Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally received news of their freedom — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The holiday stands as both a celebration of liberation and a reminder of the long, unfinished struggle for equality and justice.
This fused glass artwork by Michael Janis, created as part of his commemorative public art practice, reflects themes of freedom, resilience, memory, and connection. Flowing white and blue forms suggest the American flag in motion and transformation, while the central star references Texas, where emancipation news finally reached enslaved communities. Merged silhouettes of West Africa and the eastern United States speak to the enduring ties of the African diaspora and the histories carried across generations.
The vibrant red and orange panel evokes both celebration and struggle — the heat of transformation, the energy of gatherings filled with music, food, and storytelling, and the enduring spirit of community carried forward through time.
Through light, color, and glass, the work reflects on remembrance, resilience, and the continuing pursuit of freedom.
Jeff Zimmer, The Disconnect Between Action and Consequences (Drone 1)
As Washington Glass School celebrates its 25th anniversary, we find ourselves reflecting on the artists who passed through our studios and helped shape what this community has become. Some arrived as emerging makers searching for a new language in glass. Others helped define the adventurous spirit that has long distinguished the School. Few embody that journey more completely than Jeff Zimmer.
Before his work entered the collections of major museums and international exhibitions, Jeff Zimmer was one of the early artists working alongside Washington Glass School during its formative years. Originally trained in theatre in Washington, D.C., Zimmer brought with him a storyteller’s sensibility—an understanding of staging, atmosphere, and the emotional charge created by light, distance, and ambiguity.
That instinct eventually led him to glass.
Jeff Zimmer working in the WGS studio circa 2017.
Zimmer later earned a Master of Design degree in Glass & Architectural Glass from the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, developing a practice that has become internationally recognized for expanding the possibilities of glass painting. Today, his work can be found in prestigious collections including London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the European Museum for Modern Glass in Germany, and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.
We’re thrilled to welcome Jeff Zimmer back to WGS!
His return to Washington Glass School this summer is more than a visiting artist workshop. It is something of a homecoming.
Painting with Space
What makes Zimmer’s work extraordinary is not simply technical mastery—though there is plenty of that. It is the way he transforms the traditional language of glass painting into something cinematic and spatial.
Jeff Zimmer, Whitewash Cove
Working across multiple layers of glass, Zimmer fragments an image into separate planes. Individual sheets are painstakingly painted using vitreous enamels, kiln-fired repeatedly, etched, sandblasted, and aligned with meticulous precision. As viewers move around the finished work, the imagery shifts and reforms. Space itself becomes an active participant in the experience. The effect can be startling.
A figure appears and dissolves. Focus sharpens, then slips away. Light penetrates the layered surfaces only to be interrupted and redirected. The viewer becomes acutely aware that seeing is never neutral—that perception is always mediated through distance, memory, technology, desire, and expectation.
Glass does something painting cannot: it creates actual depth rather than the illusion of it. Zimmer exploits transparency, reflection, and layered space to produce works that exist somewhere between painting and sculpture, image and object. The result is profoundly human.
Beauty, Ambiguity, and Unease
Critics have often remarked on the emotional complexity of Zimmer’s work. It seduces viewers with technical virtuosity and luminous beauty while simultaneously unsettling them.
Jeff Zimmer, The Disconnect Between Action and Consequence (Drone V)
His images frequently hover at the edge of recognition. You cannot quite focus on their subjects. The eye searches for certainty but encounters atmosphere, suggestion, and instability instead. That longing to see clearly—and the frustration of being denied clarity—becomes part of the work itself.
Themes of power, morality, queer experience, surveillance, and historical erasure emerge through this haze.
Jeff Zimmer, You Shall Know Them By Their Deeds
In recent bodies of work, Zimmer has expanded his investigations through opaque black glass and laser engraving, exploring contemporary anxieties surrounding polarization, mediated violence, and the technologies that increasingly shape our understanding of reality.
He takes a medium historically associated with transcendence, devotion, and beauty and asks it to bear witness to more troubling truths. The seduction becomes the critique.
A Rare Opportunity
For students, opportunities to study with artists of this caliber are increasingly uncommon.
Zimmer’s own process is notoriously labor-intensive. A single pane may undergo four or five separate kiln firings. Layers are repeatedly refined, altered, and reassembled. Antique frames are transformed into illuminated environments. Transparency itself becomes material to sculpt.
