Talking Out Your Glass podcast

An American born artist dedicated to developing new techniques of glass working, Joshua Hershman combines optical physics with the fluidity of glass to make his contemporary sculpture. By harnessing light though hand-polished lenses, he employs unique methods of casting, coldworking, and photography in his boundary pushing work. Hershman states: “My work offers meditations on the complexities within the concept of photography and the repercussions of the camera’s impact on culture. The incredibly creative and destructive nature of photography is both inspiring and alarming to me. It has helped bring our global society closer together but also driven us desperately apart. It can teach us or deceive us, show us the furthest reaches of space, or the closest representations of matter itself. It is these contrasting realities that exist within photography, which inspire my works of contemporary art.” Being born with no peripheral vision or depth perception, decades of vision therapy led Hershman to his lifelong fascination with the complex nature of the visual system and the science of light and optics. By using cameras themselves as frames for his experimental photographic processes, he asks us to look more closely into the simple act of taking a photograph. His work focuses on the significance that film and photography have played on the development of contemporary global culture. More recently Hershman’s work has focused on the torus — the most common shape found in galaxy formations and human cellular biology. His series, Messier Objects, was named after the French astronomer Charles Messier, who famously catalogued anomalous objects that confused his search for comets in the night sky. Originally from Colorado, Hershman was born in 1981 and first began working with glass at the age of 17. In 2004, he graduated from the Craft and Design Program at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada. In 2008, he went on to earn a BFA with Distinction from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. Most recently, he completed the Master’s program at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Sculptural/Dimensional Studies. In 2009, Hershman had his first solo exhibition at Pismo Glass in Denver and went on to participate in many group exhibitions and art fairs including Sofa Chicago, the Armory Show, Art Hamptons, SF Art Market, the Habatat Invitational, and many others. He loves to teach and has led workshops and lectures at California College of the Arts, Public Glass in San Francisco, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and at D&L Glass Supply in Denver. Hershman has received numerous awards, was included in the Bullseye Emerge international glass competition, Young Glass 2017, and can be found in numerous private collections. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Ebeltoft Museum in Denmark, The National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, and Museum of Glass, Tacoma (MOG). In fact, MOG exhibited Hershman’s sculpture in the nation’s first LGBTQ+ glass exhibition titled Transparency. He has been invited to participate in several artist-in-residence programs including North Lands Creative Glass in Scotland, D&L Art Glass in Colorado, the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee, and most recently completed a semester-long residency at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The artist worked for Berengo studio in Murano, Italy, where he made work for the world’s leading contemporary artists. Living and operating a private studio in Los Angeles, California, Hershman makes his personal work and also operates the Glass Foundry, which provides casting and coldworking services to other artists. Additionally, he is employed at Judson Studios, where he’s currently working on a large-scale architectural glass project for James Jean. “Casting glass was something I could do in isolation in my studio which was a huge advantage during the pandemic. Without the need for a furnace or lots of facilities,...

Primarily a flameworker, Kari Russell-Pool approaches her work in a painterly fashion. She is interested in the transformation of an object into an heirloom. Made from hand-pulled glass rods, her Safety Mom Series, for example, was inspired by post-September 11 ideas of keeping a family safe. That series, in incongruously cheerful colors, is dominated by images of guns and keys, and the delicate glasswork is patterned to look like traditional needlework, which kept women’s hands busy in the 18th and 19th centuries. For her Trophy Series, Russell-Pool flameworked a strikingly delicate and extremely fragile set of trophies, inspired by an NPR interview with a trophy maker, who stated that frequently people commission trophies for themselves. In complex and decorative glass aviaries, Russell-Pool often showcases her husband and collaborative partner Marc Petrovic’s glass birds, a combination that is at once technically superlative and aesthetically enchanting. Her most recent collaborative series with Petrovic – Our Distilled Life Series – examines the individual amidst the complexity of societal and global challenges and distillates them into a series of vignettes within bottles. Russell-Pool states: “I communicate using objects as metaphors. From quilts and teapots, to sailors’ valentines and cages, I am interested in the stories objects tell and how we elevate them into heirlooms. Filled with personal content and commentary about society, the hard work of relationships, and my experience as a mom, my work tells many stories. The work is autobiographical, and although objects are my vehicle, I think of them as self portraits as each series reflects the timely concerns of my life.” Russell-Pool graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1990. She has taught and exhibited all over the world, and her work has been published in Glass Magazine and American Craft Magazine. Her public collections include the American Glass Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Niijima Museum of Glass (Tokyo), the Racine Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (DC), the Tacoma Museum of Glass, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum. Russell-Pool was awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2017 and 2019. Pulling her own glass rods or canes using soft glass or traditional blowing glass, Russell-Pool can more easily incorporate blown work by Petrovic into her pieces. They gather clear glass from their melting furnace and color it by rolling the hot clear glass through powdered colored glass, and then encasing the color in another thin layer of clear. These gathers of glass are pulled into 40′ lengths while still hot, and then cut down into 1.5′ lengths. Coloring her glass this way allows Russell-Pool to both mix colors and control their densities. She uses these colored glass canes in a torch flame to sculpt petals, leaves, and small components, which she further colors using more glass powders. Having some color in the base canes allows the artist to work much as a watercolorist would, using washes to achieve subtle or dramatic color changes. Each piece begins with a design drawn out on a piece of ¼-inch clear plate glass. Russell-Pool then bends all her glass canes exactly to that pattern using a torch with a warm flame. “By layering the color and manipulating the density, our hope is the flow between the blown and flameworked glass appears effortless. In glass there is often a right way to do things. I am more a proponent of the cowboy way. The cowboy way invites invention and serves the master of the final result rather than proper technique. I am proud to be called a craftsman, because craftsmanship underlies all I do, even if I am occasionally caught being an artist.” Russell-Pool and Petrovic have collaborative work on view now as part of the Jonathan Adler Show at the Museum of Art and Design in New York...

