Tacoma, Wash. (June 3, 2009)— The Museum of Glass announces the schedule for its Seventh Annual Visiting Artist Summer Series which features a different Visiting Artist at work in the Hot Shop each week.  The Summer Series begins on June 17 and will continue for eleven weeks, concluding August 30, 2009.

The Visiting Artist Summer Series offers Museum visitors a unique opportunity to view the diverse creative processes of glass artists from around the world who come to the Pacific Northwest to work at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA. Each summer, MOG invites a selection of these artists to the Hot Shop for 5-day work residencies. The 2009 Summer Series marks the sixth year of collaboration between the Museum of Glass and Pilchuck.

“The Visiting Artist Summer Series is designed to provide artists with a platform for experimentation and development as well as expanding our visitors’ understanding of the creative process,” comments MOG director Timothy Close.  “This program demonstrates just how diverse the medium of glass has become in contemporary art.”

Summer Series artists work with the Museum’s own Hot Shop Team, exploring and demonstrating various glassmaking techniques and styles.  Included with each residency is a Conversation with the Artist, a public lecture and slide presentation, at 2 p.m. on Sundays.

Museum visitors and glass enthusiasts can track all the action of the Summer Series from the MOG website.  During Museum hours, visitors can watch streaming video footage live from the Hot Shop Amphitheater, extending their Hot Shop experience with a sneak peek before they arrive and seeing what happens after their visit.  Each artist will also record an introduction to his or her residency that will be posted to the MOG website each Wednesday during the Summer Series.

Watch the Hot Shop live or learn more about each Visiting Artist

About the Artists:
Rik Allen (Sedro-Woolley, WA)
Residency:  June 17 – 21
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, June 21, 2 p.m.
Rik Allen’s current series of work has been in the form of spacecraft and scientific devices. While many of Allen’s pieces reflect his curiosity about science, they also convey humor, simple narratives, lightheartedness and an antiquated vision of the future that much of science fiction embodies.  In 2008, Allen exhibited Innersphere: Sculptural Works of Rik Allen, at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.

During his residency, Allen will build components for his sculptural rockets and other scientific apparatus using forms made from metals, plaster and wood to shape the glass.  Once the glass has been cooled and cold-worked, he will reheat these glass components and assemble them with a variety of other materials to create a complete sculpture.

Benjamin Wright (Providence, RI)
Residency:  June 24 – 28
Conversation with the Artists:  Sunday, June 28, 2 p.m.
Benjamin Wright holds a BS in Evolutionary Biology from Dartmouth College, a BFA from the Appalachian Center for Crafts and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He has developed a holistic approach to artistic expression based on his studies in the philosophy of conceptual art, the evolution of biological ecosystems, and the preservation and innovation of traditional craftsmanship.

“Working with the talented [MOG] glassblowing team, I will produce a number of large-scale blown environments which will be inhabited by various communities of insects, plants, molds, bacteria, etc. These environments and communities will be utilized for their evocative potential and ability to isolate and emphasize often-overlooked human interactions within the ecosystems that they inhabit.”

Lisa Zerkowitz (Seattle, WA)
Residency:  July 1 – 5
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, July 5, 2 p.m.
Lisa Zerkowitz’s work has been included in several Northwest group exhibitions at museums such as the Museum of Northwest Art, Bellevue Arts Museum and Tacoma Art Museum. She is inspired by nature and combines the use of blown and cast glass with steel, ink and bronze.

“The steel panels are my canvas, where the landscape begins to take form from a simple line.  Each mark traps ink that I apply to the surface of the steel, to provide a marriage of color and form.  The glass and bronze elements provide a layering that is akin to the organics of nature.  Most importantly, the glass is the light, bringing the viewer to a specific moment in time when light and nature combined are a language of their own.”

Stephen Day (New Orleans, LA)
Residency:  July 8 – 12
Stephen Day’s most recent solo exhibition of mixed media sculpture was at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. He grew up in Baton Rouge, attended high school in Vienna, and first studied glass in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superiere des Beaux Arts. While earning a Masters in sculpture and glass at Louisiana State University, he also studied video, which he still incorporates in his installations. Currently based in New Orleans, Day exhibits and teaches nationally and internationally.

Day likes to work thematically, infusing his interest in opera and theater into his sculpture. He often restricts or frames the viewer’s perspective by presenting historical images and artifacts in a manner that creates an ironic, problematic or unverifiable relationship to what really happened.

Peter Shelton (Los Angeles, CA)
Residency:  July 15 – 19
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, July 19, 2 p.m.
Based in Southern California, Peter Shelton is a conceptual sculptor.  He is best known internationally for his iron, steel and fiberglass sculptures, which often replicate abstracted parts of the human body as well as elements of architecture.  An eager student of anatomy and biology in high school, Shelton spent some time as a pre-med student before transferring to the art department at Ponoma College in Claremont, CA. He also earned an MFA from UCLA in 1979.

