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Washington Glass School 10th Anniversary Exhibit Artist Talk
Tim Tate describes Elizabeth Mears & Tex Forrest’s collaborative steel & glass sculpture “The Three“
Sean Hennessey describes his cast concrete & glass process.
Debra Ruzinsky talks about what inspired her in the concept for Sugar Bomb #3. This work is one of the Washington Post art critic Michael O’Sullivan’s favorites in the show.
Tim Tate discusses how printmaker Kirk Waldroff translates his print techniques into glass.
Allegra Marquart describes her sand carving technique, and how she integrates tack-fused elements in her narrative panels.
Erwin Timmers describes the lost-wax techniques he uses with recycled glass.
Michael Janis describes how Jeff Zimmer builds depth to his glass imagery.
Artist Cheryl Derricotte enjoyed talking of how her cast glass piece is part of the Arts in Hand project.
Artist Jackie Greeves describes how she avoids coldworking on her fused glass artwork panels.
Michael Janis speaks for kayaker Syl Mathis’s integration of cast recycled glass and steel into his boat series.
Tim Tate talks about the use of new media in glass.
The most delightful part of the talk was when the environmental themed work of Alison Sigethy was discussed. Alison was not able to be part of at the talk, and one of the audience jumped in wanting to talk on her behalf, as Alison’s work is one of her favorites.
The audience provided new insights to Alison Sigethy’s work.
Coming up – there is a Washington Glass School 10 Year Anniversary celebration that will be held at the Long View Gallery, Sunday, June 19, from 2-5 pm.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Artists Talk @ Long View Gallery
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Opening Night of Washington Glass School Exhibit
“Artists of the Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years” opened to huge crowds last week and a review of the artworks in the Washington Post has created tremendous interest.
This Sunday, June 5th, from 3-4, Long View Gallery presents an Artist’s Talk.
Want to know more about the work? Want to see the exhibit up-close with someone who knows what was that artist thinking? Want to gossip with the artists that made made the Washington Post art critic Michael O’Sullivan “feel like a monkey in front of a ball of shiny, shiny tin foil“?
Here’s your chance – come join us!
Long View Gallery’s Siobhan Gavan snuggling with Washington Glass School Director & Monkey Keeper Tim Tate.
“Artists Talk” @ Washington Glass School exhibition / Long View Gallery Washington, DC The exhibition runs through June 19, 2011.
Long View Gallery is located at 1234 9th Street, N.W., Washington, DC
202-232-4788. For more information: www.longviewgallery.com.
Gallery 555dc to Feature WGS Student Exhibition
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Jodi Walsh – owner of DC’s Gallery 555dc, visited the Washington Glass School to jury works by students for a new glass sculpture show that opens this Saturday, June 4, 2011.
The judging took place over the Memorial Day weekend.
Erin Antognoli’s glass and steel sculpture is reviewed.
All manner of glass sculpture are discussed by the jury.
Patrick Truby’s cast glass and forged steel work in the foreground.
Director Erwin Timmers points out some of the finer details.
Congratulations to all the artists selected for the show – it should be a great event!
Washington Glass School artists in the exhibit include: Patrick Truby, Graham Fox, Nancy Donnelly, Robert Kincheloe, Teddie Hathaway, Brenda Dean and Erin Antognoli.
The Washington Glass School 10th AnniversaryStudent Exhibit
Gallery 555dc
555 12th Street NW Lobby, Washington DC 20004
202-393-1409 or 240-447-6071
Gallery555dc.com
Exhibition Dates: June 1 – June 30, 2011.
The reception is Saturday, June 4th, 2011 – noon to 5pm; Artists present 3 – 5pm
The gallery will also feature paintings by Michele Cormier.
Washington Post asks "Is Glass Only Pretty?"
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Washington Post reviews Washington Glass School 10th Anniversary Show at Long View Gallery
The Washington Post newspaper arts critic Michael O’Sullivan has a lengthy review of the Long View Gallery 10th Anniversary exhibition : Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First 10 Years. Michael finds artworks that move him and question if contemporary art must be ugly – if only to be less superficial.
In his review of the retrospective show, Michael O’Sullivan writes: “On the one hand, glass is pretty. It’s hard not to like the way it looks: the luminous color, the way it plays with light. On the other hand, maybe glass is only pretty. How do we know that the beauty is also capable of brains? The rest of the show is proof that it is”…“For the artists of the Washington Glass School, the embrace of glass’s very materiality — in essence, its glassiness — is a tentative one. There are stories to be told, and glass is just one way to tell them.”…
Debra Ruzinsky Sugar Bomb #3
Jeff Zimmer “Fog Of Communication III” photo by anythingphoto.net
And of artist Jeff Zimmer’s work, Michael writes:
“One of the quietest, least assuming works in the show is “Fog of Communication III” by Jeff Zimmer. A moody, fog-bound landscape, it’s also mounted on a light box, and features multiple, sandwiched layers of sandblasted and enamelled glass to create something halfway between a vintage black-and-white photo and a 3D shoebox diorama. It isn’t especially pretty, or even eye-catching.
But it catches — and fires up — something else. And that’s the imagination. “
Click HERE to jump to the full Washington Post article.
The Washington Post also goes into the background story of one of the largest works in the show – “The Three” by Elizabeth Ryland Mears and William “Tex” Forrest.
Elizabeth Ryland Mears with William Forrest “The Three” photo by anythingphoto.net
Michael writes “But the vaguely anthropomorphic thing could just as easily be read as an allusion to another example of cinematic horticulture (not to mention a tribute to the strangely powerful influence of Janis, Tate and Timmers on the art-glass scene). To my eye, it looks like one of the pod plants from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
Click HERE to jump to the full Washington Post description of the Liz Mears / Tex Forrest work
Jennifer Lindstrom What is Home?