At the heart of Dylan Martinez’s work lies the striking H2O/SiO2 series, inspired by the artistic tradition of Trompe L’œil—the technique that deceives the eye into perceiving three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Each sculpture is meticulously hot-sculpted and hand-molded by Martinez, capturing the fluid movement of rising bubbles and the delicate form of what appears, at first glance, to be bags of water. These pieces transcend objecthood; they are immersive experiences that invite stillness, inspection, and recalibration of the senses. Martinez reflects, “Our vision has the greatest effect on our understanding of the world. Through my artwork, I create scenarios where viewers must question their ability to navigate between reality and illusion.” Blending classical craftsmanship with contemporary conceptual inquiry, Martinez uses glass as both material and metaphor. His work explores how perception constructs truth—how desire and expectation often override what is actually seen. In his latest series, Martinez introduces vibrant color for the first time in years, signaling a shift influenced by pop art. Sculpted forms inspired by Pac-Man ghosts and hyperrealistic water balloons appear light, buoyant, and playful, yet reveal an intense precision beneath their surface charm. Also central to this new body of work is a group of hard-edged, geometric sculptures rooted in optical art. These pieces employ sharp lines, layered transparency, and refraction to produce illusions of shifting depth, bending geometry, and visual vibration. As viewers move around them, the forms seem to flicker, realign, or dissolve—forcing perception into motion. These optical works expand Martinez’s inquiry into the unstable boundary between what is there and what is seen. Born in Stillwater, Minnesota, Martinez earned his degree in science from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls in 2008. It was during his junior year, upon visiting the university’s glassblowing studio, that he discovered a profound connection to glass—drawn to how the material responded to physical forces he had studied in physics, chemistry, and geology. He recalls, “I tried it out, and it really resonated with me—in the way you move the material and how it reacts to heat and physical forces.” He later earned his MFA from Ball State University in 2017. Martinez honed his craft through an apprenticeship with Sam Stang at Augusta Glass Studio (2010–2012), evolving from functional glassware and vases into sculptural and installation-based work. He currently lives and works in his studio in Bingen, Washington. Martinez’s work has earned global acclaim, appearing in public and private collections worldwide. International publications such as Elle Decoration (UK, NL, Germany), American Craft Magazine, Interior Design Magazine, and Aesthetica have celebrated his contributions to contemporary glass. His accolades include the Enrico Bersellini Award (Miano Vetro, Milan, 2018), the Stanislav Libensky Award (Prague, 2017), full scholarships to Pilchuck Glass School and Pittsburgh Glass Center (2017), and numerous Best in Show and Juror Awards. In 2021, he received Best in Show, OP ART/Glass, from the Imagine Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. In 2025, Martinez’s work will be featured in More Than Meets the Eye at Belger Arts, Kansas City, MO (June 6 – September 6), as well as in a solo exhibition titled, Glass Reimagined, at Square One Gallery, St. Louis, MO (June 6 – August 1). Through a fusion of light, form, and material truth, Martinez’s sculptures prompt a quiet confrontation with the limits of perception. As he states of his waterbag series, “The trapped movement of rising bubbles and the gesture of the forms convince the eye that the sculptures are exactly as they appear. What fascinates me is how our desires often override our true perception, leading us to believe what we see as the absolute truth.”

As lead painter and art department manager for Willet Studios in Winona, Minnesota, Melissa Janda will speak about Willet’s large-scale projects at the upcoming American Glass Guild Conference, being held in Mesa, Arizona, from May 22 – 24, 2025. With 30 years of experience in the field of stained glass, Janda is adept at all aspects of stained glass production, specializing in glass painting, design and restoration work. From St. Agnes Catholic Church in Key Biscayne, Florida, to St. Jane de Chantal Catholic Church, Bethesda, Maryland, the results are stunning and speak for themselves. Before entering the world of stained glass, Janda received her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, where she majored in drawing with a minor in illustration. Her professional experience with the craft first began in 1993 when she worked at Conrad Schmitt Studios, New Berlin, Wisconsin. Janda then went on to work at Jaeger Studios before leaving to manage her own studio, Melissa Janda Studios in Chicago, Illinois, and later Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for 10 years while she subcontracted work as a glass painter. During her time in Chicago, the artist also worked for a handful of studios, including Curran Glass Studio, Regina Art Glass, Glass Art and Decorative Studio, Two Fish Art Glass, and others. In 2008, Janda returned to Conrad Schmitt Studios before relocating to Winona, Minnesota, to manage Willet Studios’ art department in 2014. In addition to decades of experience, Janda offers Willet Studios a dedicated spirit to the craft, in which she is constantly striving to learn new techniques through the participation in a multitude of workshops and classes. She has a deep appreciation for the great traditions of stained glass and explains: “I have one foot firmly planted in the rich past, with the other stepping forward into the future of contemporary innovations.” A close look at Janda’s work process and unique methodology was featured in an Artist Profile for NPR. The video interview follow’s Janda’s process in creating a commissioned stained glass piece of art and features some of her favorite personal pieces. https://www.pbs.org/video/broad-and-high-artist-profile-melissa-janda-stained-glass

One of the most followed stained glass artists on social media, Meggy Wilm of Colorado Glass Works, Boulder, Colorado, shares her creations with nearly 275K (and growing) followers on Instagram – attracting a new audience of young enthusiasts to the medieval craft. Wilm and her husband Dustin Mayfield also recently purchased Boulder-based D&L Art Glass Supply from Leslie Silverman, who dedicated 50 years to the company she founded. Experienced entrepreneurs, Wilm and Mayfield have a deep appreciation for the art glass industry and a forward-thinking vision for D&L. Her first company, Colorado Glass Works is a multifaceted art glass business where Wilm teaches a variety of classes, sells and ships sheet glass around the world, designs her own custom sheet glass, and creates small and large commissions for private clients. She has been creating stained art glass for the last seven years and has a deep love of all things nature- and glass-related. States Wilm: “I founded Colorado Glass Works in the fall of 2017 sitting criss-crossed on my living room floor in Denver, Colorado. My passion is creating dreamy and colorful stained glass art pieces ranging from mini sun-catchers to fully installable windows. I imagine, custom design, and hand-make every single one of my pieces with attention to every little detail.” Beginning on January 1, 2020, Wilm made a commitment to donate a percentage of her glass profits amongst her five favorite environmental organizations – The Sierra Club, The Marine Conservation Institute, the Rainforest Action Network, Defenders of Wildlife, and The Environmental Defense Fund. In 2024, through purchases of Wilm’s art, she raised $10,000 and donated those funds to help protect our planet. Each of her chosen nonprofit organizations received $2,000 to continue their efforts. Raising larger amounts each year, in 2024 Wilm was able to expand on her altruistic goals and donate stained glass art supplies, classes, and glass to schools in need. Eight deserving schools across the United States received full beginner stained glass startup kits to introduce stained glass as an elective or after-school activity. These kits included tools, classes, and materials valued at over $10,000, giving students the opportunity to explore stained glass. Wilm says: “Together, we made a total of $20,678 in donations to causes that truly matter. None of this would have been possible without you. Thank you for being part of this journey. I am so thrilled we get to work together in making a small impact to help protect this beautiful world we live in.” In addition to running Colorado Glass Works, and taking the wheel at D&L, Wilm will be a TA for Ted Ellison at Pilchuck from May 22 – 29, 2025. Keep your eye on social media for more of the artist’s beautiful Colorado landscapes, sparkling snowflakes and signature textured or dichroic Monstera leaves.