Yet behind the sophistication of the finished works lies an approach grounded in experimentation and curiosity.
In his upcoming Washington Glass School workshop, Obscuring and Revealing / Hide and Seek, participants will explore layering, dimension, and the expressive potential of glass surfaces to create their own visual narratives. Through demonstrations and hands-on exploration, students will investigate how images can be concealed, fragmented, transformed, and ultimately revealed through the interplay of light and space.
For emerging artists, it offers access to techniques rarely taught in depth.
For established artists, it presents an opportunity to rethink how glass can function conceptually and physically.
And for Washington Glass School, it serves as a reminder of what twenty-five years of teaching has always been about: creating a place where experimentation is encouraged, boundaries are challenged, and artists return—not simply to teach technique, but to inspire new ways of seeing.
As we celebrate this milestone anniversary, welcoming Jeff Zimmer back into the studio feels especially meaningful. It reminds us that artistic communities are built over decades through shared knowledge, generosity, risk-taking, and the continual exchange of ideas.
Twenty-five years on, those conversations continue.
And this summer, they continue with Jeff Zimmer- learn more about his special class HERE –
Capture the essence of volume and space by exploring layering and dimension to achieve a variety of visual effects and meaning. You will create personal three-dimensional layered paintings on glass, using your own images and taking inspiration from the spaces around us. Exploit the transparency of glass and combine techniques and elements to create 3D images and collages with a real sense of depth and space. You will be coached in a range of glass painting techniques and get to know the brushes, mixing media and techniques that will enable you to realize your own ideas. Read about Jeff Zimmer in this fascinating online article about his work – click HERE
Continuing our successful seasonal wreaths series; this season is SUMMER! Celebrate summer with color, light, and creativity as you design your own fused glass wreath bursting with fresh energy. Think florals, soft palettes, bright pops of color, and playful textures—all brought to life in glass.
No experience? No problem. Patricia and April will guide you through selecting glass, arranging your design, and bringing it all together into a beautiful piece that captures the spirit of the season.
Design and assemble a unique landscape scene using colored glass to create your own forest, or garden. You’ll be guided in composition, and assembly techniques while exploring color, texture, and light.
Mounting the glass onto a lit base transforms it into a glowing display piece that highlights the beauty and depth of the glass.
This Memorial Day weekend, we reflect on sacrifice, memory, and the fragile humanity behind military service through the extraordinary work of artist and veteran Geoffrey Bowton.
Bowton’s acclaimed pâte de verre sculpture The Battlefield Cross transforms the familiar combat memorial — boots, rifle, helmet, and dog tags — into glass. Inspired by the battlefield crosses he assembled while serving in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, the work becomes both memorial and meditation: a powerful reminder of the cost of war and the vulnerability of human life.
Bowton’s work on display at Habatat Galleries, MI
“I built these in Afghanistan when someone died… (making this) defines unity. This always brings people together, no matter what is happening in their own world. When someone dies, we respond and memorialize those we love.”
Using kiln-cast glass frit packed into molds made from his own military gear, Geoffrey creates work that is technically masterful and deeply personal. The process itself serves as a way to navigate memory, service, and healing.
We are honored that Geoffrey also shares his generosity and expertise with our Hot Shop Heroes program, advising veterans in our classes through Zoom sessions and supporting artists working through their own stories and experiences.
Geoffrey Bowton at Habatat Galleries opening night April 2026
Recently awarded the prestigious Award of Excellence at the 2026 Habatat International Glass Invitational, The Battlefield Cross stands as both remarkable contemporary glass art and a moving tribute to those who served and sacrificed.
“I think when a vet sees another out in the world serving in their own new way, that they feel compelled to get going too. It seems like the biggest disconnect for someone post-service is finding new purpose.”
That spirit of continued service, mentorship, and creative purpose is part of what makes Geoffrey’s work — and his support of fellow veterans through the arts — so deeply meaningful.
The Language of Glass NCAGG’s Guild Member showat Bethesda’s Gallery B
This May, the National Capitol Art Glass Guild (NCAGG) Member show is proud to present The Language of Glass, a dynamic group exhibition including works by Washington Glass School Resident artists John Henderson, Kate Barfield, April Shelford, Patricia de Poel Wilberg, and Kate Wagner. Hosted at Gallery B, the exhibition runs from May 1 through May 24, 2026.
