WGS Co-Director Erwin Timmers is interviewed by Vicki Schneider in the hot-off-the-press issue of Glass Art Magazine. Erwin talks about his unique technique and if he shares his intellectual property or if he guards his glass secrets. Read his interview in the March/April issue of Glass Art Magazine. Photos by Pete Duvall.
Save The Date! May 14th is the proposed date for Washington Glass School Open Studio Tour! Many of the surrounding art studios and galleries will be participating! We will follow health protocols – and it will be great to see all in real life! Come and see what’s new and what has been shaking at the studio!
Last year, as the Glass School blog noted, “Glasstress – Window to the Future” the internationally acclaimed joint venture exhibition by Russia’s State Hermitage Museum with Fondazione Berengo and Berengo Studio showcased artworks made with glass by contemporary artists with a grand opening at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
The exhibition catalog has been released – and on the cover is the cast glass work by WGS director Tim Tate! His cast glass sculpture, “Justinian’s Oculus ” is the show’s signature featured work.
Glasstress is a project by Adriano Berengo to further his mission to promote the use of glass in the world of contemporary art. The first Glasstress exhibition was launched in 2009 to establish a new platform for art made with glass. Founded as a Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale of Arts, although its roots will always remain in Murano it has gone on to tour the world.
The Allegany Arts Council Saville Gallery presents Washington Glass School Co- Director Erwin Timmers in a solo exhibition “Reflections in Glass” from February 5 thru February 26, 2022. Recycling, waste, the environment, and the ways in which all three relate to society are recurring themes in his work.
Said Timmers about his body of work on exhibit: “My work revolves around ideas of sustainable design and consumption in the urgent context of pressing societal changes and deepening global ecological concerns.
My artwork centers on the craft of design, combining modern and traditional fabrication techniques to develop new material-based knowledge and aesthetics of sustainability. My portfolio aims to spark specific kinds of awareness. “
“The objects I sculpt from recycled materials are moments of intersection and influence. As boundary objects, they play with conventions of form and function, material and method, production and consumption. I work less for the purposes of critique, but rather for the potential to generate open and inviting exchanges. An artist, successfully engaged in creative inquiry, notices, seeks out, or otherwise creates the conditions for novel convergence and the overlapping and dissolution of conventional boundaries.
I work at reinforcing metaphors of transformation and change. “
Timmers will also present a talk on how public art transforms communities. The event “Making Our Case For Public Art” is free and open to the public and all are invited to attend. The event will begin with a networking reception at 5:30PM with the program slated to kick off at 6:00PM.
The artists from the Washington Glass School are also on exhibit in a special show, featuring artworks by Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Patricia De Poel Wilberg, April Shelford, Vibha Bhatia and Clayton Lutu.
Timmers is Co-founder and Director of the Washington Glass School and one of the DC area’s leading ‘eco-artists’. Erwin is currently working with architects and designers on several “green” design projects. His work in sustainable design can be seen in some of the large public art projects he has completed, including an award-winning project for the US EPA Ariel Rios South Courtyard Green Infrastructure Project, in Washington, DC, and the public artwork for the LEED certified Safeway supermarket in Bethesda, MD. Montgomery County honored Erwin Timmers as the county’s “Outstanding Artist” in 2018. The Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington has recently acquired works by Timmers for its permanent collection.
Allegany Arts Council Saville Gallery
9 N. Centre Street
Cumberland, MD 21502
Reflections in Glass
February 5- 26, 2022
Making Our Case for Public Art
Friday, February 25, 2022 • 5:30PM – Cocktail Reception; 6:00PM – Program • Free to attend