Working with abrasive spinning wheels, the Ferro brothers cold work glass vessels in brilliant colors. Their dramatic cuts are sometimes five layers deep, and they cradle each piece for hours, days, and often weeks, painstakingly grinding away to reveal what lies underneath. There is always the danger that the piece will shatter, so it is a painstaking process. The finished vessel is a passionate work of art in vibrant translucent colors and energetic textures. Pietro and Riccardo Ferro were born in 1975 and 1980, respectively. Under the guidance of their father, cold-working Maestro Paolo Ferro, the brothers worked in various Murano factories to learn traditional techniques, including different grinding effects such as diamond scribing, stipple engraving and the bold Battuto, which resembles hammered metal. In 2000, the Ferros opened La Moleria, a workshop for grinding glass, where they created masterpieces for world-renowned artists including Lino Tagliapietra and Pino Signoretto. They also collaborated with famous Murano factories, such as Venini and Seguso. Today, they are more focused on their own unique glass art designs and their work can be found in prestigious public and private collections worldwide. They have visited the US to meet their collectors and demonstrate their methods at the Pilchuck Glass School and the Corning Museum of Glass. Says Irene McClellan, Duncan McClellan Gallery: “Riccardo and Pietro Ferro represent a new generation of glass artists from the Island of Murano, Italy. Continuing their father’s legacy, they have become renowned coldworking specialists in their own rite. They delve deeply into the possibilities that cutting and carving through layers of glass can reveal and create intriguing textural interest on glass artwork.” From April 30 to May 18, the Wiener Museum of Decorative Glass (WMODA), Hollywood, Florida, presents Carved in Glass, a selling exhibition of the Ferro Brothers’ new work. Riccardo will attend opening night on April 29. Sergio Gnesin, Italian glass expert and author, serves as guest curator of the show. All art sales benefit the educational programs at WMODA, which is a 501c3 not-for-profit museum. Says Louise Irving, Executive Director and Curator at WMODA: “Venice has been producing glass since the 10th century, and Murano became the main center in 1291 when glassmakers were ordered to relocate their furnaces to the small island in the Venetian lagoon to mitigate fire hazards. Over the centuries, the Murano masters have changed our perception of glass as an artistic medium. People can experience the magic of Murano at WMODA on Tuesday, April 29, when Riccardo Ferro from La Moleria opens the museum’s exhibition of brilliant carved glass art by the fabulous Ferro Brothers.”

Stephanie Trenchard’s multi-disciplinary creative process includes painting and poetry along with cast glass. With a focus on biographical stories of how women artists have navigated careers and partnerships, motherhood and making a living while still focusing on their creative practice, the work also discusses the price the art has to pay in this grand juggling act. The artist prioritizes the actual experience of the work, making and seeing it, over the classification of genre or ownership of an idea. Says Trenchard: “I create my own visual vocabulary in storytelling. Using these totems, I tell stories about the artistic experience and the ensuing personal relationships usually based on true stories of artists from history. The subject of these narratives is often revealed in the title of the piece, but it is not necessary that the viewer be familiar with the subject in order to understand the concept because the metaphors are universal to the human condition.” Her work also involves using art as a way to communicate local activism as seen in her project About Sturgeon Bay. Born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1962, Trenchard earned her BFA in painting from Illinois State University in 1984. Subsequently, she and glass artist husband Jeremy Popelka relocated to San Francisco, California, where Trenchard designed textile patterns, licensed and sold under a private label. Upon returning to Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin in 1997, the couple built a hot shop and gallery that they share to this day. They assist each other with work as well as teaching projects, such as their recent classes in Thailand. As she assisted Popelka, Trenchard began to see glass casting as a means of translating textile patterns and other imagery to glass. The discovery of Paradise Paints allowed her to combine painting skills with glass art in the development of her award-winning body of work. Trenchard has developed a unique method of creating art using glass combined with paint. She first creates fully realized figures or objects in clear glass, which are then painted with high-fire enamels that are mixed and blended just as with oil or acrylic paints. Next, these three-dimensional objects or figures are submerged into molten glass encased in cubes and rectangles of clear sand cast glass. Each cube or rectangle is created so that they can be fitted tightly next to one another or on top, making a totem like structure. Coldworking is required to achieve the perfect fit. She states: “I have been following my own interests and curiosities concerning how these women have navigated their careers and artistic practices. I represent these ideas in glass through the details that speak to me, particularly the ephemera of material culture, furniture and clothing that encapsulate their era and class. I also rely on posture and facial expression to reveal the nature of the subject as I intuit it.” In addition to teaching in her studio, Trenchard has taught workshops at Pratt Fine Art Center, University of Wisconsin, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, The Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass and others. She was a lecturer at the Glass Art Society Conference, Murano, Italy, and established the first hot glass school in Southeast Asia, at Bangkok Glass, Thailand. Recent exhibitions include: Beyond Giving, Inspiring Change, Singapore Art Week, Singapore; Matriarchs of Mastery, Habatat Gallery, Detroit, Michigan; A Creative Place, Trout Museum, Wisconsin; and Beyond the Ceiling – Women of Studio Glass, Sarasota, Florida, Habatat Invitational, Michigan. Awards include Trenchard’s 2025 Featured Poet award, presented by After Hours Journal, Chicago; 2023, 2024 Prize Winner at Habatat International Exhibition; and the 2020 AACG Wisconsin Artist Series at Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass. Says Trenchard: “Telling stories is what cultures do to understand the history and identities of the people. The small details in my work open up a conversation about the personal...

For more than three decades, trailblazing artist and activist Joyce J. Scott has elevated the creative potential of beadwork as a relevant contemporary art form. Scott uses off-loom, hand-threaded glass beads to create striking figurative sculptures, wall hangings, and jewelry informed by her African American ancestry, the craft traditions of her family (including her mother, renowned quilter Elizabeth T. Scott), and traditional Native American techniques, such as the peyote stitch. Each object that Scott creates is a unique, vibrant, and challenging work of art developed with imagination, wit, and sly humor. Born to sharecroppers in North Carolina who were descendants of enslaved people, Scott’s family migrated to Baltimore, Maryland, where the artist was born and raised. Scott hales from a long line of makers with extraordinary craftsmanship adept at pottery, knitting, metalwork, basketry, storytelling, and quilting. It was from her family that the young artist cultivated the astonishing skills and expertise for which she is now renowned, and where she learned to upcycle all materials, repositioning craft as a forceful stage for social commentary and activism. In the 1990s, Scott began working with glass artisans to create blown, pressed, and cast glass that she incorporated into her beaded sculptures. This not only allowed her to increase the scale of her work, but also satisfied her desire to collaborate. In 1992, she was invited to the Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington. Continuing her interest in glass, Scott has worked with local Baltimore glassblowers as well as with flameworking pioneer Paul Stankard and other celebrated glass fabricators. In 2012, Goya Contemporary Gallery arranged to have Scott work at Adriano Berengo’s celebrated glass studio on the island of Murano in Italy, creating works that were part of the exhibition Glasstress through the Venice Biennale. Scott has worn many hats during her illustrious career: quilter, performance artist, printmaker, sculptor, singer, teacher, textile artist, recording artist, painter, writer, installation artist, and bead artist. Her wide-ranging body of work has crossed styles and mediums, from the most intricate beaded form to large-scale outdoor installation. Whether social or political, the artist’s subject matter reflects her narrative of what it means to be Black in America. Scott continues to live and work in Baltimore, Maryland. She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Selected solo museum exhibitions include The Baltimore Museum of Art (2024); Seattle Art Museum (2024 – 2025); and Grounds for Sculpture (2018), Trenton, NJ. She is the recipient of myriad commissions, grants, awards, residencies, and prestigious honors including from the National Endowment for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, American Craft Council, National Living Treasure Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts, Mary Sawyers Imboden Baker Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2016), Smithsonian Visionary Artist Award, National Academy of Design Induction, and Moore College Visionary Woman Award, among others. In March of 2024, Scott opened a major 50-year traveling Museum retrospective titled Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and Seattle Art Museum. Also in 2024, Scott opened Bearing Witness: A History of Prints by Joyce J Scott at Goya Contemporary Gallery. Her latest exhibition, Joyce J. Scott: Messages, opened at The Chrysler Museum of Art on February 6, 2025 and will run through August 17, 2025 at the Glass Projects Space. This exhibition is organized by Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, MA. Says Carolyn Swan Needell, the Chrysler Museum’s Barry Curator of Glass: “We are thrilled to host this focused traveling exhibition here in Norfolk at the very moment when Scott’s brilliant...

