As editor of Glass Art magazine from 1987 to March 2019, Shawn Waggoner has interviewed and written about multitudes of the world’s greatest artists working glass in the furnace, torch and on the table. In 2016, Waggoner turned her passion for glass art into a “Terry Gross” style podcast featuring interviews with the likes of Lino Tagliapietra, Narcissus Quagliata, Dante Marioni, Robert Mickelsen, Toots Zynsky, Shayna Lieb, Kelly O’Dell, Raven Skyriver, Ginny Ruffner, Lucio Bubacco, Banjo, Richard Marquis, Judith Schaechter, and many more.
Rated in iTunes New and Noteworthy in 2018, Talking Out Your Glass continues to evolve, including interviews with the nation’s finest borosilicate artists making both pipes and sculpture on the torch. Other current topics include how to work glass using sustainable practices and how artists address the issues of our times such as climate change, the political chasm, and life in the age of technology.
By becoming a Patron of Talking Out Your Glass (TOYG), you are helping to support TOYG’s featured artists in a world that doesn’t always value art or objects made with the artist’s hand. You are also helping to document and preserve the history of glass art and artists in Internet archives and online galleries. Through questions and guest suggestions, you have the opportunity to inspire the direction of the show and contribute to exposing lesser known artists and issues you, the Patron, feel are worthwhile.
Wesley Fleming: Releasing the Realism of the Microcosmos
Wesley Fleming brings the fantastic realism of the microcosmos to life in glass. An ambassador for smaller denizens of the earth, his passion for nature sparks awe and curiosity in others. Growing up in the countryside, his favorite pastime was exploring beneath logs and rocks in the woods or reading science fiction and comic books. Hence the natural world and his own imagination became his muse.
Says Fleming: “I hope to rekindle awe and curiosity for nature with my fantastic realism. I’ve focused more than two decades honing my flameworking skills and trying to capture the essence of actual species with intricate detail of tiny stamen or antennae. Today, I conjure plants, animals and mystical beings by merging the fantastical with the real through choice of color palette and referencing familiar archetypes. Regardless of the end result, I love the alchemical potential of sculpting glass – a brittle and cold substance transformed by fire into a pliable and molten material.”
In 2001, Fleming began working with glass, learning via apprenticeship under the tutelage of Italian maestros Vittorio Costantini and Lucio Bubacco in Venice, Italy. He subsequently gained valuable experience working for Josh Simpson and the MIT Glass Lab. His work has been included in numerous publications, exhibited around the United States and included in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Kobe Lampwork Museum, Tacoma Museum of Glass and Racine Art Museum.
Recently, Fleming was commissioned by Wes Anderson to make glass flowers, which were animated by a studio in London for his 2023 movie Asteroid City. Along with his wife, Rebecca, the artist demonstrated his techniques at Denizli Glass Bienali in Denizli, Turkey, where she played her composed pieces on the cello while Fleming worked at the torch. In March 2020, his first solo museum exhibit was scheduled to open at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. Sadly, opening day the museum closed due to the Covid pandemic.
Says Fleming: “Insects have been my main focus for many years, but recently I have been very inspired by the Blaschka Glass Flowers at Harvard and have been working on developing my plants and flowers. This was what was so exciting for me about the Brattleboro exhibit – that I was given trust and free rein to make my new passion and to focus on local wildflowers, which I see on the regular hikes I do around my home.”
In 2024, Fleming will co-teach “Bugs, Figures, Plants, & Beyond” with Emilio Santini at Penland School of Crafts, Bakersfield, NC, April 28 – May 3. He will also co-teach “Collaborative Soft Glass Sculpture” with Michael Mangiafico at Touchstone Center for Crafts, Farmington, PA, August 5 -9 . His work will be on view at Level 42 Gallery, Asheville, NC, beginning May 4.
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Josh Simpson
CLICK TO LISTEN TO Season 9, Episode 4
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The Glass Galaxies of Josh Simpson
Apollo 8, which launched on December 21, 1968, was the first mission to take humans to the moon and back. While the crew did not land on the moon’s surface, the flight was an important prelude to a lunar landing, testing the flight trajectory and operations getting there and back. Capt. James A Lovell, Apollo 8 astronaut, shared his memories of that historic mission: “Then, looking up I saw it, the Earth, a blue and white ball, just above the lunar horizon, 240,000 miles away…I put my thumb up to the window and completely hid the Earth. Just think, over five billion people, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb…I began to question my own existence. How do I fit in to what I see?”
