May 12 - June 25, 2006

A nationally juried show highlighting fine glass art being created in North America today. The show represents an overview of contemporary glass in its many forms: blown, fused, drawn, stained, etc. with a wide range of contemporary and traditional techniques that reinforce the unique properties of glass, such as its fragility, translucence, its color and clarity.

[click on thumbnails for larger view]

		John Bassett is interested in the richness of shape and texture of glass produced by slumping and fusing. His focus is on producing glass that can be shown on interior walls without requiring strong backlighting. He is interested in light, structure, line, texture, balance, and color in that order. Not flat, not round, his work might be called glass relief. He is happy in the rich, associative world of recycled glass and other found objects. His focus is on that most conventional quality of glass-its transparency.
		Scott Benefield's current work reflects an abiding fascination with mid-century Italian glass design, especially the work of such seminal figures as Archimedes Seguso. The process of creating pattern and adding visual textures through the use of various cane techniques is a constantly escalating technical challenge for Benefield. The application of those techniques, and the aim of intelligently innovating upon that basic knowledge, has been to use pattern and repetition in a vessel format to explore ideas of control and chaos in a graphic manner.
		As an artist who works mainly with kiln-formed glass Linda Cardell still finds herself delighted and sometimes amazed at what she finds when she finally gets to open the kiln. Needlepoint, ceramics, quilting and even oriental rug making have, no doubt, influenced her colorful glass work. She enjoys the diversity of glass and its ability to change given the way one views it in direct or indirect light, in daylight or in lamplight. Her work captures the, "amazing interplay between the light and the environment in which it (glass) is viewed."
		Joshua R. Cole uses traditional Venetian glass blowing techniques, making objects that romanticize the disposable and valueless. These ornate objects commemorate the overlooked moments in people's lives: the conversation at the water cooler, the fifteen minute coffee break, and the last minute dinner from the drive-thru. Cole is inspired by these seemingly mundane events that, "define the average American experience."
		Sally Eyring describes her work as a metaphor for life. Seemingly soft and smooth objects on one side, may be sharp and prickly on the other side. Sometimes you are invited to participate, invited to touch-only to be wounded for your efforts. As examined in her entry, Love me/Love me Not, time passes and life is experienced, little pieces are broken off and left behind in a cycle of constant change. The way people or things look today, will not be the same tomorrow because little pieces will be lost along the way.
		Lisa Feldman considers herself to be, primarily, a mixed media artist. In exploring this medium, she has learned to weld, work wood, make molds; blow, lamp work and kiln work glass; cast plasters, resins, and metals. It is glass that has captured her heart. She appreciates the versatility of this medium which can be blown, cast, fused, painted, silk-screened, draped. Her skills and appreciation for glass have been honed by studying with such glass artists as Rudi Gritsch, Rene Culler, and Shinichi and Kimiake Higuchi. She also remains influenced by such divergent artists as Paul Gauguin, Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder among many others.
		Richard Glenn has developed a reputation as the Pop artist of glass. His kiln-formed glass "photo-collages" uniquely combine elements of photography and printing with glass enameling and fusing. He studied and worked for the Pilchuck Glass School and Pratt Fine Arts in Seattle, before moving to Portland, Oregon in 2004. Recently he was featured in the touring museum exhibition: What's Pop? Pop Icons and Contemporary Neo-Pop Artists, in which he was the only artist working in glass. His two works featured in the Biennial, "Little Debbie Dreams" and "6 Mood Swings" feature iconic imagery that harkens back to Richard's childhood.
		As an artist for over thirty years, Margot Jacobson Gotoff was trained at L'Ecoles des Beaux Arts, Geneva, and received Masters' Degrees in sculpture from the University of Michigan and University of Cincinnati. She has cast a number of sculptures in cement, resin, and bronze and now primarily uses glass, a material that allows her to incorporate color and light into her work. These pieces, always molded in clay, are essentially figurative and composed in ways suggesting both the Classical sculpture she grew up with in Europe and more contemporary psychological insights. Her work is featured in public and private collections throughout the world.
		Timothy Hochstetter makes art, "to remind people where they came from and to imagine where they are going." As a self-proclaimed intuitive engineer specializing in the art of combination, Hochstetter's work responds to and explores the natural and technological worlds within which we live. He is inspired by the merging of evolving chrysalis, microscopic zooplankton and fragile shells with hot glass and inflated steel. This examination of elemental characteristics and personalities help to generate his ever-evolving work. In glass and metal, his passion for Nature is manifested.