self-described loner, Joel Philip Myers developed his skills in relative isolation from the Studio Glass movement. With works inspired by a vast array of topics ranging from his deep love of the Danish countryside to Dr. Zharkov, the artist avoided elaborate sculpture in favor of substantial vessels that are simple yet powerful. States Myers: “In 1964, on the occasion of an exhibition titled Designed for Production: The Craftsman’s Approach, I wrote in an essay in Craft Horizons magazine: ‘My approach to glass, as it is to clay, is to allow the material an expression of its own. Press the material to the utmost, and it will suggest ideas and creative avenues to the responsive artist.’ The statement was sincere and enthusiastic, but decidedly naïf. I never thought when I wrote it that it would be the one statement of mine that would continue to be repeatedly quoted, throughout my 46- year-long career, as my defining philosophy. I have no defining philosophy. I am a visual artist, not a philosopher. Thoughts and ideas and opinions do not constitute a philosophy, and my thoughts and ideas and opinions have evolved and matured and changed in the time that has passed since 1964.” He continues: “As an artist I like to think of myself as a visitor in a maze, trying to find a solution to a dizzying puzzle. As in a maze, I have, through blunders and exploration, arrived at solutions, and embraced the manifold possibilities that the material offers: plasticity, transparency, opacity, translucency. I am sensitive to the wonders of the visual world and inspired by the forms and colors of the natural world. My training as a designer has enabled me to understand and exploit organization and structure, adding a rational perspective to my intuitive, emotional self.” Myers earned his degree in advertising design from Parsons School of Design in 1954. He studied in Copenhagen, Denmark, before earning a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in the early 1960s. In 1963, he was hired as design director at Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia. Captivated by the drama of this thriving glass factory, he learned glassblowing through observation and practice. In 1970, Myers established the nascent glass department at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, where he served as Distinguished Professor of Art for 30 years until he retired from teaching in 1997. He is an Honorary Lifetime Member, 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and past President of the Glass Art Society, a Fellow of the American Crafts Council, and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work is represented in prominent museum collections around the world, including The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris, France; and Musee de Design et d’Arts Appliques Contemporains, Lausanne, Switzerland, amongst others. Of his sculpture, Myers states: “My work is concerned with drawing, painting, playing with color and imagery on glass. I work with simple forms and concentrate on the surface enrichment. I prefer the spherical, three-dimensional surface to a flat one, because as I paint and draw on the glass, the glass form receives the drawing, adapts to its shape, distorts and expands it as it clothes and envelops itself in my drawing. I feel a communication with the material, and a reciprocation from my subconscious, as I continually search for new insights into my unknown self.” Enjoy this enlightening conversation with Myers, who at 91 has a near photographic memory of the events and developments that spurred the Studio Glass movement forward in its early days, as well as the ideas...

Perceiving her role as a record keeper, artist Jen Blazina captures the essence of lost memories and forgotten voices. Through her work, she holds onto fragments of personal history, transforming common objects into poignant relics of the past. Her visual narratives express universal concepts of memory, inviting audiences to connect with the stories she preserves. Blazina states: “Memory is embodied in everything around us: in our culture, beliefs, objects, and ourselves. Discarded objects and those passed down to me become personal keepsakes and icons of the past, rather than overlooked or regarded as useless. My collections represent a sense of holding onto a place in time. By re-creating these keepsakes, I re-cast their history into my own voice.” A sculptor and printmaker who uses glass as her primary medium, Blazina currently resides in Philadelphia where she is a working artist and professor at Drexel University in the College of Media Arts and Design. Blazina’s work can be found in multiple collections such as the Neuberger Museum of Art, The Imagine Museum, The Cranbrook Museum of Art, and the Corning Museum of Glass, to name a few. The artist has been awarded numerous residencies including: the Corning Artist in Residency at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York; GAPP Residency at Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, OH; Bezalel Art and Design Academy in Jerusalem, Israel; and the Creative Glass Center of America in Millville, NJ. She has also been awarded prestigious grants such as the Bessie and Louis Stein Fellowship; Independence Foundation Grant; and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Nominated for the 2022 Pew Fellowship Award, Blazina received her M.F.A. in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art, her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in New York and her B.F.A., cum laude, from the State University of New York at Purchase College. Blazina is represented by Habatat Detroit Fine Art in Royal Oak, MI; Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, NC; Vetri Glass Gallery in Seattle, WA; Kittrell Riffkind Gallery in Dallas, TX; Bullseye Projects in Portland, OR; and Koelsch Gallery in Houston, TX. In 2025, Blazina will have work on view at the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, WI, in New Art on the Block: Selections from the Permanent Collections, October 31, 2024 – April 6, 2025; in Object Memory, Jen Blazina and Ash Smith at 20*20 Gallery, Lansdowne, PA, February 22 – April 15; in Through a Window Darkly, The Works of Jen Blazina at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, April 24 to October 5, 2025; in Collections at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville, NC, May 2 – June 25; and in Glass 53: International Glass Invitational at Habatat Fine Art Gallery, Royal Oak, MI, May 1 – September 6. She will teach Alternative Approaches to Printmaking and Glass at Corning Museum of Glass Studios, Corning, NY, June 16 – June 21; and In Pursuit of Light: Kiln Casting at Glass Furnace, Istanbul, Turkey, August 25 – August 29. Says Blazina: “As an artist, I am intrigued with the idea that what is precious to one person will be discarded by another. My work is influenced by commonplace possessions, familial vignettes and photographs. These evoke an ephemeral sense of past memories. Whether found in a second-hand shop or passed down from my family, I am often attracted to and captivated by the lost beauty of subtle images and materials. By re-creating and casting momentos in glass and metal, I can capture and hold on to another time in the past. Photographs and chosen objects allude to narratives of fleeting moments.” ​UPCOMING EVENTS New Art On The Block: Selections From The Permanent Collections Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass Neenah, WI Dates: October 31 – April 6, 2025 Object Memory, Jen Blazina and Ash Smith 20*20 Gallery Lansdowne, PA Dates: February 22 – April 15 Through a Window Darkly, The Works of Jen Blazina Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass Neenah, WI Opening: April 24 Dates: April 24 to October...

