetic flexibility he can continue to evolve as a visual artist. As he says: “We don’t have stasis in our minds so why should it exist in our artwork.”

When Paley was invited to do a summer residency collaboration with glass artist Dante Marioni at the Pilchuck Glass School in 1998, he eagerly brought his creative sensibilities and technical expertise in metalwork into an alliance with glass. Though he was aware of the Studio Glass movement and knew Harvey Littleton and Dale Chihuly, he had never engaged with the material. Steel is opaque, hard, and defined by silhouette, while glass is transparent, reflective, and characterized by light. But at Pilchuck, Paley discovered that different glass techniques such as blowing, forming, and casting have commonality with the forging, bending, and punching of iron and steel. More importantly, he recognized a symbiotic relationship between two inorganic materials that through heat and pressure both submit to manipulation and are transformed into expressions of gesture, movement, and vitality. Paley merges the two materials in graceful synergy—the weightiness of metal amplifying the lightness of glass, the fragility of glass highlighting the strength of metal, equivalent forms in different media fluidly intertwining. This complementing of opposites is a visual metaphor for the many dualities of the human condition that exist in dynamic harmony within us.

Crystal Progression, 2019, (detail)

Each sculpture by Albert Paley bears witness to the processes involved in its development; instead of concealing the signatures of the different machines and tools, Paley chases those effects. Like rings on a tree, this surface variation graphically expresses the physical qualities of the material and tells the story of how the piece is made. Paley will deliberately imprint tool lines in the metal and purposely not polish the pour lines off cast glass, going so far as to have special sessions with glass artists like Martin Blank and William Carlson to experiment with creating lines in glass that mimic the interesting marks of a particular metal press. When he was curious how far much metal could twist, he built his own machine for the task. His year-long 2014 residency at the Corning Museum of Glass afforded him the opportunity to work with specialized technicians, scientists, gaffers, and materials such a borosilicate glass that bonds with a metal alloy because they have the same rate of thermal expansion.

Beckoned Gesture, 2019, 33 x 19 x 14”

Paley has said, “there is a vocabulary of form for any given medium. The more technically proficient one becomes, the more they can explore.” He likens that exploration to a dance, in which there is a sense of the choreography but also a sense of letting go and moving unconsciously to the music. Paley uses his immense knowledge, both of the materials he uses and the art historical precedents he admires, as his guide to an open inquiry into the unknown, endeavoring to prevent his established notions and processes from becoming an impediment to seeing and doing new things. His ink on paper monoprints are reductive expressions of this search that allow him to probe formal elements outside his familiar materials. Rather than charting a definitive narrative, each work of art by Albert Paley provides a map to an encounter with our emotional selves. By his deft technical and aesthetic skills, we are quickly freed from our consciousness to wander the intricate twists and turns of each piece, discovering along the way a metaphor for the enigmas, experiences, and ecstasies of the human condition.

A “Walk Through” of the GLASS and STEEL exhibition installed at the Stockbridge Station Gallery, 2020

Albert Paley at work and speaking of his exhibition at the Museum of Glass…

CompContrast_AlbertPaley_MSTR_H264 from Derek Klein on Vimeo.

Available Works by Albert Paley

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About the Artist….

Albert Paley, photographed in 2013 by Creative Imaging

Albert Paley, an active artist for over 40 years at his studio in Rochester, New York, is the first metal sculptor to receive the coveted Institute Honors awarded by the American Institute of Architects, the AIA’s highest award to a nonarchitect. “The allure of Paley’s art comes through its intrinsic sense of integration of art and architecture,” as one noted architect stated. Paley, Distinguished Professor, holds an Endowed Chair at the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. Commissioned by both public institutions and private corporations, Paley has completed more than 50 site-specific works. Some notable examples are the Portal Gates for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Synergy, a ceremonial archway in Philadelphia, the Portal Gates for the New York State Senate Chambers in Albany, Sentinel, a monumental plaza sculpture for Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as a 65-foot sculpture for the entry court of Bausch and Lomb’s headquarters in Rochester, NY. Recently completed works include three sculptures for the National Harbor development near Washington DC, a 130’ long archway named Animals Always for the St. Louis Zoo, a gate for the Cleveland Botanical Gardens in Cleveland, OH, a sculptural relief for Wellington Place, Toronto, Canada, Threshold, a sculpture for the Corporate Headquarters of Klein Steel, Rochester, NY, and Transformation, a ceremonial entranceway for Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Pieces by Albert Paley can be found in the permanent collections of many major museums including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Broadly published and an international lecturer, Paley received both his BFA and MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He received honorary doctorates from: the University of Rochester in 1989; the State University of New York at Brockport in 1996; St. Lawrence University, in Canton, NY in 1997; and the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden in 2012. Paley is also a Distinguished Professor, holding the Charlotte Fredericks Mowris Professorship in Contemporary Crafts, School for American Crafts, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY

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STUDIO FOCUS | RICHARD MARQUIS

a new lease on life…

… and nearby, nestled within the trees, Marquis’ studio feels part cabinet of curiosity and part retro auto body shop.

