The January / February 2024 issue of Glass Art Magazine has a spread all about WGS Co-Founder and Co-Director Tim Tate. Artist & Author Sara Sally LaGrand writes about Tim’s story and how he has put his life experiences and feelings into his art. The article covers his history and how his artwork includes aspects of not only his life as a gay artist, but as a vehicle to promote the ideation of a more inclusive world.
The Glass Art Magazine issue also covers Tim’s recent collaboration with artist Joyce Scott, making a 6’H x 9’W wall sculpture titled “NOW” that incorporated themes of Racial Equality, Woman’s Rights and LGTBQIA+ issues that our world struggles to come to terms with.
Some photos from the last night’s talk at DC’s Hillwood Museum – ‘A Conversation with Joyce J. Scott and Tim Tate’.
Artists Joyce J. Scott and Tim Tate had an engaging and insightful conversation moderated by Wilfried Zeisler, chief curator and deputy director of Hillwood.
Joyce and Tim talked about their artistic practices and inspiration for their work, including the stories and process behind “Him” by Scott and A Century of Longing by Tate, both featured in the current Glass: Art. Beauty. Design. exhibition. https://hillwoodmuseum.org/exhibitions/glass
Joyce and Tim talked about their current projects, including the process of working collaboratively on a monumental glass project.
Glass: Art. Beauty. Design. is on display thru January 14, 2024
If you are anywhere near Asheville next week, think about stopping by and joining glass artist Deborah Czeresko, winner of the reality competition series Blown Away, and Tim Tate, artist and Director of the Washington Glass School, for an exciting conversation exploring both artists’ long history of using glass sculpture to highlight LGTBQ rights. Both artists will share images of earlier pieces while discussing their artistic journeys, work, and the art world. Thursday, Oct. 5, 5:30 – 6:30
Now that Joyce Scott’s 50-year retrospective has been announced, we can share this image of the Dr Joyce Scott/Tim Tate collaborative mural that has been in creation for over 6 months! What a joy to get to work with this huge icon of contemporary art and MacArthur Fellow!
Titled “NOW” the work measures 9ft W x 6ft H and the mixed media, cast glass wall focuses on topics around racial inequality, women’s rights and LGTBQ+ issues.
Said Tim about the work – “This is a once in a lifetime project, and I couldn’t be prouder of any piece I have ever made.”
The artwork is available at Goya Contemporary in Baltimore and will be on display there in Sept or Oct. (Check with gallery).
Saturday, July 22nd, from 10:30 am til 11:30 am – join Queer Glass Artist and Co-Director of the Washington Glass School, Tim Tate as he talks about his art work and his upcoming “Utopian Queer Futurism” exhibit on Art Clinic Online. The episode will be hosted by Jamianne Jacobim, Executive Director of the James Renwick Alliance.
Want more?! Watch ACO presentation of Eco-artist and WGS’s Co-Founder Erwin Timmers work and inspirations on youtube. Click on image below:
All of us at the Washington Glass School & Studio Wish You and Family a Joyous Holiday Season! And a Happy Healthy New Year!
(L-R) Patricia De Poel Wilberg, Erwin Timmers, Christina Helowicz, Nancy Kronstadt, Kate Barfield, Tim Tate, April Shelford, Michael Janis, Trish Kent and John Henderson. Not pictured: Graciela Granek, Sean Robinson, Diane Cabe, Gabrielle Morris, Kyle Crosby, and Daphne Matyas.
Miami’s Longest Running International Art Fair Art Miami and sister fair CONTEXT Art Miami featured artwork by many artists from the Washington Glass Studio.
On Tuesday, November 29, 2022, almost 20,000 guests came to the opening of the 10th edition of the sister fair to Art Miami. CONTEXT Art Miami is dedicated to the development and reinforcement of emerging and mid-career artists, and the vibrant contemporary and modern art fair was the natural setting for the works carried by Alida Anderson Art Projects (AAAP).
This year’s AAAP booth at CONTEXT Art Miami showed works by glass mixed media artwork by Christina Helowicz, Michael Janis, Tony Porto, Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers. It also featured mixed media works by J Jordan Bruns, Lenny Campello, and Steve Wanna.
Some Art Miami Highlights:
The artists at CONTEXT Art Miami raise their glass in toast! Salud! Amor! Dinero! Clockwise from left bottom: Steve Wanna, Erwin Timmers, Michael Janis, J Jordan Bruns, Christina Helowicz, Tony Porto, Lenny Campello, Joe Ivacic, Danny Marder.
Glass Sculptor and Artist Tim Tate looks back on 20 years of creating a community. He recently put together some of his observations on well, how did we get here?