Nothing short of inspirational, Martin Gerdin’s journey through crafting wild fish in hot glass is inextricably tangled with his evolution to mental health and sobriety. Beginning during the pandemic, the artist has hand-blown dozens of meticulously detailed trout, salmon, redfish, and other revered gamefish from his glassblowing studio, Gerdin Glass in Crawford, Colorado. The dangers, volatility, and physical labor of blowing glass are symbolic of the challenges he faced and conquered on his pathway to sober living. For some, fly fishing is a pastime, something fun to pursue on a long weekend or camping trip with friends and family. For others, it’s a calling, a religion, lionized in the literary creations of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Maclean among many others. Gerdin clearly falls into the latter category. He states: “Some say fly fishing is an art. I spend my days on our stunning Colorado river systems catching beautiful wild trout, and I spend my nights in the studio recreating them in glass. My life is a confluence of passion.” Gerdin’s father, a professional skier for most of his career, decided to raise his family as far away from civilization as possible. In the Rocky Mountains, some 8,500 feet above sea level, his son’s community was built around skiing, conventional fishing, and dirt bikes. Gerdin’s mother played a central role in his early angling and artistic exploits. “There were two archetypes in my home growing up — the super athletes and the artist fishermen, and nothing in between,” he states. Gerdin and his mother connected through time spent fishing their local waterways while other members of the family were focused on more physically demanding recreation on the mountain. When not on the water, his mother would create complex beaded and woven patterns in her home art studio. Raised in the wilderness, Gerdin’s childhood fostered a love for the natural forms and colors that surrounded him during his youth, especially those in the rivers. He began blowing glass in 2008, when he discovered the hot shop at his high school, Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Basalt, Colorado, headed by Dave Powers and after Gerdin graduated by Jose Chardiet. Fascinated by the material, he spent every spare moment learning and absorbing as much as he could. Being an avid fisherman, blown glass fish were a natural progression in his artistic journey. As Gerdin grew, he lost his way. Addiction clawed its way into every aspect of his life, and he lost his vision for the future. Doing craft shows and drinking enough to prevent seizures due to alcoholism became the norm. On May 13, 2020, he decided enough was enough. After addiction treatment he fell into a crowd of young, sober fly fishermen. With a clear head and a fresh perspective, the artist strived to bring the beautiful wild salmonids he saw to life in glass. Since his sobriety date, Gerdin has made more than 700 fish, making his own tools and trying to push the limits in sculpting realism. His collectors are many and include the likes of other fly fishermen such as Kevin Costner and Jimmy Kimmel. Moving into the next iteration of his craft, Gerdin is pushing his technical and creative skills to realize a new series of trout, which he calls Naturalisms, stemming from the philosophical idea that everything arises from natural properties and causes. At age 31, his journey is just beginning. From March 7 -9, Gerdin will demonstrate his processes and techniques at Third Degree Glass Factory, St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 2002, it is a multifaceted venue for year-round exhibitions, classes, events and studio rental. Register for the Glasma Conference at studioglassbatch.com.

The raw brilliance and color of glass are primary inspirations in Rita Shimelfarb’s work. The deeper she explores the technical side of working with glass, the more it leaves her in awe at the range of possibilities for something new and beautiful to emerge. Building upon the millennia-long tradition of stained glass art, Shimelfarb pushes her material beyond traditional imagery and conventional construction methods by utilizing both time-proven as well as innovative contemporary glass forming and painting techniques. By combining modern and traditional, play and purpose, she makes the seemingly conflicting entities sing together in harmony. Shimelfarb’s unforgettable series, The Sacred Feminine Grace Archetypes, recognizes the universal interconnectedness and divine essence of all living beings. Through moving portraits of strong, wise and soulful female subjects, the work embodies beauty in movement, thought and action, reflecting an inner harmony that transcends physical appearance. This state is not just external; it is a quality that emanates from within, allowing individuals to navigate life’s challenges with poise and dignity. It’s an acknowledgment that life’s challenges are opportunities for growth, and by flowing with these experiences, one can find wisdom and serenity. Unintegrated.

Combining technical skill with a strong aesthetic, flameworking pioneer Sally Prasch is known for her work that places other-worldly figures in glowing globes filled with rare gasses. She has also constructed portraits from broken shards of glass and is well known for her goblets made with coiled stems that allow them to bounce when handled. Her latest work incorporates cast bronze with glass. But perhaps Prasch’s greatest fulfillment has come from teaching. She has taught flameworking workshops at UrbanGlass, Brooklyn; the famous Niijima Glass School, Japan; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA; Penland School of Craft, Penland, NC; Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, PA; Grove Gas & Light Co, University of CA, San Diego, CA; Ingalena Klenell’s Studio, Sweden, and many more. States Prasch: “Teaching has always been a part of my life. My parents were teachers, and both my brother and sister have also been teachers. Lloyd Moore, my first teacher, found it very important not to have any secrets but to share your knowledge with others – share your love of glass and making things. He taught thousands of people, and I continue in his tradition. Lloyd started me teaching at age 15. It was scary for me to teach adults, but made me practice things over and over again. We started people on soft glass tubing and then worked them up to borosilicate.” Prasch began her career at age 13 with Moore working as a part-time apprentice at the University of Nebraska and then worked as a glassblowing instructor for the City of Lincoln Recreation Department. Later on, she took workshops from some of the best glassblowers of the time including William Bernstein, Ray Schultz, and Lino Tagliapietra. She attended the University of Kansas from 1977 to 1980 and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art in Glass and Ceramics. After college, Prasch started her glass art business that is still active today. She soon began to receive recognition for her artistic work and was selected for the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review in 1993. The artist has been attending Glass Art Society (GAS) Conferences since 1978 and continues to participate by giving demonstrations and lec-moes, serving on the GAS Advisory Board and working with the organization’s History Committee. In 1985, Prasch received her Certificate in Scientific Glass Technology from Salem Community College (SCC), Carneys Point, New Jersey. Soon afterwards, she obtained a position with AT&T doing large quartz work for the semiconductor industry. Continuing with her studies, Prasch earned her degree in Applied Science from SCC in 1986. Later that year she got a job as a scientific glassblower and glass instructor at the University of Massachusetts. She has worked as a scientific glassblower at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst), Syracuse University, and the University of Vermont, Burlington. Currently, Prasch is the scientific glassblower and also teaches Scientific Glassblowing and the Properties of Glass to graduate students in Chemistry, Art and Physics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a member of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society (ASGS) and the director of the Northeast section. Her ASGS experience includes participating in seminars on such subjects like vacuum technology, quartz technology, and glass sealing. She has instructed a neon class with David Wilson, presented a paper on her work with the discovery of the gravitational wave, and co-chaired symposiums. In 2025, Prasch will exhibit her work in Glass Lifeforms at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, opening February 7 and running through April 20. Her work will also be on view in Glasstastic at the Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro, VT, March 22 through November 1. The artist will teach at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, PA, from July 28 – August 1. After curating the annual glass exhibit at Leverett Crafts and Arts in Leverett, MA for the month of November, Prasch will have a...