A kaleidoscope of cane for murrini piled below some of Marquis’ bottle cap collection.

This potato box is a great example of the symbiotic relationship between Marquis and his wife, Johanna Nitzke Marquis. The work appears in Marquis’ exhibition Richard Marquis: Keepers at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and Marquis describes: “found objects, delicate paintings, sense of humor, and some glass French fries that I made for her. She’s up there with Westermann and Cornell.”

Artist Richard Marquis works in a studio on Whidbey Island, Washington that is part 16th century kunst und wunderkammen and part retro auto body shop. His encyclopedic collection of ordinary things—from baseball gloves to boat motors, lanterns to license plates, tools to toys—reflects the artist’s interests and becomes inspiration for his work. Stacked in shelves, hanging from the rafters, filling old dishwashers, these discarded ephemera get a new lease on life in Marquis’ kingdom.

An insightful thinker, Marquis teems with ideas and notions that he wants to render in glass. As a glass master, he has an impressive repertoire of skills and techniques to achieve this goal. And as an artist, he shares an irreverently smart perspective on the world. In the process, he creates a diverse, clever, and evolving body of work. 

Richard Marquis studied ceramics and glassblowing at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s but was compelled to Murano, Italy by a thirst to learn from and work with the world’s glass masters. There, Marquis learned to make the murrine cane for which is so well-known today. He was especially drawn to murrine because of how it can be infinitely stretched and cut, offering endless possibility for patterning.  

What makes Marquis’ glass work so interesting is that simple forms belie a confluence of ideas and influences. In every work by Marquis, clever and ironic imagery results from studied practice and thoughtful manipulation of both the media and the message.

Marquis shares his home with his wife, assemblage artist Johanna Nitzke Marquis. He explains:

“Our house is mostly [Johanna’s] works on the walls because I’d rather look at her work than mine. She appropriates things from my shop as I do from hers. We have a similar aesthetic in the sense of collecting and using found objects.”

Meet the Artist

All rights reserved. ©2012 Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency: Richard Marquis Dates of the residency: December 5-9, 2012 All images courtesy of the a...

©2012 Museum of Glass

Available Works at the Schantz Galleries

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About the Artist

Richard Marquis studied ceramics and glass at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1960s. He received their Eisner Prize for Design and the President’s Undergraduate Fellowship, enabling him to build his own glassblowing studio. In 1969, through a Fullbright-Hayes Fellowship, Marquis spent a year working at the Venini Fabbrica in Murano, Italy. Over the years, he has returned there many times to hone his skill and learn more from the masters. In 1972, he produced his famous Lord’s Prayer Murrina, as part of his UC Berkeley master’s thesis. In 1990, he begins his series of Marquiscarpa, pieces based on the work Carlo Scarpa did at Venini with Lino Tagliapietra. He has exhibited extensively across the world, from the Seattle Art Museum to The Hague to Asia. He has always freely shared his knowledge by teaching and demonstrating throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand; his glassblowing has influenced an entire generation of artists working in glass who aspire to his technical mastery and the originality of his voice. Richard Marquis : Keepers, through December 2020 is an exhibition at the Museum of Glass, curated from the artist’s archives, his “keepers,” the exhibition includes facets of Marquis’s work that have rarely been exhibited, such as ceramics and prints.

Photos from a visit to “RICHARD MARQUIS: KEEPERS” at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma.

Installation photos from Richard Marquis’ exhibition Richard Marquis: Keepers at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

View the exhibition’s publication here.

Among his recent awards are: Neddy Artist Fellowship, Seattle (2010); James Renwick Alliance Masters of the Medium Award from Smithsonian Institute (2009); Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Alliance of Contemporary Glass (2006) and the Glass Art Society (2005); Elected to College of Fellows  of the American Craft Council (New York; 1995); Fulbright-Hayes Grant to study in New Zealand (1982 and 1988); NEA Grants (1974, 78, 81, 90). A monograph Richard Marquis Objects was published on his work in 1997, and his work is represented in nearly fifty public collections.

