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Tim Tate photograph by Tom Wolff
Tim works “off pipe” at Penland, NC
After a personal event sent him to Penland School of Craft for several months, Tim left the concept of technique driven vessels behind, and began his decade long passion for narrative, content driven sculpture. By working with content, Tim had found his voice. With this clarity of focus Tim sought to enhance the position of glass as a sculptural medium to the Washington, DC art scene. Tim’s first step: he founded the Washington Glass School.
Working with Erwin Timmers and a dedicated group of volunteers, they began by clearing space out of one of DC’s abandoned school buildings that was converted to artist studios. That task was a hard enough start, but after a summer of preparation of the studios, the school was challenged by situations outside if its control. The first class occurred just days after 9/11. Thinking the students would want to cancel after so disturbing an event, Tim called all the students – who unanimously asked for the class to go on. In frightening and unstable times, Tim discovered that people like to work through pressures by creating artwork. The glass school has sought to become the refuge for those seeking artwork as a way to help define and express themselves.
Tim advises a student about a casting technique.
Tim has worked at having the medium of glass evolve in the last decade; taking it from a technique driven vessel approach to the mixed media sculptural material it has become. His pioneering work at integrating contemporary electronics and video medias into traditional craft has brought much attention to his artwork. In 2009, National Public Radio (NPR) had segment about Tim’s work in their “All Tech Considered”
Click HERE to jump to the NPR segment “Tim Tate’s Hi-Tech Art”.
Tim has become an enthusiastic promoter of the medium, finding new ways to have artists of other media integrate glass into their works. He also works with other glass artists on collaborative works that takes both artists to new levels that they could not achieve on their own. Most notable are the series that Marc Petrovic and Tim Tate worked on together – the Apothecarium Moderne and the Seven Deadly Sins – which was recently featured in American Craft Magazine.
Tim has shown nationally and beyond, including exhibitions in the Museum of Arts and Design in New York; SOFA New York and Chicago; Art Basel Scope in Switzerland; Red Dot at Art Basel-Miami; the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian; the Renwick Gallery and commercial galleries from Washington, DC to London and Berlin.
Tim Tate & Marc Petrovic
Apothecarium Moderne
photo: Anything Photographic
His awards include “Rising Star ” from the American, the Virginia Groot Foundation Award for Sculpture, three Artists Fellowship awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Mayor’s Art Award. His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, the Mint Museum, the Fuller Museum, the Katzen Art Center of American University, the Milwaukee Art Museum and Vanderbilt University. Tim Tate was just awarded a Fulbright, and in 2012, he will be at the UK’s University of Sunderland and the National Glass Centre. He has an upcoming solo show at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Va.
Click HERE to jump to the Taubman’s website information on the museum’s solo show “Tim Tate: The Waking Dreams of Magdalena Molière”
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 – June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
For other glass artist profiles:
Diane Cabe
Sean Hennessey
Teddie Hathaway
Elizabeth Mears
Erwin Timmers
Michael Janis
Robert Kincheloe
Jackie Greeves
Jeff Zimmer
Allegra Marquart
Glass Sparks: Michael Janis
photograph by Tom Wolff
Michael Janis studied architecture at Mies van der Rohe’s IIT in his hometown of Chicago, IL. In 1993 he moved to Australia and there he worked on a number of large scale architecture projects, including work for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It was in Australia that Michael first started working with glass, designing walls of cast glass.
Moving back to the United States in 2003, glass artwork became his focus. Michael began glass blowing at a Baltimore hot shop and was soon taking glass courses at art centers such as Haystack Mountain in Maine, North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft, and Urban Glass in New York.
Michael at Penland School of Craft
Attracted to the experimental and adventurous approach to the medium that defined the Washington Glass School, he soon became involved with the school as the Studio Coordinator.
L-R Washington Glass Studio directors Erwin Timmers, Tim Tate, Michael Janis. From the 2006 American Style article “Filling Glass With Meaning“. Photo by Roger Foley.
In 2005, Michael became one of the Co-Directors of the Washington Glass School, and he is the Director of Public Art projects for the Washington Glass Studio.
“The Gravity Between Us” Hotel Palomar, Washington, DC
Public Art sculpture for Prince George’s County Circuit Court
Michael continues teaching at the Washington Glass School, and also has taught glass art workshops at Istanbul’s Glass Furnace, the Penland School of Craft and the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI) in California.