Childhood experiences of life on a sailboat in the Bahamas and Caribbean left a profound mark on Kait Rhoads. The experience of growing up on the water has provided great inspiration for her artwork. The artist’s Sea Stones series hints at its watery origins. Each sculpture is a small world in itself, an intimate object you can hold in your hand. A talisman, the work looks almost molecular, like plankton carapaces as observed under a microscope. Rhoads states: “My work is inspired by nature and informed by memory. And, three oceans—the Caribbean, the Indian and the Pacific – delineate the imaginative boundaries of my practice. I grew up on the water of the Caribbean in a ship with my family where my deep affinity for biological systems began. I lived surrounded by nature; the liquid light and aquatic life imprinted upon my senses. The sculptures I create emanate from my early experiences within and curiosity about the natural world. While exploring the waters around Bali, I experienced the extraordinary biodiversity and extensive architecture of coral colonies there. This has been a deep influence on my sculptural forms and process of making.” Best-known for her innovative use of Venetian techniques such as murrine and filigrana, she applies these decorative processes to sculptural forms as well as to vessels. She was influenced early on by Lino Tagliapietra’s work with cane and Richard Marquis’ use of murrine as a structural material. Rhoads’ unique process involves weaving pieces of blown and cut glass tubes with copper wire to create flexible looking “soft sculptures.” States Rhoads: “My method of construction mirrors how my life has formed me, with individual elements woven together to create a strong whole. I consider the individual units, conical hexagonal forms known as hollow murrine, as architectural elements that fit together to create a fluid or floating object. The concept of the work develops slowly, and the production of a complicated piece can take months to years to complete.” Rhoads is also well known for her public art installations including Bloom, commissioned in 2018 for the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s two-story tall window space. In 2022, Bloom was chosen to be permanently installed inside of the biology department at Highline College, Des Moines, Washington. She also created Salish Nettles, her largest work to date, for the Pacific Seas Aquarium, Tacoma, Washington, and Proto Kelp, which was on view through October of 2024 at Method Gallery, Seattle, Washington. In 2025, the artist will apply for residencies and funding to expand the project sustainably. In all of these public projects Rhoads hopes to inspire in the viewer empathy, curiosity and interest in ocean ecology. Receiving her BFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, Rhoads earned her MFA in glass from Alfred University, New York in 2001. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doug and Dale Anderson Scholarship, The Anne Gould Hauberg Award, and a Fulbright Scholarship for the study of sculpture in Venice, Italy. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Her work can be found in many collections, including the Seattle Art Museum; the Toyama Institute of Glass in Toyama, Japan; the Glasmuseum in Ebeltoft, Denmark; Shanghai Museum of Glass, China; and The Corning Museum of Glass. She maintains a studio in Seattle, Washington. “The cold, deep green waters of Puget Sound are a more recent source of inspiration in my work. Since moving to the Northwest over two decades ago, my fascination extended from coral colonies to kelp forests. Seaweed’s pliable forms continually inspire me—they stretch up from the depths, undulate in the shallows, and lie on tidal surfaces. Aquatic life infuses my sculptures with animated forms, sparkling surfaces and faceted exoskeletons.” In 2025, Rhoads will continue to...

Weston Lambert transforms semi-precious stones and found rocks into profoundly beautiful, time-defying glass sculptures. By incorporating an original process for laminating the two materials and by cold-working the surfaces of the glass and rock, the artist is able to bring his skill to bear on these objects that seamlessly transform from stone to glass and back again. Lambert’s work is about dualities and the balancing of contrasting forces. He’s looking for the place where transparency/opacity, and ephemeral/eternal coexist, each taking part in creating equilibrium. This dynamic relationship turns fragility into an asset and rigidity into liability. Lambert states: “In the studio, I accelerate the slow violence of geological processes. My materials are engaged in a condensed passage of time—modified by my brief tenure, on a timeline charted by millennia, not decades. The heat of the kiln allows molten glass to nestle into stone and days of grinding/polishing simulate eons of erosion. In my pursuit of permanence, I create invulnerable, seamless objects that have been broken and mended outside of geological time.” A sculptor based in Tacoma, Washington, Lambert’s primary media are glass, metal and stone. In 2007, he earned a BFA (Maxima Cum Laude), from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and in 2012, his MFA from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2010 and again in 2020, the artist was awarded a full-tuition scholarship at Andersen Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Career Opportunity Grant, one of two such grants awarded nationally per year. Lambert’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including SOFA Chicago, The Toyama International Glass Exhibit, and the Cheongju Craft Biennale in South Korea. As a public artist, Lambert has completed prominent commissions including Untitled, at Western State Hospital, Lakewood, Washington, 2023 and Currents, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington, 2020. His works have been included in such publications as Sculpture Magazine and Glass Quarterly Magazine. In 2024, Lambert’s work was exhibited at Smith and Vallee Gallery, Edison, Washington, and Taoxichuan Glass Studio Gallery, group exhibition, Jingdezhen, China, where he also lectured and demoed. The artist lectured/demoed at Chico State University, California, and on November 23 taught an online class, Making it on Social Media: Aligning Creativity, Integrity, and Studio Success. He has over 350K followers on Instagram. In March 2025, Lambert will participate in a group exhibition at Visu Contemporary, Miami Beach, Florida, and film a class on his process of combining glass and stone at Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, Oregon, available in late Spring. Of his artwork, Lambert explains: “In the context of human lives, rock embodies strength, consistency, and timelessness. There’s safety in its solidity, but the natural world is in constant flux. Granite and sand share each other’s future—forever shattered and recast. Glass is delicate, but when combined with the durability of stone, the pairing embodies harmony.”