STUDIO FOCUS | VERUSKA VAGEN

finding sanctuary…

In seeking to find solace during these daunting times, it is often difficult not to feel overwhelmed with concern and sadness for humanity.  While navigating through the many challenges at hand and often in isolation, there is still much comfort in knowing that we are not alone in doing so. Indeed, living in solitude has amplified a thankfulness for supportive others, with so much encouragement offered by so many.  My heart is truly overflowing with love and appreciation.  

These days I feel especially blessed to have found sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest in the home and studio near Pilchuck where I have lived and worked for 27 years.  The wooded enclave is shared with an array of critters who are unaffected by current events.  Deer linger in the yard with their newborn fawns, rabbits abide in hopes of raiding the vegetable garden, an occasional bear comes down from the hill in search of berries or apples that fall from the trees.  Bobcats and coyotes patrol the back meadow and raccoons come around seemingly just to annoy the dogs and barn cats.  My rural neighborhood teems with farm animals as well whose little ones frolic in their pastures.  The presence of assorted four-leggeds and observing the constancy of their lives brings a certain peace and hope for the future for us all, and a perspective in simply carrying on as they do.  

During times of adversity and in the midst of an uncertain world, there is still goodness and beauty to be found, always.  My wish for everyone is to stay safe and well as we look forward to better times ahead, in hopes of reconnecting soon with a renewed faith and sense of gratitude for each other.              

Veruska Vagen updates the centuries-old technique of mosaics with her dot de verre process, and the results are astonishingly beautiful. She also pays tribute to the past with her choice of subject matter: famous and obscure paintings from art history ranging from the 15th to the 20th century.

Vagen explores a variety of paintings from different cultures and time periods, and excerpts from them to create her unique compositions of grids of tiny glass dots. Historical landscapes and portraits of people and animals become contemporary through Vagen's process, and we approach these works with new eyes. From the Cobbe portrait of Shakespeare, 1610, to Van Gogh's Starry Night, 1889, Vagen scans the span of art history for intriguing subjects and her work is made in homage to these past painters.

Originally a painter, Vagen developed her dot de verre (dots of glass) process while working for the William Morris Studio nearly twenty years ago. Having come to Pilchuck Glass School from the southwest, Vagen found in the northwest a community and a technique, both of which have sustained her creative pursuits. Since 1993, Vagen has lived in Stanwood. Her background includes a BFA in Painting with an emphasis in Art History, twelve years as archivist and researcher for glass artist William Morris, and exhibitions throughout the country. Vagen's work is in many private collections, and has received numerous awards.

Her technique distinguishes Vagen from the typical glass artist. Working with 3 millimeter glass dots, she first separates them by color, then arranges them in grids to capture the likenesses of the paintings she is honoring -- an exacting process that takes many hours and requires intense focus. Thousands of dots are used in each piece. Once the image is made, the composition goes into the kiln for two firings, where the dots soften, tack fuse to the backing tile, and fire polish to produce the shimmering images on view. The glass dots are in finite supply, as the factory that produced these forms closed in 1993. Due to the complexity of the material, no attempts have been made to reproduce them.

Kathleen Moles, Curator Museum of Northwest Art

Vagen selects from her “palette” as she works on the image the color of each dot to fit into her image before placing it very carefully into the small kiln. Above is a portrait of Tova-dog in the kiln, commissioned by a loving husband for his wife on their anniversary. Below, two Scotties in progress.

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Currently Available

White Rabbit, 1878, after Hunt, 2023

Dot de verre mosaic is mounted on a black glass, 11.5 x 13 x 1.5”

Bianca, 1920s, after Armstrong

Dot de verre mosaic is mounted on a black glass, 11.25 x 18.25"

The Gaze, 1878, after Dicksee

Dot de verre mosaic is mounted on a black glass, 17.5 x 11.25"

In the Wind, 1903, after Waterhouse

Dot de verre mosaic is mounted on a black glass, 15.5 x 12"

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Veruska Vagen’s photos and words bring to mind this poem by Walt Whitman to compliment her photos of the four-legged friends who visit the artist during her days.

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”

~Walt Whitman

CONTEMPORARIES | JOHN KILEY and DANTE MARIONI

To appreciate the relationship between John Kiley and Dante Marioni, Kiley suggests you get in the “way back machine” to when he was a high school student in Seattle and an apprentice chef with a knack for ceramics. He was saving money for a course on lost wax casting at Pilchuck Glass School (he wanted, but was too young, to enroll in glassblowing). When a guy came into his restaurant wearing a Pilchuck shirt, they struck up a conversation. It was Dante Marioni, an established glass artist and Pilchuck teacher who proposed Kiley join him a few days later at Benjamin Moore’s studio to talk glass. But the young and somewhat cavalier Kiley missed the meeting, only realizing later when he arrived at Pilchuck that Marioni was a big deal in glass. Kiley looked Marioni up in the phone book and gave him a call, during which Marioni graciously forgave the missed appointment and invited the kid to his studio.