Michael teaching fused glass technique class at Washington Glass School, 2005
Michael Janis teaching at California’s Bay Area Glass Institute, 2010
His kilncast bas-relief glass and steel sculptures were featured in the seminal “Compelled By Content” exhibition at Bethesda, Maryland’s Fraser Gallery. In this show, artists that used glass with narrative content showed how the traditional craft of glass was evolving.
“Liar Paradox” Collection of Susan and Fred Sanders. Photo: Anything Photographic
Michael began incorporating imagery into his glass works, and by manipulating crushed glass powder he has been able to create intricate detail images within the glass, layering the images to emphasize the depth within.
Text and imagery work their way through Michael’s artwork panels, similar to an architect’s diagrams, suggesting elements of stories not fully disclosed. Michael’s work references the Surrealist artists of the early twentieth century and Neo-Dada concepts as seen in the work of artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell and Jasper Johns.
Click HERE to jump to a short documentary on Michael and his sgraffito frit powder technique.
From the catalog of the 2011 exhibit “Material World”:
“When viewers see images of Michael Janis’ work, they may not immediately recognize it as glass art…The virtuosity of Janis’ technique supports his imagery, which is often tinged with a nostalgia for days where innocence reigned and magic seemed possible. Janis is not simply naïve, for there is a darker undercurrent to these works that speaks to the loss of this sense of wonder.” Stephen Boocks curator, April 2011
Maurine Littleton Gallery space, SOFA Chicago 2009
In 2007, Maurine Littleton Gallery began exhibiting his glass artwork at international art shows such as Art Miami, SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York. Currently, his work is on exhibit at the Flemish Center for Contemporary Glass Art in Lommel, Belgium.
In 2009 he was awarded Florida’s “Emerging Artist” award by the Florida Glass Art Alliance, in 2010, he received the Saxe Fellowship from California’s Bay Area Glass Institute. This year, Janis will be named a “Rising Star” by the Creative Glass Center of America and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass at the biannual glass art conference held at the Museum of American Glass at WheatonArts, in New Jersey.
The Memory of Orchids, 2011
His first museum solo show will open this year (August 6 thru November 6, 2011) at the Fuller Museum of Craft, in Brockton, Massachusetts. Michael Janis also was just awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, and will be at the UK’s University of Sunderland and National Glass Center in 2012.
Detail from “In the Evening Twilight”
Michael will be one of the featured artists in Long View Gallery’s exhibition of Artists of the Washington Glass School:
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC May 19 – June 19,2011
Artist Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
For other Washington Glass School artist profiles:
Glass Sparks: Robert Wyckliffe Kincheloe
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Glass artist Robert Wyckliffe Kincheloe is focused on blending a variety of techniques to create sculptural works in glass. Rob has studied all forms of glass including scientific flameworking, sculptural flameworking, fusing, kiln-casting, glass blowing, hot casting, cold-working, and the blending of techniques for sculptural assembly. His focus is flameworked and cold-worked borosilicate glass and he has been pioneering the use of kiln-casting borosilicate glass for use in flameworking.
Robert Kincheloe demo at Penland School of Crafts 2011
Robert has studied and taught glass techniques at many centers, including Virginia Tech Scientific Glass Lab, Penland School of Crafts, the Carslisle School of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, and The Bullseye Research Lab. For several years, Rob has been part of the technical staff involved with the International Society of Glass Beadmakers annual Gathering. He was selected as a Glass Craft Emerging Artist for spring 2010 in The Flow Magazine. Robert was also been published in the spring 2011 edition of The Flow magazine for his techniques on incorporation of kiln-casting of Borosilicate components in Flameworked Sculptures. He has another tutorial on cold-working techniques coming out in the summer 2011 edition of The Flow Magazine.He has been the Studio Coordinator and a Resident Artist at the Washington Glass School for the last year.
Robert heads up the flameworking program at the Washington Glass School, where he is adding new levels of glass instruction and working at crossing over techniques to those already offered at WGS.
Robert Kincheloe Tree of Life, 2010
Robert Kincheloe Holding onto Possibilities, 2010
“Holding onto Possibilities” was made for the The Flow Magazine’s Spring 2011 Tutorial: Flameworking with Kiln-cast Borosilicate Glass.
Robert Kincheloe Shine On Your Love Light, 2011
Kiln-cast glass, Steel, and LED lighting.