		Abrea Johnson's creative patterns and flowing shapes exemplify the endless possibilities and freedom within the medium of glass. Using bold, bright, defining colors, Johnson characterizes her work as modern and confident. Creating contrast between bright colors and translucent glass, she produces a "window effect" with clean, definite lines. She designs strip plates, sometimes using more than a thousand tiny pieces of hand cut glass to create repetitive patterns. These ever-complex designs ensure that each viewer sees something different when they look upon her work.
		Lisa Koch began as a scientist. She earned her biochemistry and molecular biology degrees from the University of Wisconsin before fully pursuing her interests in the arts. After exploring a number of fields including graphic design, sculpture and glassworking, all while juggling her career in a biochemistry lab, she decided to pursue a more serious career in the arts at Alfred University where she refined and developed the ideas she currently works with. Lisa's work involves the use of both art and science. She looks to science to think about how time and space affect data as well as molecular interactions in our world, and expresses these ideas in visual art.
		Stephanie Maddalena has been lampworking since 1994 when a complete life overhaul led to a search for a new medium (she had previously been making collage jewelry).. A lampworking workshop with Kate Fowle-Meleney became a life altering event. Originally intended as an addition to her pins and necklaces, the beads became an obsession. As she became more and more involved in the beads she began to teach. Her fascination with "anything sculptural" and love of color and texture led her to create floral, wearable art pieces. Maddalena will be teaching at Guilford Art Center this year.
		Barbara J. Matteson, a previous participant and prize-winner in the Center's Biennial Exhibition, creates Gold-glass drawings in a manner similar to scratchboard artwork. She creates each drawing by removing gold foil from a base of colored glass. Fusing clear glass over this drawing helps to ensure it is preserved. Each piece is one-of-a-kind and crafted using a live model. Matteson's human forms are influenced by Greek drawings and Japanese wood block prints. The richness achieved by combining gold with opaque and transparent colored glass is a wonderful compliment to her figurative drawings.
		Carol Milne began her artistic career with an undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture. However, she soon discovered her passion for sculpture and since 2000, most of her work involves glass. Milne enjoys working in glass because she is, "obsessed with the intellectual and technical challenge of making objects that are carved on the inside as well as the outside." Her work has a self-proclaimed "underlying serious streak with a strong dose of social commentary." Milne's work is a parallel to her philosophy on life, "color outside the lines, bend the rules, and think outside the box."
		Karen Reid's inspiration lies with the simple, unpretentious and often over-looked elements that surround her life. A branch, whose surface has been patterned by insect activity, a broken pottery shard unearthed while gardening or the determined journey of a caterpillar as it works its' way across her porch, can easily become her muse. Reid attempts to manipulate less and observe more, striving to find a path exposed by the material and not forced by her hand. She delights in unexpected results and continually struggles to remain truthful to those discoveries.
		Darlene Durrwachter Rushing began working in glass in 1997, taking classes for several years at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PCA) from Milissa Montini, a nationally-known glass artist. Her education in glass has primarily been informal, taking advantage of week-long opportunities to study at Corning Museum of Glass, Touchstone Center for Crafts, and the Pittsburgh Glass Center with such glass luminaries as Stevi Belle (2004), Emilio Santini (2002), Sally Prasch (2002), Beth Williams (2001) and Loren Stump (1998). Rushing, a former public school teacher, has taught at Pittsburg Center for the Arts and the Pittsburg Glass Center among other schools. Teaching remains an important part of Rushing's growth as a glass artist.
		Brian F. Russell creates works that will live harmoniously in the world as independent functionaries of society. He draws inspiration from forms and rhythms in nature, ancient artifacts, mathematics and science, distilling these influences into abstract points of intersection. His aim on a public scale is to involve the viewer, to interject into the world points of beauty, interest and spontaneity. He wants people to use his sculpture as an excuse to mentally shift to another level of consciousness, above the daily hubbub, even for a moment, and to reconnect with themselves via that primal, emotional, cortex-controlled spasm of an encounter with an unexpected oasis in our modern chaotic visual desert.
		David A. Schnuckel's makings have always been rooted in the merging of his interests in glass objects of historical significance and the iconography and ideologies of popular culture. The body of illustrated cups he produces are but an echo of the ancient practice in ornamenting the surface of a vessel body with pictoral narrative. Schnuckel elaborates, "The motives for the ancient craftsperson of this particular procedure were to commemorate the significant moments that defined the shaping of their particular culture...and I suppose to a certain degree, the same applies to me." The narrative content upon the surface of his goblets are brief stories that portray a protagonist finding him or her self in a pivotal circumstance of struggle or dissidence. The thematic motives of each story are the result of his personal fascination with the ironic tendencies of human character.