Current work by Jeremy Sinkus includes his Contemporary Art Nodules, inspired by collecting and focusing on the top 10 attributes that the artist and viewers found intriguing about glass objects. Simultaneously ancient and from the future, his Nodules combine texture and form with transparent windows that allow the viewer to explore unknown inner worlds. A former mineral collector and digger, Sinkus put down his chisel and picked up a torch when he realized his fondness for minerals and natural history was all encompassed in glass. Sinkus says: “Glass is geological. The material bit me hard in the late ‘90s and opened a future of infinite expression for my fascinations of the subterranean world. I constantly dream about finding objects beneath the surface of either the sea or the earth – the feeling of finding something exceptional and spirit engaging. Maybe that is what spending all this time in the studio is? Digging, searching, revealing important concepts from deep inside myself. Intentional forms should be both something to recognize and something to ponder or be awakened by.” Sinkus now works out of a 2400-square-foot studio in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It is entirely powered by a waterfall on the nearby Deerfield River and functions as a green energy studio. He uses flameworking, metal fuming/deposition, cold working (lapidary), welding, woodworking, laminating and casting techniques to manipulate the glass daily. “Minerals have always captivated me with their color, clarity, and infinite geometric permutations. Of all the images, objects and art I have seen, still it is these natural crystalline forms that strike me. They express something enormous that is otherwise almost impossible to voice. Akin to the felt language underlying a resonant piece of art, minerals speak precisely of their making. They require no interpretation. I am fascinated by the sheer fact of their existence and circumstantial nature of their variety. Human participation was absent but nonetheless, I wanted to be part of it.” The opportunity to experiment with hot glass came in 1998 at a studio in central Massachusetts. The roaring furnaces, smell of burning bees wax and graceful movements impacted Sinkus. He admired the team aspect of glass blowing but needed a more independent approach to satisfy his ambition. In 1998, he began flameworking borosilicate glass as an obtainable approach to working glass on his own. He studied with Milon Townsend, Sally Prasch and Emilio Santini as he developed a body of work inspired by scuba diving, ocean conservation and ocean arts and evolved into a professional working artist. In 2015, Sinkus began his journey in cast glass, studying with Daniel Clayman. This allowed him to apply the techniques necessary to make more authentic and precise mineral designs and increase the scale of his designs. The use of familiar tools and techniques for working stone from his gem cutting years connected him to glass sculpting. Sinkus says: “These tools allow me to venture into the deep process and experience of what made the mineral world so appealing to me creatively. Cast glass has taught me patience and channels a version of a 100,000,000 year geological process. This body of work gives me human participation in a form that would otherwise only be a geological event. My geological designs have reconnected me to the gem and mineral world. Though realistic, they are seen as art. In the art world they are seen as contemporary.” In 2025, Sinkus will have an exhibit of his recent works at the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and launch his new designs at a couple of U.S. galleries. He’s also designing a class that combines casting, flameworking, coldworking, surfacing and adhesives in the creation of glass art sculpture.

From his Micromorphisms to his Opticals and Pinwheels, Dan Alexander explores the mesmerizing world of optical illusions, where intricate designs and mind-bending patterns come to life in stunning glass artistry. From captivating sculptures to breathtaking installations, each piece in this collection is a testament to his artistry and craftsmanship. Much of Alexander’s inspiration comes from photographs he has taken or his travels. Looking at one micro-aspect of an object, he envisions how that small segment could be used in repetition to create an overall pattern. An example would be looking at one single coral in the ocean and repeating its colors and shape over and over again to make a large glass tile. By rolling that glass tile up hot around a glass bubble or collar, he makes a large vessel. The artist uses the blown glass process to create a three-dimensional canvas on which his murrine and patterns can be displayed. Says Alexander: “The work I am currently exploring is inspired by nature, textiles, travel, and architecture – more specifically patterns therein. Being an artist and world traveler, I look at the world around me and try to determine how it could be translated to glass.” Having grown up in a small farming town in northeast Ohio, Alexander has always been interested in art, history, nature, and creating. Upon seeing glass being made for the first time at Hale Farm and Village, Bath, Ohio, he knew this was a trade he had to master. He received his BFA in glass from Kent State University, where he was able to explore glass as an artistic medium while being introduced to working with other materials, history, color theory, and composition. Following graduation, Alexander studied with some of the top glass artists in the field today and worked in Murano, Italy, with Maestro Davide Salvadore creating large scale blown glass art. Later, he worked for the Corning Museum of Glass as lead gaffer, where he spent six years traveling the world and educating the public about the science and history of glass art. Eventually Alexander decided to take on a new role as the studio director of Third Degree glass factory, St. Louis, Missouri, producing higher volume work, site specific installations, and overseeing studio operations and glass production. In 2016, Alexander began to branch out and create a name for himself as an independent artist. In recent years he was awarded an emerging artist residency at Duncan McClellan’s Gallery in St. Petersburg Florida, the AACG professional artist residency at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Empire of Glass exhibition/residency in Vienna, Austria. He was nominated for the Glass Art Society’s Saxe Emerging Artist Award and received an international exhibiting artist award from the Effect, Dream, Transform exhibition in Uskudar, Turkiye. Alexander is currently building a private studio and 501C3 nonprofit in St. Petersburg, Florida, called Art, Education, Gathering Inc. or AEG. Its tagline is: From Glass to Growth – Building Communities Together. AEG will offer community outreach, using glass as a form of STEM education, residencies, mentorships, classes and an emergency program for artists affected by disaster. Says Alexander: “Education is an extremely important aspect. If the public wasn’t interested in art, many mediums would suffer. The more knowledge we can share with the public, the more sales, donations, and funding will be put into the arts.”

In her summer 2024 exhibition Trial By Fire at Core Art Space, Lakewood, Colorado, Maria Sheets exhibited a series of colorful, sculpturally dense, illuminated glass panels of portraits and landscapes created in a unique process that combines the mediums of traditional stained glass grisaille/enameling with fused glass “painting” known as Vitreonics. The technique was documented in Justin Monroe’s award-winning documentary Holy Frit. The movie traces artist/designer Tim Carey’s journey through making the world’s largest stained and fused glass window with the help of Italian glass maestro Narcissus Quagliata. Says Sheets: “Our family experienced a major loss in late 2023 that inspired a radical shift in what I was producing. In an attempt to address this swing of emotional intensity, I found I desperately needed to break some sh#t. Inspired by the project created in the new film Holy Frit, I began to learn Vitreonics. The process, particularly the intense smashing, layering, and heating of glass, gave me the change I needed. Vitreonics brought balance to my creative world and reminded me that though I can and do use my skills to make art that is highly technical, I can also relax into flexibility and levity.” With a conservation and glass studio located in Evergreen, Colorado, Sheets is a senior conservator of Foothills Art Conservation and a master glass designer, painter and fabricator. She was Chief Conservator of a fire recovery project with the Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas from 2005-2018. A partial list of additional clients includes the Ross Perot Collection, George Bush Family, Gerald Ford, Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Samurai Collection. She served as President of the Conservators Private Practice Group of the American Institute for Conservation and holds a Professional Associates status. Signed commissioned works in architectural glass include large-scale projects presently housed in museums, universities, houses of worship, businesses and private residences internationally. In 2021, Sheets designed and painted the Legacy Window for Tulsa’s Vernon AME in Greenwood, illustrating 120 years of the church’s history and survival from the Tulsa Race Massacre. Her own work was included in recent juried exhibitions such as American Glass Guild NOW 2016 (juror, contemporary artist Judith Schaechter), Texas National 2018 (juror Jed Perl, international art critic), and Materials Hard and Soft International Craft Exhibition 2019 (2nd place of 1100 entries). She is a resident artist for Valkarie Gallery in Lakewood, Colorado, where her work will be exhibited in a solo exhibition from November 13 through December 8, 2024. In 2022, Martin Faith, Scottish Stained Glass, Centennial, Colorado, approached Sheets with a project that involved reproducing an artist’s pieces made in the 1970s onto glass. Sheets explains: “He showed them to me, and I gasped, recognizing the work as Judy Chicago’s. I had read her early biographies while I was in college in the ‘90s. My feminist art teacher taught us about her work and the famous piece The Dinner Party, which congress was crucifying along with a number of artists trying to get funding through the National Endowment for the Arts. I even wrote her fan mail.” Sheets and Chicago met and spent several years working collaboratively in Chicago’s Belen, New Mexico studio. There they created complex airbrushed/masked pieces onto glass. These took five months of research and development as the technique/design would be some of the most unforgiving yet enlightening of Sheet’s life. Last year Chicago had a blockbuster show of the work at New Museum in New York accompanied by a four-page spread in the New York Times as well as an exhibition at Serpentine in London. Occupying a rare niche in the art world, Sheets was inspired by her great-uncle, a Russian Orthodox priest and iconographer to apply old-world art materials on stained glass to...