Shelton will unveil a new public sculpture this summer.  Animaline, a series of six bronze-cast, ballooning forms, will be installed outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.  “I’d say my work is somewhere between abstract and recognizable. The main thing is to convey a sense of something animated.”

Joe David (Vancouver, BC)
Residency:  July 22 – 26
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, July 26, 2 p.m.
Joe David is recognized as one of the leading contemporary Northwest Coast native artists.  He is a member of the Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) tribe, the indigenous people of the west coast of Vancouver Island. He was born in the Clayoquot village of Opitsat on Vancouver Island and grew up in Seattle.  After attending art school in the late 1960s and working as a commercial artist, David’s interests turned to native art.  He is known for his individualized hybrid of various Northwest Coast styles in his work as a mask maker, printer, jewelry maker and carver.

David has been instrumental in the resurgence of Nootka art and ceremony. His art reflects a deep commitment to spirituality and cultural heritage.  In 2000, he met Preston Singletary who credits David with helping him “develop a spiritual connection in a Native context.”  This residency is presented in conjunction with Singletary’s exhibition, Echoes, Fire, and Shadows, which opens at the Museum on July 11, 2009.

Richard Whiteley (New South Wales, Australia)
Residency:  July 29 – August 2
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, August 2, 2 p.m.
Richard Whiteley is head of the prestigious Glass Workshop at the School of Art, Australian National University in Canberra. He has dedicated his studio career to cast glass, having spent many years developing his techniques. In his work, there are two elements he consistently investigates—the ability of glass to capture, focus and transmit light, and the dynamic relationships between architectural space, form and color.

During his Hot Shop residency, Whiteley will demonstrate techniques he uses to cold work (sandblast, engrave, cut, grind and polish) his glass works.  Whiteley’s work can be seen on the eleventh floor of Tacoma’s Hotel Murano.

Shelley Muzylowksi Allen (Sedro-Woolley, WA)
Residency:  August 5 – 9
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, August 9, 2 p.m.
Myth, magic and a touch of whimsy inform the work of Shelley Muzylowski Allen, whose oil paintings and glass sculptures serve as meditation on the enduring relationship between humans and beasts of burden.  A Canadian native from a family of horse breeders, Allen captures the animals’ essence through color, form and scale, creating “a new iconography in which animals are the supreme rulers of our collective consciousness.”

Allen began her career as a painter and did not consider working with glass until a colleague suggested her designs would translate well to the translucent medium.  She now works with both mediums, often using them in the same piece.

Richard Notkin (Helena, MT)
Residency:  August 12 – 16
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, August 16, 2 p.m.
Richard Notkin is a full-time studio artist who has worked primarily with ceramics for nearly forty years.  His teapots and sculptures have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous public and private collections.   He is perhaps best known for his series of unglazed stoneware teapots, inspired by the Yixing wares of China (circa 1500 AD to present), but consciously maintaining a separate cultural identity, “reflecting the current dilemmas of our contemporary human civilization.”  In 2008, Notkin was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council and has recently been awarded a USA Hoi Fellowship by the United States Artists Fellowship.

While in the Hot Shop, Notkin plans to “continue my bent for strong social/political commentary which would best be actualized in the transparent medium of glass.”

Tom Rowney (Ainslie, Australia)
Residency:  August 19 – 23
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, August 23, 2 p.m.
Tom Rowney studied glass at Australian National University, Canberra, and trained at the Budgeree Glass Factory in Port Adelaide. He uses traditional Venetian-style glass techniques with a contemporary viewpoint to create his art.  “Venetian style glass blowing has always fascinated me the most.  The combination of precision and accuracy used to create a precise piece of glass is something I aim for in my work.”

Since 1997, Rowney has developed two major series, Map Series and Maelstrom, which have been featured in exhibitions in Australia and overseas.  “The Maelstrom series is based on the fluid nature of blowing molten glass and the relationship to the visual ‘water like qualities’ of the solid state of blown glass.  Each form has its own memory of liquid water—a drip, a drop, a splash—and the elastic forms the water becomes.”

Jackie Pancari (Andover, NY)
Residency:  August 26 – 30
Conversation with the Artist:  Sunday, August 30, 2 p.m.
Jackie Pancari earned a BFA from Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania and an MFA from Alfred University in New York.  Her work represents a series of discoveries made while working with the properties of glass and light. “Glass speaks clearly about light. It seems so simple yet its ability to assume an infinite number of forms and to evoke just as many feelings renders it complex. My greatest hope is that those who see my work walk away with a sense of wonder, mystery and the same inquisitiveness that I experienced in its creation.”

During her residency, Pancari plans to further develop her Reflection Series.  She will create vessels of various sizes that will be mirrored during the cold working process and paired with companion glass objects.  “By resting the companion pieces on the mirrored surfaces, I am able to create reflective curiosities that trick the viewer by making it difficult—sometimes impossible—to distinguish by eye the tangible from the intangible.”

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