STUDIO FOCUS | RICHARD JOLLEY and TOMMIE RUSH
photo credit: Hei Park
Blue Sky Bunnies for a Good Cause….
All the bunnies are individually made of cobalt blue colored glass with iridized surface. They vary in size but average 8 1/2” high by 4 1/2” wide. More information below.
Art, in its broadest context, is the perfect antidote for the present times. Whether escaping in a book or poem, finding solace and comfort in music, or contemplating the meaning or beauty or context of a painting or sculpture, it is a balm for the soul and spark for our minds for endless possibilities. People are seeking out the arts more than ever now (just look at the explosion of fabulous artistic content being made available and viewed online currently) and we like to think that art is an essential too. Just witness the nightly rituals in many cities of making a collective sound to acknowledge and thank healthcare workers. It not technology, a text, email or zoom meeting, that people are using to express themselves, it is something unique being created each night by the participants and it is a release and an declaration of life and that is the power of art and creating.
Tommie and I feel incredibly fortunate to have a home and food and still be able to work in the studio, on a much smaller scale, and our good fortune led us to wanting to do something to help others. So that’s how the project Blue Skies with Bunny came into being. We realized we could use our art as a multiplier to raise more money than our contribution to our local food bank could generate and here we are now. The blue skies symbolize hope and the future and the bunny with mask documents our current situation and a salute to those amazing healthcare professionals. I am making each piece by myself in the studio and happily donating most of the proceeds on my end to various food banks and it feels great to be a very small part of a solution to food insecurity during this time. Jim and Kim, no surprise to anyone, immediately embraced the idea of raising money for Feeding America and graciously provided this platform that you are currently reading. Thank you, Jim and Kim, for your generosity.
As for what else is occupying our time these days it’s like the 1970’s, I am working solo in the studio, and in essence living a more simple life. I have been painting more and recently finished several painting commissions while also working out ideas for future projects including a large outdoor commission that will start when this passes. Tommie an avid reader, gardener and cook might not ever want to go back to our previous work schedule and over busy existence.
We would like to thank everyone who loves and supports the arts and artist you enable all the great things that the arts provide. Thanks again to Jim and Kim for what you do and are doing to help now. And a special thanks to those of you who will support this project, as Tommie likes to say “ bunnies to the rescue”.
Richard Jolley
May 2020
A brief video to introduce the Water Series, which Richard Jolley has been working on in his studio this year.
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RICHARD JOLLEY
Richard Jolley has great appreciation for the hand techniques used for making glass objects that traces back to the Romans, but says “there are technical accomplishments I use to create my sculptures that though related to this long tradition of glassmaking, are in a world apart..”
When Jolley began working with glass in the early 1970s he knew he had discovered his muse. “There is a seduction with glass. It is such a beautiful material. I was trying to use non-traditional materials for art and at that time Jackson Pollack was using industrial painting techniques and developments were happening in plastics. It’s not a stretch to say sculpting glass is as non-traditional as any of these media.”
Jolley, who grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, decided to stay in the region and study glassmaking at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. The influences on Jolley’s work are a complex amalgam of not only where he studied, but where he grew up, the social fabric of the times, and sheer serendipity.
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TOMMIE RUSH
Tommie Rush, a native of Mobile, Alabama, is a glass artist who lives and maintains a studio, Tomco Inc., in Knoxville, Tennessee. She began her early studies in ceramics which ultimately lead her to working in glass.
By 1980, Tommie Rush began to share a studio space with renowned artist Richard Jolley, whom she married several years later. Through tireless experimentation and the development of custom blended glass mixed in the studio, Tommie Rush has created a unique and identifiable style which has been celebrated in over 75 exhibitions and was honored in a retrospective exhibition at the Mobile Museum of Art in the spring of 2011.
Her work can be found in numerous private and museum collections through out the United States including the Sheldon Art Museum and Sculpture Garden in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C., the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee, among others. Most recently Tommie Rush completed a glass and welded steel site specific commission for the headquarters of Scripps Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee. As a tireless supporter of the arts, Tommie Rush has served on several national boards including the Glass Art Society in Seattle, Penland School of Craft, Asheville, North Carolina, and the American Craft Council located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is very active with her local arts community.
Flowers from Tommie Rush’s Garden: mini roses, a peony from an heirloom tree, lilacs and mixed flowers, blooming in what was a late spring in Knoxville, Tennessee where Jolley and Rush live and work. Rush is an avid gardener, especially of flowers, and she describes her artistic mission as a “quest for the perfect vase for every flower.”