Seattle based artist Martin Blank is known for a massive installation, “Fluent Steps,” that runs the entire length of the 210-foot plaza outside the Tacoma Museum of Glass.

Sonja Blomdahl has worked as an independent artist since 1983 when she built her own hot glass studio in Seattle, Washington.  

In 2014, Sonja completed and installed a glass commission at Westwood Middle School, in Spokane, is titled “Synergy”, which was part of the WA State Art in Public Places Program. The stunning eight window-panel piece, titled utilizes different types of glass; Sonja’s hand-blown rondellas, Fremont Antique Glass and prisms creating one large, intricately colored and textured composition.

Selected Public & Private Collections
Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, Little Rock, AR ~ Harborview Medical Center, Cultural Heritage Artwork Collection, 1% for Art, Seattle, WA ~ Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY ~ Everett Public Library, Everett, WA ~ Harborview Medical Center, Cultural Heritage Artwork Collection,Seattle, WA ~ Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, AL ~ Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, New York, NY ~ Museum of Decorative Art, Prague, Czechoslovakia ~ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA ~ Oregon Public Arts Commission (Salem Public Service Building), Salem OR ~ Port of Seattle, WA ~ Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI ~ Renwick Gallery, National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. ~ Seattle Arts Commission Portable Works Collection, Seattle, WA ~ United States Department of State: Art in Embassies Program ~ United States Department of State: Official Gift to Sweden 2001, Washington, D.C. ~ Washington State Arts Commission, Olympia, WA

Netherland based Peter Bremers uses a sculpting and casting technique to create large scale sculptures for interior an exterior spaces.

In 2003, William Carlson (b. 1950) received his MFA in 1976 from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1973. He was formerly a Professor of Art and head of the Crafts and Sculpture programs at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1976-2003. Throughout Bills academic career, he completed numerous major public commissions. 

 In 2003, Bill became the Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami. Currently he is an Endowed Professor at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami Carlson has significantly impacted the contemporary art glass movement as both an artist and an educator. In 1993 the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, Chicago, Illinois Academy of Fine Arts, nominated him for “Excellence in Glass Education”, Decorative Artist. The James Renwick Alliance, of the Smithsonian Institution of the National Galleries of American Art, awarded him the Distinguished Craft Education Award in 2004. Carlson’s most recent recognition is through the Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. As a documented artist in the Archives of Oral Art History Program and invited to the Archives Research Collections in Washington, DC. As a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Illinois Arts Council, he has participated in many one-person invitational and group exhibitions. He is widely published both nationally and internationally. His art is represented in numerous private and public collections. Following is a selected group of museums exhibiting his sculpture. William Carlson resides and has his studio in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

James Carpenter brings over 40 years of experience and a rare synthesis of skills to the intersection of art, engineering, and the built environment. Born in Washington and raised in New England, Carpenter graduated with a degree from Rhode Island School of Design in 1972. He was also a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He planned to study architecture at RISD but discovered the sculpture studio and the work of glass artist Dale Chihuly, then a teacher there. Chihuly and Carpenter collaborated on a series of neon-light sculptures, and Carpenter also went on to teach at RISD. Carpenter continued making light-based installations while also serving as a consultant at Corning Glass, where he developed new glass materials including photo-responsive glasses and glass ceramics for architectural applications. Carpenter’s art installations drew the attention of architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, who later commissioned him to create a foundational work for the Christian Theological Seminary chapel. In 1979, Carpenter established James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA), as cross-disciplinary firm working on large-scale art, architecture, and engineering projects. read more….

Daniel has been involved in the visual and performing arts since the mid 1970’s. His first formal training was as a theater and modern dance lighting designer. He began “sculpting with light” as a lighting design student and then as a visiting Lighting Designer for the Dance Department at Connecticut College in 1977. The year 1983 proved pivotal in his artistic career. After six years of working with numerous touring theater and dance companies, he enrolled in the Glass Program at the Rhode Island School of Design. Graduating with a BFA in Glass in June of 1986, Daniel made his home in the Providence, RI area where he has maintained a studio ever since.

I am in contact with my work everyday. Most days I come to the studio as the “working artist.” Other days I come as an observer, to see what the “artist” is doing. The work is a continual, always evolving exploration of simple forms.

Using a vocabulary of extremely simple forms whose scale ranges from three to nine feet, these objects describe volumes in space. Some of the pieces are easily identifiable as vessels and may allude to holding volumes of water. Others are pure abstraction holding only quantities of air and space. By taking away any real solid mass, I am left with just the skins of glass, bronze or graphite that define a measure of capacity. Other objects are identifiable as a ramp (“PLANE”) that divides space with a simple line or as a wheel (“CIRCULAR OBJECT ONE”) that makes the center volume of air as important as the white structure itself.

Dorothy Hafner received her BA from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, where she also completed her post-graduate studies.Trained as a painter and sculptor, Hafner first tried her hand at ceramics, both functional and sculptural in 1973. In the ensuing 15 years she created over 12 lines of tableware, both hand crafted and industrially produced, for such firms as Tiffany & Co. in NYC and Rosenthal in Germany. At the same time she also actively created one of a kind sculptural objects which were exhibited internationally. Museums owning these works include the American Craft Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Mint Museum of Art to name only a few.

 Building layer upon layer of transparent cutouts, she began fusing them together to produce single multi-layered transparent panels, each rich with overlays of her diaphanous imagery.

Hafner’s glass works are in many major collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, NYC, the Brooklyn Museum, NY, the Musee des Arts Decoritifs, Montreal, the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, the American Crafts Museum, NY, and the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach.

Scottish Artist and Designer Eric Hilton is a skilled master at working glass to convey the aesthetic and philosophical issues that confront artists. “Art for me is a vehicle that synthesizes order into the awe of existence. It is the vehicle for dance, music, poetry, literature and the visual arts. It represents the soul of human consciousness.”

Eric’s true passion is in the creative process in the molding, etching, cutting, sandblasting and the polishing of each work. His process is like painting, as he builds each piece gradually etching and cutting his detailed imagery and patterns over the whole surface. You can find the elements of life – earth, air, fire, and water in his work.  “I am influenced by nature from which infinite information can be gleaned.”   read more…

Steve Linn was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois with a BS in agriculture in 1965. As a sculptor, he worked primarily in wood and bronze until the early 1980s, when he added glass to his repertoire. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1992: “I like the danger, the possibility of risk glass poses. It challenges you.” Since 1993, he has maintained a studio in Claret, France. His work has been exhibited around the United States since 1969 and internationally since 1994, and was featured in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.” He has taught at Smith College in Massachusetts; University of California, Santa Cruz; Pratt Institute in New York; and Centre European Recherche & Formation Arts du Verre in France.

“I Dreamt I was a Model for George Segal”

I haven’t done a self-portrait in almost twenty years. When thinking about it, however, I did not want to do a piece specifically about me, so I put it in the context of posing for one of my earliest art heroes.

In the 1960’s when I was in college at the University of Illinois George Segal came and gave a lecture which made an enormous impression on me.  At the time although I was a student in the Agriculture school, my interests were in theatre design and sculpture.

During the talk I vividly remember a slide of a guy hanging letters on a marquee at a movie theatre, this sculpture “Cinema” from 1963 was a revelation because it bridged the gap, at least for me, between my two interests. From that time on my two biggest contemporary sculptural influences were Segal and Ed Keinholz. I went on to work in the theatre and television for the next ten years as a designer, master carpenter, and prop builder in order to earn money to continue to make sculpture.

