North Lands Creative Glass has announced its 2017 summer program, its first under recently appointed artistic director Jeffrey Sarmiento. The program of classes and a conference will be centered around the theme of faith. The program, titled "Leap of Faith," is billed as exploring the relationships between glass and belief in its varied forms — religious belief, social dogmas, and artistic conviction. Master-classes will be headed by artists Anne Vibeke Mou, Annie Cattrell, Beth Lipman, and the duo of Michael Schunke and Josie Gluck. The one-day conference, "Taking a Leap: Concept, Conservation and Innovation in Architectural Glass," is organized in collaboration with Bullseye Glass Company, and will take place on July 16th, 2017, in the county of Caithness in the northern reaches of Scotland.
Anne Vibeke Mou is a Danish-born artist whose engraved glass works are created through a labor-intensive process of repeatedly applying minute marks onto glass, until forms begin to emerge. Her North Lands master class, "Divine Light," will be taught with stained-glass conservator Keith Barley, and will challenge students "to incorporate markmaking into traditional stained glass."
Scotland native Annie Cattrell, a tutor in ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art whose installation is pictured at the top of this article, will focus her class, "Materiality Making Meaning," on risk-taking and experimentation in the medium.
Ideology in glass sculpture will be explored in "Time to Believe," American glass artist Beth Lipman's master class on using the material as a means to "expose, question and express current and past belief."
And finally, American glassblowers Michael Schunke and Josie Gluck will teach a process-focused master class on goblet-making that makes use of meditative practices. All classes have an application deadline of Febraury 28th, 2017.
The upcoming conference will be focused on all areas of stained-glass, from the preservation of historical works to pioneering techniques for contemporary work in the medium. A one-day series of “lectures, discussions, networking and gallery tours,” the conference will explore “the creation and conservation of traditional and contemporary architectural commissions.”
Located along the windswept northeastern coast of Scotland, in the town of Lybster, North Lands Creative Glass has become an international destination for glass artists since offering its first master class (with Bertil Vallien) in 1996. A 2014 expansion to its studio resulted in new workshop spaces and a residential structure to increase accommodation for class instructors and artists-in-residence.
Conference tickets are now available, and can be purchased here.