Robert actively teaches and promotes the progress of glass arts as a creative medium. This summer Rob will be teaching and presenting at the 2011 ISGB Gathering in Louisville, KY. He will be assisting Elizabeth Ryland Mears at the Pittsburgh Glass Center for her summer flameworking intensive. Robert will also be presenting cold-working techniques for flameworking at the Art Glass Invitational in Hilliards, PA.
Click HERE to jump to Robert Kincheloe’s website.
Robert will be one of the featured artists at Longview Gallery ‘s exhibition in honor of Washington Glass School’s 10 year anniversary: Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 – June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
For other glass artist profiles:
Glass Sparks: Diane Cabe
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Moving into the Capitol Hill/Half Street campus – circa 2003.
Diane Cabe was one of the Washington Glass School’s first Resident Artists – helping set up the main classroom in 2003 at the Half Street, DC location. Her glass studies included courses at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, where she studied with Lucartha Kohler, author of Glass: An Artist’s Medium. She was a Bullseye E-merge Finalist in 2004 and has exhibited at many area fine art galleries including the Fraser Gallery ,Target Gallery, VisArts Gallery, and the Glenview Mansion. Diane’s work was part of the seminal “Compelled by Content” exhibition of narrative glass held in 2005.
Diane’s glass portfolio comprises both sculptural and functional pieces. She is a resident artist with the Art Glass Center at Glen Echo, where she now teaches casting and other forms of kilnformed glass.
Diane’s cast glass purses are meant to evoke the bags, purses, satchels, backpacks that would sit with her wherever she would travel, holding her life. Diane sees the bags as how one holds treasured objects, secrets and the important items that define one’s life, paradoxically rendering them in beautiful translucent glass.
Some of Diane’s recent works expands on exploring items from the domestic life; La Bella Figura is about personal memories, reflections, sensations. Diane said of the work that it …”is a tribute to my genetic inheritance that has compelled me to find beauty in mundane objects”…
La Bella Figura
Glass, Wood, Copper, Mica
DC’s Longview Gallery juried invitational exhibition showcasing the people and work of the artists of the Washington Glass School. The show opens in May.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 – June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Click HERE to jump to Diane’s artwork website.
For other glass artist profiles:
Glass Sparks: Sean Hennessey
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The Measure of Value
He began his relationship with the Washington Glass School by teaching mold making and concrete casting and assisting various classes. Slowly and steadily Sean began including more and more glass into his mixed media sculptures. By 2010 Sean focused primarily in glass and became a resident artist at the Washington Glass School. His current work uses a combination of glass, concrete, found objects, and steel to create works based on mythologies, philosophy, personal experiences, and whimsy. |
We Share What We Have
Glass, Concrete, Steel
24″x13″
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| A Dream of Flying Glass, Concrete, and Steel 24×13 Sean creates pieces that have the feel of archaeological finds, as if messages from today have been uncovered in some not too distant future. The earthiness of the concrete in his pieces suggests age and patina, slightly covering and obscuring his glass reliefs. He equates the glass with ethereality and the concrete as a corporeal coating. His work touches on issues of overcoming in everyday life–judging yourself and being judged by others, finding and maintaining inspiration, and dealing with dreams and hopes than conflict with our reality.
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| Ghost Light Glass, Concrete, Steel 43″x13″ Sean uses the Dry Plaster Relief Casting technique in his work. He sets up boxes inside the kiln, fills the box with sifted plaster power, makes impressions in the plaster, places sheets of float glass on top of the box and fires the glass to slump into the mold.
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Example of a Mold used for Dry Plaster Relief Casting Once the glass is removed from the kiln, Sean uses special primers and polymers to add a coating of cement to the surface. |
Glass castings fresh out of the kiln.
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| Adding layers of concrete to the glass
But it’s not done yet! Apparently Sean loves adding many complicated processes into each piece! He then goes on to stain, sand, and distress the concrete, adding to the sense of age and antiquity. Sometimes he will paint the back of the glass using translucent coatings to allow light to come through. He then welds up steel frames to finish off his work.
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Finding Your Power
Glass, Concrete, Steel 42″x13″
Sean will be one of the artists exhibiting at DC’s Longview Gallery juried invitational exhibition showcasing the people and work of the artists of the Washington Glass School. The show opens in May.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 – June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Click HERE to jump to Sean’s artwork website.