Glass is a material that speaks in paradox—at once fragile and resilient, transparent and opaque, ancient and contemporary. In this exhibition, each artist engages glass as a visual language, using its unique properties to explore narrative, form, and emotion. The result is a compelling conversation across approaches and perspectives, where technique and concept intertwine.
From sculptural explorations to richly layered wall works, The Language of Glass highlights the breadth of expression fostered here in this region, and the Washington Glass School community proud to be a part of. The artists bring distinct voices to the medium: whether through investigations of abstraction, personal narrative, or material process, each work reflects a deep engagement with glass as both subject and storyteller.
More than a group show, this exhibition is a vibrant showcase of the extraordinary glass art talent rooted in the DMV (DC–Maryland–Virginia) region. The Language of Glass reflects the depth, diversity, and vitality of artists working in glass across the area today.
This exhibition underscores the NCAGG’s commitment to advancing contemporary glass while celebrating the creative energy of its artists. Together, the works invite viewers to consider how glass communicates—through light, texture, color, and form—and how meaning is shaped in the space between transparency and reflection.
Washington Glass Studio was pleased to have its public art projects featured at the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals 2026 Annual Conference, held in The Palm Beaches from April 27–30, 2026.
Centered on the theme Artists Transforming Public Places, the conference explored the evolving role of public art through a wide range of perspectives — from artists and commissioning agencies to community stakeholders and developers. The annual gathering provides a platform for in-depth discussion on current trends, best practices, and key issues shaping the field, while also offering valuable opportunities for connection among arts professionals.
Washington Glass Studio Co-Director Erwin Timmers participated as a presenter (via video), highlighting the studio’s recent public art installations in West Palm Beach. His presentation focused on two major works created in collaboration with Palm Beach County:
A sculptural installation fronting the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Administrative Services
Guidepost, a site-specific illuminated glass and aluminum tower created as a placemaking element for the Palm Beach County Tourist Development Council offices near West Palm Beach International Airport
These projects demonstrate how material, light, and community-driven narratives can transform everyday civic environments into meaningful, visually dynamic public spaces.
The FAPAP conference also included its popular Year in Review, showcasing notable public art installations from across Florida, offering attendees a broad look at innovative work happening throughout the state.
Click link below to jump to online descriptions
Explore More
Click the links below to learn more about the featured projects and to watch the presentation by Erwin Timmers:
Guidepost – Palm Beach County Tourist Development Council
Guardian – Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Installation
On Monday night, March 16, 2026, a 40-year-old man caused approximately $240,000 in “catastrophic damage” to the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle.
According to the Seattle Police Department, the following occurred: Targeted Destruction: The suspect broke into a secure outdoor garden area and destroyed roughly 12 glass plant sculptures, each valued at about $20,000. Violent Confrontation: When confronted by security, the man allegedly threw glass shards at a guard and attempted to stab them multiple times with a broken piece of glass. Arrest and Charges: Police followed a trail of shattered glass to find the suspect, who remained combative during his arrest. He faces charges of first-degree burglary, second-degree assault, and first-degree malicious mischief. Museum Status: The damaged art has been removed, and museum officials stated they plan to replace the pieces in the coming weeks. The museum reopened for its regular hours the following morning.
The Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG) is a not-for-profit organization and leading resource for glass collectors, art enthusiasts, artists, gallerists, museum personnel, and educators on all things related to glass art. The AACG has coming up this Friday, March 6 on online zoom talk.
Collector’s Edge presents “The Thrill of the Hunt: Collecting in a Digital Age”, a conversation about how discovery, instinct, and decision-making shape contemporary collecting today.
Reserve your spot today! Free & Open to the public
• Sarah Traver, President and Director of Traver Gallery
• Charles Shepard, President & CEO of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art
• Jerry Paulson, AACG member and collector
• Ray Chimienti, AACG Board member and collector
• Moderator: Brit Micho; Curator, Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Collector’s Edge presents “The Thrill of the Hunt: Collecting in a Digital Age”, a conversation about how discovery, instinct, and decision-making shape contemporary collecting today. As more and more of the collecting journey unfolds through online access, how do collectors navigate that process and have confidence in their decisions, when work is not always viewed in person before a purchase?
AACG is bringing together a gallerist, museum director, established collector, and newer collector, to hold a dynamic panel discussion exploring how relationships, education, and trust come together to guide the collecting experience in an increasingly digital world.
Reserve your spot today! Free & Open to the public