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.

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:

HutterfromSGMCatalog.jpg

 “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…

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

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

 

Available works.

 

___________________

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

STUDIO FOCUS | KAIT RHOADS

weaving her world with glass

Kait in her studio.jpg

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.

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

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

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

 

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

 
 

Working at the Museum of Glass

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.”

Klumpar vladimira.jpg

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….

From Prague….

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

…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.

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.

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

This is a clay model in progress…

This is a clay model in progress…

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

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

 
Klumpar 2.jpg

“…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.

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.

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.

_____________________

 

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

 

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 | THOMAS SCOON

 

a contemplative environment….

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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

 
The sculptures of Reflection pose for their portrait.

The sculptures of Reflection pose for their portrait.

About the Artist

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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