Inspired by this wonderment and interest in perspective, glass artist Josh Simpson embarked on his own exploration of the cosmos. Born on August 17, 1949 and educated at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York (1972), much of Simpson’s career in glass has been dedicated to communicating his fascination with the earth and its role as our planet, first through entertaining demonstrations for middle schoolers, then with art lovers worldwide. He has enthusiastically shared his glass art in much the same way the astronauts shared their experiences – with any man, woman or child whose heart fills with excitement just thinking of the possibilities.
Since the 1980s, Simpson has been hiding his glass Planets all over our Earth. In 2000 he launched the Infinity Project, which invites people around the world to hide Planets in exotic, mysterious, and sometimes even seemingly mundane – but personally meaningful – locations.
Simpson’s space-inspired glass art includes Planets, vases, platters, and sculpture. The artist has dedicated more than 50 years to inventing new glass formulas and making unique objects that embody his fascination with color, form, light, pattern, complexity, and the working of the universe. His iconic Planets evoke imaginary worlds that might exist in distant undiscovered galaxies. His New Mexico Glass suggests star-filled night skies and swirling blue seas, while Corona Glass evokes deep-space images captured by the Hubble Telescope.
Simpson’s work has been exhibited in the White House and numerous international museums. Select pieces are currently on permanent display at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, Yale University Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many more.
Says Simpson: “I am moved by the beauty of the night sky and other astronomical phenomena. Physics and cosmology fascinate me, as does high temperature chemistry, powered flight, and all things mechanical. I am mesmerized by color, form, contrast, iridescence, tessellating patterns, and complexity.”
Located in the rural hills of Western Massachusetts, Simpson’s studio can be found in a converted dairy barn beside his home. Every night, the last thing he does is walk from the house to his studio to check the furnaces. Seeing an aurora borealis, watching a storm develop down the valley, or looking at the sky on a perfect summer night, compels him to translate some of the wonder of the universe into his glass. This process doesn’t happen in any planned way, but gradually and unpredictably. He never tries to replicate what he sees around him, and in fact often doesn’t recognize the source of inspiration until someone points it out later.
Simpson states: “Molten glass consists of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat. The result is a material that flows like honey. When it’s hot, glass is alive! It moves gracefully and inexorably in response to gravity and centripetal force. It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that make it simultaneously one of the most rewarding and one of the most frustrating materials for an artist to work with. Most of my work reflects a compromise between the molten material and me; each finished piece is a solidified moment when we both agree.”
In his most recent book, Josh Simpson 50 Years of Visionary Glass, 500 beautiful photos and informative (and humorous) narration by the artist, reveals the evolution of Simpson’s evocative glass art over the past 50 years. In-depth looks at his several signature series and experimental works illustrate how the artist has continually explored new ways to express—in glass—his fascination with outer space, the natural world, and the workings of the universe. Text and photo spreads narrate the story of Simpson’s glass, details of his life and process, and his contributions within the craft world. Text by experts in the glass world, including William Warmus, Tina Oldknow, Nezka Pfeifer, and others, supplies additional views. In addition, strategically placed comments from numerous museum curators, along with insights from astrophysicists and space flight professionals, present a unique perspective on the meanings and broad appeal of his unique glass.
From playing the spoons, to winning story slams and flying high performance planes to the wrong number that resulted in him marrying astronaut Cady Coleman – enjoy this fascinating conversation with Josh Simpson.
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The State of Stained Glass
CLICK TO LISTEN TO Season 9, Episode 7
Judith Schaechter
Stephen Hartley, images courtesy the University of Notre Dame
Megan McElfresh
Amy Valuck
A Panel Discussion with Judith Schaechter, Stephen Hartley, Megan McElfresh and Amy Valuck
Enjoy this stained glass panel discussion with top industry professionals and educators Judith Schaechter, Stephen Hartley, Megan McElfresh, and Amy Valuck. Topics addressed include: what is needed in stained glass education; how the massive number of Instagrammers making suncatchers and trinkets affect stained glass; how to promote stained glass in a gallery setting; and how to stay relevant as stained glass artists.