Click HERE to jump to the Washington Post’s photo gallery of some of the works in the show.
The WGS 10th anniversary show at Long View Gallery will be on exhibit until June 19, 2011.
Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D’Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy.
There is an artist talk on Sunday, June 05, from 3-4 pm. There is a 10 Year Anniversary celebration that will be held at the Long View Gallery, Sunday, June 19, from 2-5 pm.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Gallery 555 to Celebrate Washington Glass School’s 10 Anniversary
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“The Washington Glass School is known for its excellent student program and the quality of creative work its students produce. I wanted to celebrate their 10th anniversary by giving students an opportunity to exhibit their work in Gallery 555dc. Running and managing a school takes hard work, long hours and dedication – then more hard work. To celebrate a 10th Anniversary in the art world is a rare thing and a tribute to the founders and teachers of the Washington Glass School. ”
Jodi Walsh
Owner Gallery 555dc
Jodi Walsh
The gallery is at 555 12th Street NW Lobby, Washington DC 20004
202-393-1409 or 240-447-6071
Gallery555dc.com
The show is from June 1 – June 30, 2011. The reception is Saturday, June 4th, 2011 – noon to 5pm; Artists present 3 – 5pm.
Photos from 10 Year Anniversary Exhibit Opening Reception @ Long View Gallery
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Huge turnout at the opening of WGS’ anniversary show.
photos by Robert Wiener unless noted
The much anticipated Washington Glass School 10th Anniversary exhibition show opened on Thursday, May 19th. The gallery estimated that the crowd attending was over 400, and the opening event was a great success!
Elizabeth Ryland Mears and William “Tex” Forrest alongside their collaborative glass and steel work “The Three”
Text on the entry wall
Robert Wiener next to his work
Diane Cooper Cabe next to her glass, wood, copper & mica work “La Bella Figura” – photo by Michelle Delino.
Syl Mathis’ cast glass boats – photo by Michelle Delino.
Admiring the sculpture.
photo by Todd Wiggins
The WGS show at Long View Gallery will be on exhibit until June 19, 2011
There is a closing reception scheduled for Sunday, June 19, from 2-5 pm.
Washington Glass School: The First 10 Years
LongView Gallery
1234 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Glass Sparks: Tim Tate
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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
Gateway Open Studio Tour
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WHY?
To Get to Gateway Art District’s Open Studio Tour!
Cross the Eastern Ave Border and check out the Gateway Arts District Open Studio tour!
click on image to jump to Gateway Arts Map pdf
The 7th Annual Gateway Open Studio Tour
May 14th, 12-5pm in the Gateway Arts District. FREE!
Join the Washington Glass School and the other 70 Studios as they invite you to get “up close and personal”! Free shuttle bus transportation is available along the Route 1 / Rhode Island Avenue corridor to help get you to all the venues on the tour. Or … drive, walk, bike or skip your way along this self guided tour. Maps and more information is available at www.GatewayOpenStudios.com
Big Ideas @ Gateway Arts Center, 3901 Rhode Island Ave.
Check out what’s on sale and what’s shaking at the Washington Glass School, then pop in at the adjacent Flux Studios ; Red Dirt Studio and the other studios “On-the-Tracks”. Also – down the street, at the Gateway Arts Center – there is a great show – Big Ideas – that features work by Ellen Weiss, Susan Finsen and Sondra Arkin. They are having artists talks at 2 & 4 pm.
Be A Chicken & Cross The Road!
See you Saturday!
Open Studio Tour
Saturday, May 14, 2011
12 Noon til 5 PM
Washington Glass School
3700 Otis Street
Mount Rainier, MD 20712
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:
Washington Glass School – The First 10 Years
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The Washington DC area has become internationally renowned as an emerging center of glass art. At the forefront of this charge is the Washington Glass School, where the instructors, artists and students have brought narrative and content into glass, dragging it away from decorative craft and into the rarefied atmosphere of the contemporary fine art scene. The Washington Glass School has produced artists whose art can be found in museums and collections world-wide and is advancing the Studio Glass Movement with its explorations of narrative, technology and skills. This represents the largest and most important movement in the Washington art scene since the Color School of the 70’s/80’s. 
This May, the Washington Glass School celebrates a momentous milestone – its 10th year. DC’s Long View Gallery presents “Artists of the Washington Glass School – The First Ten Years” showcasing over 20 artists and 10 years of integrating glass into the contemporary art dialogue. While it recognizes the past and present, The First 10 Years is intended to instigate – and celebrate – the new directions contemporary glass is exploring through various artistic metaphors. 
Featured artists include: Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Erwin Timmers, Elizabeth Mears, Syl Mathis, Lea Topping, Robert Kincheloe, Alison Sigethy, Dave D’Orio, Anne Plant, Jeffery Zimmer, Teddie Hathaway, Jackie Greeves, Kirk Waldroff, Debra Ruzinsky, Tex Forrest, Diane Cabe, Robert Wiener, Nancy Donnelly, Sean Hennessey, Cheryl Derricotte, Jennifer Lindstrom, Michael Mangiafico, Allegra Marquart and m.l.duffy. 
In bringing The First 10 Years to Washington, DC, Long View asks artists and audience alike to cast aside traditional notions of glass art and participate in a new form of dialogue; one that looks to the future and not the past.
The Washington Glass School Movement has focused almost entirely on the narrative content aspects of glass, breaking away from the technique-driven vessel movement of the last millennium. By focusing on cross-over sculptural work, mixed media and new media (such as interactive electronics and video), the impact this movement has had on the work of contemporary art has been felt internationally. This is the perfect chance to see a cross section of artists who have led this evolution.
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 more information
http://www.longviewgallerydc.com/
email: info@longviewgallery.com
(202)232-4788