“I had been raised in a household filled with craft materials. I rarely saw my mother’s hands empty, always creating something. I inherited this love. I spent my early adult years being trained in the methods revolving around studio glass while attending the 2 weeks to 2-month workshops of Penland, Pilchuck, Corning, Pittsburg, etc. (I had no money to attend grad school …though I yearned for Cranbrook). These years of varied workshops and practitioners was the perfect way to obtain a broad outlook on the entire field. We founded the Washington Glass School in 2001 with very specific goals. Let me see if I can make this clear.
1). We wanted to be something other than a traditional studio glass shop. From the beginning we realized we wanted a much broader approach; something that reflected the mission of education centers like the Crucible in Oakland and Penland in NC. We embraced mixed media work from the beginning with varied classes in kiln formed glass, steel, electronics, encaustics, etc. Our idea was not to in any way denigrate the rich history of studio glass, but to live just outside of those confines to see what would happen. To step slightly away from the 20th century.
2). As a gay man in glass, it was apparent that diversity was sorely lacking in every way in the glass world. So we did outreach and advertised our classes in many publications that went to diverse populations, rather than wait for these populations to approach us. This worked very well. Even now we go to the Facebook pages of different neighborhoods to show our class schedules.
With William Warmus we came up with the original concept of “Glass Secessionism”…to step slightly away from the recognized canon of 20th century glass and to create as much dialog and critical analysis as possible. There have been over 1.5 million words written and over thousands of images shared on this page focusing almost entirely on that theme.
4). We participated in many local shows here in the DC area, such as the spectacular Art-O-Matic show that truly put us on the map. We also curated many shows over the years to include local emerging artists. I have served on a dozen boards and juried dozens of shows and grant applications to stay in the loop and form a community bond. There are 3 Co-Directors here, all sharing a similar mission….to create a large regional, national and international community to foster new growth within our field.
5). Our first class was on Sept. 13, 2001…. a difficult day in history to start anything being right after 9/11. We thought no one would even attend the first classes. But we discovered something else….no one cancelled. It appeared that while the purchase of art slowed to a trickle around the country, the creation of art thrived. Our first class was filled with artists who wanted to make narrative work about the devastation of that event. From that moment on we embraced narrative work with all our hearts. Works about political events, social injustices and inequalities were common within our sculptural classes, and certainly in my own works. We have now been in operation over 20 years, with over 6000 students. 60% of those were and are women, we have a large population of BIPoC students and we have worked with hundreds of LGTBQ students. We are so very proud of this fact.
My purpose for serving on boards right now is to focus on the building of communities as an artistic practice. I want to take a slight step away from academia as these institutions can become elitist, and I want to be non-elitist as we have been from the beginning. I also like regional boards that focus in the mid-Atlantic.
My personal practice had been deeply imbedded in the world of glass galleries and museums, though frequently as an outsider. I have stepped away from this in the last few months. I have moved towards the fine art world once again, as I had started there. It feels great to go back to my roots, surrounded by a community that reaches far beyond anything we ever anticipated.” – Tim Tate, October, 2022
Toronto, Canada’s famed Sandra Ainsley Gallery present the narrative glass artworks by WGS Co-Directors Tim Tate and Michael Janis. The show, titled “One Story is Not Enough” featured works by each artist as a solo, and a number of their collaborative wall murals.
When Michael Janis and Tim Tate met, almost 20 years ago, they discovered a shared fascination of narrative sculpture- one that seeks to arrive at an image that is both unflinchingly candid in physical representation and psychologically evasive. Working together, they are interested in the simultaneous read of an immediately recognizable image that asks the viewer to linger over history and meanings that unfurl more slowly. Mark, line and material become an extension of touch in the act of representation. The relationship of hand to subject, negotiated through the material, can elicit a response of both visual and tactile.
With these confines they create work in many techniques, but if you stand slightly back and see their history a huge thread of interconnected stories weave through their work from day one. The beauty comes into focus and the viewer sees the edges of a world not dissimilar to this one, but so much more thoughtful.
They present this glimpse into that alternative world, seemingly unstuck in time somewhere between past and future.
Sandra Ainsley Gallery The Warehouse 100 Sunrise Avenue, Unit 150 Toronto, Ontario Canada M4A 1B3
Bill just returned from visiting Venice and can give us great insights into how glass is being used in art today by artists from around the world. He will also talk about Glasstress, a project by Adriano Berengo to further Berengo’s 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 and was founded as a collateral event of the Venice Biennale. This is the seventh edition of Glasstress, where Berengo Studios has brought together a group of leading contemporary artists from Europe, the United States, Latin America, Africa and China in an ambitious exhibition that explores the infinite creative possibilities of glass. The works are hosted inside the Berengo Art Space Foundation in Murano, an old abandoned furnace transformed a few years ago into a suggestive exhibition space.