For other glass artist profiles:
Glass Sparks: Jackie Greeves
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15″ x 19 1/2″ x 1/2″
In the past thirty years, Jackie Greeves has evolved from being a nationally recognized studio potter, an enamelist whose work was exhibited both nationally and internationally, and an award winning glass artist. What has remained consistent has been the artist reaching for the emotional presentation of themes from her early training in Japan.
Quand Je Pense
Glass, .999 silver foil, .999 silver wire, copper wire, copper electroformed
perimeter
14 1/2″ x 14″ x 1/2″
In the 1960’s, she received a degree in Biology and Chemistry and worked as a bacteriologist for the Food and Drug Administration. In the early ‘70’s she spent three years studying ceramics in Tokyo, Japan with master Yamagami Norikazu. During her time as a ceramicist, she was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant for her work in clay and was a frequent exhibitor in both the Philadelphia Craft Show and the Smithsonian Craft Show.
During the 1980’s, Jackie also served as advisor for the Mayor’s Committee on Art and Culture in Baltimore, Maryland; as exhibit director of the Tomlinson Craft Collection in Baltimore; and as assistant to the Dean, Maryland College of Art and Design in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In the 1990’s, Jackie began metalsmithing and enameling at Montgomery College, where she is presently an adjunct professor in the art department.
From the 2000’s until present, Jackie has pursued the use of glass in combination with enamel and its techniques, is presently working in metal and glass creating small sculptures evoking a sense of depth and emotion. Jackie has taught courses on copper electroforming at the Washington Glass School over the years
Jackie will be one of the artists exhibiting at DC’s Longview Gallery juried invitational exhibition showcasing the people and work of the artists of the Washington Glass School.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
May 19 – June 19, Opening Reception, May 19th, 6:30-8:30 PM
Glass Sparks: Elizabeth Ryland Mears
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Elizabeth Ryland Mears is an amazing, award winning, studio glass artist that is a master with flameworked glass. Flameworking is a technique of working with hot glass. Rods or tubes of glass are held in the flame of a bench torch where the glass is softened and then shaped by sculpting and/or blowing. The forms created are limited only by the artist’s creativity and skill, in addition to gravity and the sizes of the bench torch and annealing kiln.
Elizabeth has studied and taught lampworking techniques at Penland School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio of Corning Museum of Glass, and has been involved with the Washington Glass School for many years. Her instructional book of borosilicate glass techniques “Flameworking“, was published in 2003 by LARK Books.
Elizabeth Mears Basket of Past Dreams and Future Fears
Each bundle represents some aspect of her inner world or the outer world, as she relates to it. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers also speaks of this relationship, “The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet”.
In her “Shelter” series the glass structure of the shelters serve as the protective shell for the work of her inner journey. Each shelter has a different theme.
Elizabeth Mears Shelter For Endings That Beget Beginnings
One such shelter created at a time of transition in Elizabeth’s creative life is entitled, “Shelter for Endings That Beget Beginnings”. The inner objects of this shelter are composed of hollow blown egg shapes which contain the charred remains of cedar wood shavings collected at Pilchuck Glass School from the 30th Anniversary Totem carved while she was at the summer session. The egg shapes can represent new life, and the charred remains, the death of the old life. Liz has commented that her time away at Pilchuck was instrumental in her personal transformation.
In 2002 Liz began a series, which started as a collaboration with her daughter L. Lindsey Mears, a maker of artist books and prints. Elizabeth created the glass sculpture, which later became “books” with her daugher providing the content through her photographs and poetry. Elizabeth is now the sole creator of the glass books, which contain the poetry that she writes. The photographic images chosen are symbols, which represent the experience of her poetry.
Elizabeth Mears Breath
A later series began after the death of Elizabeth’s mother in 2006. One day after that death Mears learned that her mother had been adopted as a newborn. She had never shared with any of her four children this secret she carried and no information exists about her birth family. Soon after this revelation, Liz learned many other family secrets, which prompted a continuing series of glass and mixed media pieces dealing with various aspects of the secrets we each consign to the dark recesses of our lives. In the process of making these pieces and contemplating secrets as a universal theme, Elizabeth looks at how the secrets of life often bind us together more than the parts of our lives which are shared openly. According to Campbell, “…the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life”. 