In 2021, the town of Nový Bor became the main organizer of the International Glass Symposium (IGS), and once again this small glassmaking town in the north of Bohemia will turn into a true world glassmaking metropolis for a few days. Each of the previous symposia was unique, and this year’s jubilee will be no different. Place and material are the unchanging basis of the tradition, but glassmaking and art are a living, leading and original phenomenon reflecting the times. This year’s IGS will take place on a much larger scale than previous years. The number of organizers and participants increased, and IGS strengthened its global prestige. Despite all the changes that glassmaking has gone through and that have also affected IGS, Nový Bor region remains an exceptional area with its range of glass processing technologies, from machine production, off-hand blown glass at glassworks to an extremely wide range of refining techniques. The beginning of the IGS dates back to 1982 when Crystalex in Nový Bor managed something almost impossible. The idea of an international meeting of glassmakers in totalitarian Czechoslovakia became reality. Crystalex invited artists and designers from all over the world to its workshops. Nearly 50 artists from 13 countries came to realize their artistic ideas with the help of the local glassmakers. More than 300 exhibits were created. Thirty-nine years later, the program structure and the basic idea of the symposium still follow the tradition founded by Crystalex. Many artists also return to Nový Bor regularly. However, the symposium has changed with the time as well. The visit of artists from the “West” is no longer considered exotic and thanks to IGS it’s possible to show the world that Czech glassmakers have not lost any of their famous craftsmanship. IGS has become one of the most important international events in the art glass field and during its existence it has hosted about 600 artists from all over the world. To make the symposium attractive for the public, not only glass artists are invited to participate, but designers, painters, sculptors, architects, personalities from among fashion and jewelry designers, street art and pop culture, which turns every IGS into a four-day art experience marathon. The world is being introduced to Nový Bor, Liberec Region and the Czech Republic as a significant glass destination. The event has an enormous significance for the local glass region, for promotion of Czech glass and Czech glassmaking craft in the world. It contributes to preserving intangible cultural inheritance, and finally, it serves an important function for collectors. The 15th edition of the International Glass Symposium (IGS) will take place from October 3 to 6, 2024 in Nový Bor in North Bohemia and its surrounding area. Preparations have been underway since spring to ensure the participation of more than 40 selected artists or creative pairs from 15 countries around the world. They will create their works of art in collaboration with top glass craftsmen of various professions, whether they are master glass blowers, grinders, engravers, or glass painters, but also experts in the field of slumped or melt glass and other techniques. Several glass companies and specialized workshops and operations will be available to them, including Ajeto. Petr Novotný (1952-2024) enters the Hall of Fame of the International Glass Symposium next week, https://www.igsymposium.cz/aktuality-en In celebration of IGS 2024, ToYG speaks with David Ševčík, the director of Glassworks Ajeto as well as Ricardo Hoineff, who moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1991. In 2010 at the age of 41, Hoineff decided to take a two-week glass course that turned into three years of creation and production of art glass at the Higher Vocational School of Glassmaking Nový Bor. He is still kiln forming art glass in Slunečná, North Bohemia.

Gene Koss uses glass as a medium of pure sculptural expression resulting in monumental sculptures of cast glass, steel and light. He developed innovative techniques to transform his memories of the mechanized Wisconsin farm of his youth into foundry-based glass sculptures. He combines glass and steel found objects to create small-scale sculptures that often also serve as studies for his larger-scale works. Opening on September 20, 2024 and running through February 9, 2025, The Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass (BMM), Neenah, Wisconsin, presents a major solo exhibition of Koss’ work: From Farm to Flame. Says Casey Eichhorn, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at BMM: “Gene Koss’ career in glass has been one informed by experience, and driven by creative experimentation. Alongside two of his sketchbooks, Farm to Flame showcases the tangible results of these experiments in the form of 14 sculptures of glass, steel and wood – each highlighting a specific point in time in the artist’s illustrious career.” After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls in 1974, Koss then earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia. In 1976, he moved to New Orleans to develop a new glass facility and program for Tulane University, and subsequently became head of the department. “Gene’s career at Tulane University helped shape the Newcomb Art Department, and he is a pivotal figure in the teaching and creation of glass art in the South,” said Stephanie Porras, chair of the Newcomb Art Department. Koss is the recipient of several awards including the National Endowment for the Arts, The New Orleans Community Arts Board and Pace-Willson Art Foundation grants. His work has been exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans; the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana; the Sculpture Center in New York City; as well as the International Biennale for Contemporary Art in Florence, Italy. It has been published in International Glass Art, Contemporary Glass-Color, Light & Form and Glass Art from Urban Glass publications. Koss is represented by Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, LA. His work is in many prominent collections including the Pan American Life Collection in New Orleans and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. The Arnoldsche Art Publishers of Germany released a 2019 retrospective monograph of his work, Gene Koss Sculpture. Creating Koss’ majestic works in glass and steel requires demanding techniques to realize their monumental scale. These massive volumes of glass are married with elaborately engineered steel elements. The artist casts molten glass directly from the hot furnace, working with teams of highly-skilled assistants and rigging elaborate systems for transporting his finished abstract works for display in museums, galleries and public spaces. Working with serial cast glass parts to enlarge scale and combining these elements with iron and neon, he has raised glass sculpture to the realm of public art. Koss’ work has had a profound impact on American artists working in both steel and glass media.