Over the years, the two became colleagues and friends. Marioni recommended Kiley check out the Glass Eye Studio, where the young artist eventually landed his first job in glass. Later, Marioni hired Kiley to his team. Kiley clearly respects Marioni, who was surrounded by glass from a young age (his father is American Studio glass pioneer Paul Marioni), honed classic glassblowing techniques working with Maestro Lino Tagliapietra, then firmly established his own style of elegantly blown diaphanous forms patterned with impeccable reticello cane work. Eventually, Kiley ventured out on his own to pursue his personal style, characterized by a signature technique in which separate hand-blown geometric forms are joined, then cut, polished, and poised in precarious balance; the resulting configurations offer myriad passageways for light and for the interplay of color.

Kiley reminded Marioni that he wanted to work with some of his little “seeds” (kernels of concentrated and painstakingly designed patterns that he blows and stretches in his larger forms), thinking it would be interesting to experiment with a design element as the membranes of his joined pieces. For Kiley’s 2015 Museum of Glass residency, Marioni finally gave him one of these “seeds” to make a piece for auction, though Marioni did not participate in making the work. When Kiley made further requests for more patterns, Marioni—a consummate teacher driven by sharing the craft—encouraged him to learn how to make them for himself. But Kiley is a minimalist by nature, so while Marioni has a passion for perfecting patterns, Kiley chose to focus his glass practice on exploring the essence of the objects. A fortuitous intersection of circumstances finally brought Marioni’s meticulously arranged patterns and Kiley’s joined geometric forms together. In 2017, Kiley’s main projects involved optical glass and a body of work called Fractographs, neither of which could be demonstrated at his forthcoming Museum of Glass residency as they did not involve blowing glass. He figured he would hearken back to “classic Kiley” forms for the week-long stint in the museum’s hot shop. Marioni had shut down his furnace for his annual summer hiatus so he relented when, two days before the residency began, Kiley stopped by his studio and suggested he come along and bring some of his “seeds”. From that residency, and their subsequent sessions together, came an extraordinary amalgam of two minds in joyous equilibrium.

Basket Halo, 2020, 15.5 x 15 x 7"

Each artist is fussy about different things—Kiley rejects work with the smallest bubble (which Marioni finds imperceptible), while Marioni rejects the slightest wrinkle in the reticello (which Kiley sees as beautiful). As the collaboration progressed beyond the Museum of Glass residency, the two worked more deliberately. Whereas in the beginning Marioni would choose the patterns and Kiley would blow, fuse, and cut the pieces, now they collectively and purposely select patterns together and discuss how to cut a piece when it was still a sculptural blank waiting to be formed.

Though Kiley’s glassblowing demands discipline and technical prowess, and each piece of Marioni’s cane represents decades of practice and hours of labor, the physical act of combining Kiley’s two spheres with Marioni’s reticello core occurs in mere seconds. Success is rarely guaranteed. Kiley and Marioni have attempted many pieces that simply did not work, though they have used these failures as lessons and appreciate that accidents can often lead to intention.

When these two distinct aesthetic points of view coalesce—when Marioni’s fine patterning endows the central membrane where Kiley’s colored objects fuse together—a stunning harmony is achieved.

Amber Wave, 2020, detail.

The head of a glassblowing studio is its creative visionary and technical director but being a successful hot-glass artist does not happen in isolation. To actualize an elaborate work of glass art, a group of incredibly talented individuals work together in very close quarters. The master conducts a choreographed whirlwind of intensity, heat, and drama, and with the right assembly of personalities the process can be a lot of fun. Sometimes two artists come together in this dance of effort and joy, not as leader and assistant but as true partners. Though there was a time years ago when Marioni was the boss and Kiley the apprentice, the current collaboration between them is genuinely synergistic—two friends coming together to have a good time in the hot shop, each of whom bring to the experience distinct aesthetics and aptitude. The singular and exceptional results of the venture are a testament to the spirit of skill, spontaneity, experimentation, and friendship that began “way back” and continues to this day.

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View the works at the gallery.

Amber Wave, 2020

14.5 x 13 x 11”

Basket Halo, 2020

15.5 x 15 x 7”

Cerulean Tunnel, 2020

14 x 16 x 14”

Cresting Reticello, 2020

14.5 x 14.5 x 11.5”

Current, 2020

14 x 14 x 5”

Kinetic Reticello Wave, 2021

15.5 x 14.5 x 7”

Reticello Sun, 2022

14 x 14 x 6.5”

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Cresting Reticello, (detail)