The panelists:
By single-handedly revolutionizing the craft of stained glass through her unique aesthetic and inventive approach to materials, Judith Schaechter championed her medium into the world of fine art. The content of her work – some of which gives voice to those who experience pain, grief, despair, and hopelessness – resonates with viewers, leaving a profound and lasting impression.
Schaechter has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited her glass art widely, including in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, The Hague and Vaxjo, Sweden. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hermitage in Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other public and private collections. Schaechter’s work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2012, and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow. In 2013 the artist was inducted to the American Craft Council College of Fellows. The Glass Art Society presented Schaechter with a Lifetime Achievement award in 2023, and this year she will receive the Smithsonian Visionary Award.
Schaechter has taught workshops at numerous venues, including the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, the Penland School of Crafts, Toyama Institute of Glass (Toyama, Japan), Australia National University in Canberra, Australia. She has taught courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the New York Academy of Art. She is ranked as an Adjunct Professor at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art Glass Program, both in Philly .
Born in Philadelphia, Stephen Hartley began his craft career working on a variety of historic buildings and monuments throughout the region. In 1999, he moved to South Carolina to attend Coastal Carolina University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in History. He then relocated to Savannah, Georgia, and continued to work in the traditional crafts and conservation fields while attending graduate school. After completing his MFA in Historic Preservation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hartley was employed as an instructor at various colleges within the Savannah area. He earned his PhD from the University of York in 2018 where his dissertation thesis studied the historical and modern frameworks of trades training in the US and the UK.
Hartley eventually returned to the Philadelphia area and accepted the position of Head of Building Arts at Bryn Athyn College, where he formulated the first Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (BFA) in traditional building within the United States. Hartley, currently an associate professor in Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, wants his students to have a deeper appreciation for the work craftspeople do to fulfill an architect’s vision—by learning the vocabulary of the trades, understanding their history, and, when possible, trying out the tools.
Executive Director of the Stained Glass Association of America (SGAA), Megan McElfresh has dedicated her professional life to community service and the art and science of stained glass. With a background in fine arts and operations management, she joined the Association as a professional member in 2015 and became the Executive Director in the fall of 2017. Growing up in small stained glass studios, McElfresh continued to build on her technical skills in the medium by seeking mentorship opportunities throughout college. Some of the highlights of her glass studies were traveling to Pilchuck Glass School and time spent at the nationally recognized kiln forming resource center, Vitrum Studio.
Prior to working with the SGAA, McElfresh worked in a variety of roles from operations management at a life sciences firm in Washington, D.C. to IT and web support for small non-profit art organizations. In 2011, McElfresh moved from Northern Virginia to Buffalo, New York, and founded her studio, McElf GlassWorks. With a passion for her professional career as well as her new community, she never turned down an opportunity to collaborate with neighborhood teens and local programs to provide enthusiastic and creative educational enrichment. In her personal work, McElfresh uses her artwork in the advocacy of issues she became passionate about during her time working at a forensics laboratory concerning subjects like domestic violence and rape, and DNA backlogs. Her studio work has been featured in the Stained Glass Quarterly, Design NY, The Buffalo News, and Buffalo Rising.
Find out more about the SGAA’s 2024 conference here:
Amy Valuck is a stained glass artist and conservator based in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the current president of the American Glass Guild. She began her apprenticeship in 1998 at The Art of Glass in Media, PA, and in 2014 went on to establish her own studio, Amy Valuck Glass Art, now located in West Chester, PA. Her studio’s primary work is the restoration and conservation of historical windows from churches, universities, and private residences. As a conservator she specializes in complex lead work, plated windows, and replication painting. Valuck also maintains a personal art practice, producing autonomous stained glass panels for private commissions and public exhibition, including the AGG’s American Glass Now annual exhibit. Her personal work is heavily influenced by the fabrication and painting techniques of historical windows but frequently includes experimental fused glass elements.
Valuck is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, who earned her BFA degree in jewelry and light metals. Her work in jewelry earned awards including the first annual Cartier Prize, and the MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Silversmiths’ Association) Award. She has served on the board of directors of the American Glass Guild since 2017 and has participated as a lecturer and instructor at several of the AGG’s annual conferences. Registration is now open for the 2024 Grand Rapids conference, July 9 – 14.
Find out more about the AGG’s 2024 conference here:
