| My
introduction to hot glass came as an undergraduate at Tyler School
of Art in Philadelphia in 1976. At that time I was studying ceramics
under Rudy Staffel and occasionally visited the glass studio.
On those visits I was fascinated by the manner in which the glassblowers
seemed to instantaneously produce a finished object. My experience
with making ceramics was that it involved a lengthy process to
achieve the finished object. Aside from being intrigued by the
immediateness of this liquid material I was captivated by the
technique. The fire, the heat and the sense of timing involved,
together with the fact that one could never actually touch the
molten glob at the end of the blowpipe, all appealed to me. I
immediately enrolled in a glass blowing course and tried to learn
as much as possible in the limited studio time available. Over
the next two years as my skills grew my emphasis shifted from
ceramics to glass.
During
my last years at Tyler I worked closely with sculptor Italo
Scanga who at that time was incorporating glass into his work.
Italo invited me to come to Seattle to be his student at the
Pilchuck Glass School the following summer. It was at Pilchuck
that I first met and worked with Dale Chihuly, Fritz Dreisback
and Venetian master glassblower Checco Ongaro. Having the opportunity
to work directly with professionals of that caliber served to
broadened my vision of the possibilities glass offered as a
medium. Indeed that summer at PiIchuck confirmed my desire to
work with hot glass, although having just graduated from art
school I was faced with the financial reality of being unable
to afford a glass studio of my own.
At
that time, in 1978, studios were very scarce and technically
I was still inexperienced, however I was determined to continue
blowing glass and within two months of returning from Pilchuck
obtained a position at Wheaton Village Glassworks in Millville,
New Jersey. As part of my contract at Wheaton Village I was
allowed unlimited access to the facilities at nights to produce
my own artwork. This experience allowed me to blow glass eight
hours a day in a well equipped studio and at the same time provided
me the freedom of expression needed to perfect my technique
and develop a style. Working on my own after hours my ideas
crystallized and I concentrated exclusively on blowing colorless
forms which I could later paint. By that time I had become proficient
at blowing a variety of forms and wanted to step away from the
furnace to decorate my pieces in a more painterly manner than
conventional colored hot glass applications allowed. The notion
of painting on glass seemed a natural progression for my work
given my background in ceramics and the use of glazes. One of
my first painted pieces was featured in the Corning New Glass
Review I in 1979.
During
the summer of 1979 I was given a scholarship to the Penland
School in North Carolina to study with Fritz Dreisbach whose
work I have always admired. In 1980 my stay at Wheaton Village
ended and I returned to Penland where I assisted Fritz on the
beginning of his Mongo series. Not having a glass shop to return
to Fritz advised me on building my own studio which I began
the following year in Baltimore. I am still indebted to him
for his encouragement during that period.
It
was at the New Glass Exhibition at the Corning Museum that I
first saw the work of Erwin Eisch and Ulrica Hydman-Vallien.
Those pieces were very inspiring to me not only because of their
extraordinary sophistication, but because they were the first
painted glass pieces executed by contemporary artists that I
had seen aside from my own. Eager to meet Ulrica I went back
to Pilchuck as a teaching assistant in 1981 and 1984 where I
worked with her and her husband Bertil, both Swedish artists
and glass designers for Kosta-Boda Glass. The Valliens have
been very supportive of my work ever since.
In
1981 I built my own glass studio and have run it steadily since
then. Although I had exhibited my work widely throughout the
U.S. it was not until 1987 that I was financially able to give
up my full time employment at a theatrical costume design company
in Baltimore and support myself entirely with my artwork.
During
the first ten years of my career, while producing painted pieces,
I also experimented with a wide range of hot glass techniques.
Among the projects completed during that period are the cast
and painted glass tile floor entitled American Transparency
which was exhibited in the Sculptural Glass show at the Tucson
Museum of Art in 1983, and blown pieces incorporating copper
foil, one of which was part of the American Glass show at the
Huntington Museum in 1985. Having discovered early in my career
what still intrigues me about glass, I always return to painting
on translucent glass forms despite having explored a variety
of techniques. What fascinates me about glass is its unique
relationship to light which gives it a free-floating quality.
I hope to emphasize the inherent characteristics of glass by
treating the blown forms as empty canvasses, layering their
surfaces with overlapping color and texture to create three
dimensional translucent paintings. I want my pieces to have
a handled quality and to be a record of my involvement with
them. Technical virtuosity and flawless execution are not my
concern, but rather the marriage of form and color with spontaneous
and expressive energy.
|
