The Museum of Glass will welcome four artists for special one-day Visiting Artist residencies to participate in the Kids Design Glass program. Dante Marioni, Preston Singletary, Martin Blank and Lino Tagliapietra have each offered their talents to render into glass a creature designed by a young Museum visitor or patient at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. These sculptures will be included in the upcoming exhibition, Kids Design Glass, which will open at the Museum of Glass in October, 2009, before traveling to venues around the country.

“We are so pleased to have these prestigious artists volunteer for our Kids Design Glass program,” comments Museum of Glass Director Timothy Close. “What a tremendous honor for the child—and for the Museum.”

The Kids Design Glass program invites children 12 and under to sketch a design for a glass sculpture. Each month, one entry is selected to be interpreted into glass by the MOG Hot Shop team. Two vessels are created—one for the designer and one for the Museum’s permanent collection. To date, the Hot Shop team has created 50 creatures designed by kids, including Bacon Boy, Shark Attack! and Green Guy. Visiting Artists who have already participated in the program include Nancy Callan and Joseph Rossano. Bee Kingdom, a Calgary-based glass artist collective who will be featured in the Hot Shop over Thanksgiving weekend, will also create a sculpture for the program.

In addition to the Kids Design Glass days, the Museum will also welcome four artists for five-day Visiting Artist residencies during the 2008 fall season—Bertil Vallien (Afors, Sweden), Preston Singletary (Seattle, WA), Corban Walker (New York, NY) and Doug Jeck (Seattle, WA). Each of these artists will demonstrate diverse techniques and create works in glass with very different aesthetics.

The Visiting Artist Program offers visitors a unique opportunity to view the diverse creative processes of glass artists from around the world who come to the Museum of Glass to experiment and explore new directions in their art that may not be possible in their own studios. “Our Visiting Artist program provides artists with a platform for experimentation and development as well as expanding our visitors’ understanding of the creative process,” states Close. “We provide the artists with a state-of-the-art facility and the assistance of one of the finest glassmaking teams around, and they bring with them ideas and techniques that help make each day unique in the Hot Shop.”

Museum visitors and glass enthusiasts can also track all the action of the Hot Shop from their computers. The Museum of Glass website features streaming video footage live from the Hot Shop Amphitheater, allowing visitors to extend their Hot Shop experience—by either taking a sneak peek at what they might see before they arrive, or seeing what happens after their visit. Viewing is available during regular Museum hours: www.museumofglass.org/live-glassmaking/watch-the-hot-shop-live/.

KIDS DESIGN GLASS Visiting Artist Schedule:
October 26, 2008 Dante Marioni
Novmeber 30, 2008 Bee Kingdom
December 14, 2008 Preston Singletary
January 25, 2009 Martin Blank
February 1, 2009 Lino Tagliapietra

FALL VISITING ARTIST SCHEDULE:

Bertil Vallien (Afors, Sweden)
Residency: October 29 – November 2
Conversation with the Artist: Sunday, August 3, 2 p.m.

Swedish artist Bertil Vallien has been a leader in the glass art world since the 1960s. Vallien was the first artist to apply sand casting to glass, opening up new modes of expression for the medium, the most significant of which was its effects on light. He is known for his cast glass boats which are represented in many leading museums and collections in the U.S., Europe and Japan. His residency at the Museum of Glass will focus on sand casting applications.

Vallien has been selected as the recipient of Pilchuck Glass School’s 2008 Libenský Award for his contributions to the development of glass in contemporary art. His MOG residency coincides with the Libenský Award presentation and the annual Pilchuck Auction in Seattle.

Corban Walker (Dublin, Ireland and New York, NY)
Residency: November 12 – 16
Conversation with the Artist: Sunday, November 16, 2 p.m.

Corban Walker employs various mediums—glass, painting, drawing, photography and digital art—to create site-specific installations. In his recent work, he has used glass to create architectural sculptural objects that present an unusual perception of scale. These sculptures are assembled onsite by building layers of float glass or stacking long, hollow objects, sometimes to a precarious result.

During his Museum of Glass residency, Walker plans to create unique components for a new installation, building on a concept he began at Pilchuck Glass School in 2007.

Preston Singletary (Seattle, WA)
Residency: November 19 – 23

For newly two decades, Preston Singletary has melded the patterns, symbols and legends of his Tlingit heritage with the dynamism of the Studio Glass movement, creating a distinctive and powerful body of work. During this residency, he will continue to explore an aesthetic inquiry he began at his MOG Hot Shop visit earlier this year.

On Saturday and Sunday, Singletary will create a glass replica of Single Fin, a killer whale monument carved by John Wallace in the 1930s, for the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. This special commission will become part of the Burke’s permanent collection. Historical information about the artwork and the artist will be shown on the Hot Shop big screen throughout the weekend.

Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire and Shadows, a solo exhibition of Singletary’s work organized by the Museum of Glass, will open at the Museum next July before traveling to venues around the country.

Doug Jeck (Seattle, WA)
Residency: December 17 – 21
Conversation with the Artist: Sunday, December 21, 2 p.m.

Doug Jeck has taught ceramics at the University of Washington in Seattle since 1996. He is known for his large-scale figurative clay sculptures. Jeck’s work was recently on view at Tacoma Art Museum as a nominee for the 2008 Neddy Artist Fellowship.

For his residency, Jeck plans “a different circus each day.” Proposed projects include rendering an amusement park designed by preschoolers into glass, creating mold-blown Georgia clay face jugs out of black glass, and experimenting with sand casting.