Elizabeth Mears Secrets They Sprout Up and Burst
Liz felt a strong connection to the comment by Joseph Campbell, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you”. She was struck by the similarity to a statement she has included in her own writings for many years.
In 2008, Mears was asked by LARK Books to be one of ten master artists to write a chapter for the book, The Penland Book of Glass. In her chapter, Elizabeth writes the following about her personal philosophy of living a creative life, “I am a proponent of the philosophy that when we are born, we come to Earth with a personality and a set of gifts, propensities, and abilities. If we pay attention to them, they lead us along a path to fulfillment. When those things we feel passionate about energize us, energy flows out and then returns to us, altered in some form by its journey. This energy creates a positive dynamic in all directions, reaching and influencing an ever enlarging circle”.
Through making her glass objects and meeting other makers and lovers of glass and sculpture, poetry and photography, the circle of energy continues to grow, and, as Campbell says, “doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be”.
Elizabeth Mears and Robert Kinchloe review glass projects at Washington Glass School.
Elizabeth will be one of the featured artists at Longview Gallery ‘s exhibition in honor of Washington Glass School’s 10 year anniversary. Click HERE to jump to Elizabeth Mears website.
Glass Sparks: Jeff Zimmer
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Washington Glass School alumn Jeff Zimmer had returned to the school for a visit in January. Now a resident of the UK, Jeff lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received a MDES in Glass & Architectural Glass, at the Edinburgh College of Art, (ECA), where he is now an instructor.
In the UK, Jeff has been making quite a name for his artwork – recently featured in the British Glass Biennale and shown in a collaboration between Contemporary Applied Arts & Contemporary Glass Society This year he will be exhibitng at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, in the UK .
Jeff’s work was selected to be part of the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review 31. Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass said of his work:
“… glass is not immediately apparent in Jeff Zimmer’s ‘1/1000th the Distance between Me and You (in a Deadrise)’, but it is an essential part of the work. A dark and dramatic object, it is constructed of 22 layers of enameled and sandblasted glass in a light box. In the obscured photograph, an object in the distance that emerges from black clouds under a clearing sky can be faintly discerned: is it a ship or something else? Using a box of cut glass sheets, Zimmer creates the depth and luminosity of a painting, but it is an image that undoubtedly changes every time it is viewed, depending on the angle and the ambient light.”
While at the Glass School, Jeff worked on a piece that will be shown at the WGS 10th Anniversary Exhibition to be held this May at Washington, DC’s Longview Gallery.
A strong narrative is created by meticulously layering imagery made from enameled and sandblasted glass.
Jeff constructs a box of glass for presentation, and installs LED lighting to illuminate the panels.
The box-like construction of each work creates an almost cinematic experience of space, volume and depth. One is drawn in by the emergent light from beneath the horizon or trailing into the distance like a wake.
Check out the final piece – titled “Fog Of Communication” at the 10th Anniversary Show!
Click HERE to jump to Jeff’s website.
For other glass artist profiles:
Glass Sparks: Teddie Hathaway
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Teddie Hathaway
As part of the Washington Glass School’s upcoming 10 year anniversary, the WGS Blog will have a series of stories – “Glass Sparks” – stories and profiles of the school and its artists. The first artist we will feature is Teddie Hathaway.
Teddie’s career as an artist traces her transition from a distinctly DC career path. Teddie had worked in and for the offices of Members of Congress, most recently as the finance administrator for seven different members handling the strategic budgeting for their official activities and the execution and monitoring of those budgets.
As a way of finding a new career path, she took inventory of her own skills and interests and plotted out her options to make sure she used the opportunity presented by retirement. Teddie took numerous classes – at the Washington Glass School and at other glass education centers and studios – affording her explore to as many approaches and techniques as possible in her newfound medium – glass. Focusing on recycled glass, which she sometimes removes from old window frames and collects from demolition sites, Teddie works at changing industrial components into things of beauty that speak to her of form, rhythm, texture and heft.
Teddie working hot glass at DC Glass Works Studio
Teddie exhibited recently in a juried show in Sequim, Washington, as part of an international glass festival. Teddie also has work in a group exhibit here in the DMV area, as the Weisser Glass Gallery’s show: “Excavate – Unearthing The Artist” which opens this Sunday, Nov 21st.
EXCAVATE – Unearthing The Artist
November 21st – December 12th
Weisser Gallery, 4080-B Howard Ave, Kensington, MD 20895