As sure as winter turns to spring, this time of year sees the mailboxes (and email inboxes) of glass enthusiasts jammed to overflowing with summer catalogs from the major schools: Arrowmont, Bild-Werk Frauenau (Germany), Corning Studio, Glass Furnace (Turkey), Haystack, North Lands (Scotland), Oxbow, Penland, Pilchuck, Pittsburgh, and UrbanGlass. To help sort through the dizzying offerings, the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet offers our highly opinionated picks of some of the most exciting courses being offered. This is far from a complete list, and we are leaving out plenty of important classes. But we hope you will find inspiration in our efforts to shine the light on some of the more notable offerings for summer 2010 and do your own exploring of the links to the 11 summer programs we’ve provided above.
Team teaching seems to be all the rage this year. Some of the summer’s best teaching experiences in stereo are sure to be Petr Novotny and Rob Stern‘s late-August advanced glassblowing course at the Glass Furnace, Paul Cunningham and Darin Dennison‘s two-man “Form and Pattern“ exploration at Pittsburgh Glass Center in late May, and Dante Marioni and Benjamin Moore‘s tag-team master class “A Venetian/American Experience“ at North Lands in early September.
Flameworking is on fire for 2010, and there’s no shortage of opportunities to learn from some of the best. Pittsburgh’s “Imagery in Torchwork“ course in mid-May offers a rare chance to study with pipe-maker and aspiring sculptor Aaron “Slinger” Golbert in an institutional setting. If Slinger’s five-day intensive on using computers and other high-tech approaches to transferring two-dimensional imagery onto three dimensional flameworked objects represents the leading edge, Paul Stankard‘s courses at Corning Studio (”Miniature Paperweights“) and UrbanGlass (”Encased Worlds“) are a chance to learn from a legend in flameworking who has updated and advanced the long tradition of botanical imagery in American art with work of extraordinary workmanship.
Another trend for 2010 is that some artists are teaching at multiple locations. You can catch Boyd Sugiki’s masterful Venetian techniques (which he’ll be co-teaching with his wife, Lisa Zerkowitz) at Pittsburgh (”A Foundation for the Future“), Penland (”Intermediate/Advanced Glassblowing“) and/or the Glass Furnace (”Glassblowing“).
While Americans such as Boyd as well as Dante and Ben may have mastered the Venetian techniques and even pushed them into new territories, there is no shortage of Venetian techniques being taught be actual Venetians. Among the highlights, catch hot-working rock star Dino Rossi’s Pilchuck advanced class “Venetian Sculptural Glass” (Session 4), or, if that’s full, take Davide Salvadore’s “Cane & Murrini Mastery” class (Session 1).
Glass as an element of mixed-media work seems to be all over the summer sessions this year. Pilchuck is offering a course entitled “Digital Glass Remix” (Session 3) taught by Czech art explorer Pavel Mrkus, while Corning is marking Lance Friedman‘s return to the art world after a multi-year break with a week-long class in mid-June on mixed-media work entitled “The Sum of its Parts.” Anyone interested in combining glass with other materials must consider Jude Schlotzhauer and Chuck Scanlin’s two-week intensive at Arrowmont entitled “Explorations in Glass and Mixed Media Assemblage“.
For pure teaching power of the instructor, a number of courses stand out. Chris Taylor’s glassblowing intensive at the Glass Furnace in July will challenge any glassblower’s skills, Scott Chaseling’s Roll-Up course at Bild-Werk Frauenau, also in July, will be a memorable skills-building session, and Jeff Mack’s “Goblet Exploration“ class at Pittsburgh will be a chance to understand the nature and form in new ways by studying with an up-and-coming master.
Finally, a rare chance to study with a true Studio Glass pioneer is Richard Marquis‘s course in exotic Venetian techniques entitled “The Whole Elk Theory“ at Haystack in June.