My guide, as a young man, the stage set designer Robin Wagner who took me under his wing as his first assistant in 1965, gave me a very sage piece of advice. He said that the theatre was a group sport involving producers, directors, actors, and fellow designers (lighting and costumes) and that one had to bend their ideas as a set designer to mesh with everyone in order to make a production work.  I was always a hard head trying to assert my ideas and not being very willing to compromise. For that reason he advised me to stick to sculpture where I had full control. I am forever grateful.

We skip now to 1975, I am in Rome as a recipient of the Prix de Rome in sculpture. I get a call from the cultural attaché at the American Embassy. Would I be so kind as to accompany George Segal for a number of days while he worked on a series of “blue jean prints” My task was to help navigate Rome and to aid with the language. This was very exciting and definitely one of my fond memories. We do not often get to spend time with our heroes.

For the next twenty five years Segal continued to make his full body and bas-relief plaster bandage wrapped figurative sculptures often adding real objects to complete the scene. He passed away in 2000.”

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Albany Museum of Art, Albany, GA

Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

City of Pasadena, CA

Commune de Hauterives, France

Ile-Ife Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN

Long Beach Art Museum, Long Beach, CA

Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, FL

Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland

Museum of American Glass, Millville, NJ

Museum of Art and History, Anchorage, AK

National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY

National Liberty Museum, Philadelphia, PA

New York City Fire Museum, New York, NY

Verrerie Ouvrière d’Albi, Albi, France

Verrerie Ouvrière d’Albi, France

Color continues to inspire me. The recent sunrises and sunsets up on my knob (Kentucky small mountain or big hill) have been particularly brilliant and expressive because of frequent storms and, probably, global warming.

Working with my crew, not distracted by anything, being able to totally focus on the hot mass of molten glass on the end of the pipe, mesmerized by the pattern of murrine, this is what I want, time stands still or, at least, goes to slow motion. Working in the zone!

I was drawn to the process of glassblowing because of the immediacy and intensity.  I have always been something of a pyromaniac, as my background in ceramics was mostly involved with the raku firing.  I do have a love of fire.

SELECTED PERMANENT COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITIONS

Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VACincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OHCleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OHDetroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MIGrounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJH.E. Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani, Foreign Minister, Doha, QatarHaystack Mountain School, Deer Isle, MEHermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, RussiaHunter Museum of American Art,Chattanooga, TNHuntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, ALLamar Dodd Art Center, LaGrange, GALvov Art Institute, Lvov, UkraineMobile Museum of Fine Art, Mobile, ALMontgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, ALMontgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, ALMuskegon Museum of Art,Muskegon MIRacine Art Museum, Racine, WIRed May Glass Museum, Vishny Volochok, RussiaRegent Hotel, Le Plume, Hong KongSydney College of Art, Sydney, AustraliaThe Auckland Museum, Auckland, New ZealandThe Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New YorkWagga Wagga City Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga, AustraliaWustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI

Lino Tagliapietra’s career is defined by a dedication to workmanship, innovation, and collaboration. Born in 1934 on the renowned glass-blowing island of Murano, Italy, Tagliapietra began his apprenticeship at age 11 with Muranese master Archimede Seguso from whom Tagliapietra achieved the status of Maestro Vetraio by the age of 21. For over forty-two years, Lino worked in various for-profit Murano factories including Vetreria Galliano Ferro, Venini & Co., and finally as the Artistic and Technical Director of Effetre International (1976-1989). Tagliapietra has been an independent artist since 1989, exhibiting in museums around the globe, receiving countless honors, openly sharing his far-reaching knowledge of the medium and his skill as one of its finest practitioners, and helping to create a new renaissance in studio glassmaking. As James Yood, adjunct professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and regular contributor to GLASS magazine wrote, “there are probably no two words more respected and honored in the history of modern sculpture in glass than ‘Lino Tagliapietra’; he is the living bridge, the crucial link between the august history of Venetian glass and the ceaseless wonders of what today we call the modern Studio Glass Movement”, (to read more of this essay, refer to Dalle Mani del Maestro, Lino Tagliapietra.)

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