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.
Jesse Olwen Stained Glass: Wrapping New Flesh on the Bones of An Ancient Craft
In a heartbreakingly dark and beautiful panel depicting the Statue of Liberty afloat in a pond amongst lily pads, water grasses and small frogs, Jesse Olwen reveals his inner sadness about the state of affairs in the US and wider world today. Though the most recent, this is not the only one of his works to reference Memento Mori– a Latin phrase meaning, remember that you have to die.
Olwen is a stained glass artist based in Montreal, working at the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary visual culture. His work reinterprets historic techniques through modern subject matter, exploring themes of memory, symbolism, and transformation. Through glass, he aims to create pieces that feel both timeless and culturally immediate.
States Olwen: “I don’t know yet how my work can impact viewers on a large scale, but I do know that working with stained glass offers a unique way to express my message while also pushing the boundaries of the medium, which may be enough to hook some people. I want to show what stained glass can do and break it out of stereotypes that limit it. I want to show people that stained glass can exist in equal respect to other conventional artworks in a gallery or museum setting.”
Bouncing from one high school to the next, at 16 Olwen was strongly considering dropping out. A local stained glass artist offered him a bit of foiling work to help her prepare for the holiday craft season. This mentor ended up encouraging him to finish high school, college and apply for an international exchange so he could see the world.
After traveling and a long hiatus from artmaking, Olwen returned to Montreal to pursue glass in his own direction, a solitary path he is still navigating. Beyond basic copperfoil techniques, he had no experience with glass painting and was feeling frustrated with the design limitations of the lead line. Someone gifted his mentor with a glass kiln that she passed along to Olwen, and eventually he found the courage to do his first tests and taught himself to paint on glass. Now in an improved studio space, Olwen is perfecting his painting skills surrounded by tables and benches he built to his specific needs.
He says: “Working with stained glass allows me to make art that is both physical and ephemeral: solid in its construction, yet constantly shifting with the light that passes through it. I am drawn to the paradox of permanence and fragility in this material. It can last centuries, yet remains vulnerable to the slightest fracture. That duality often mirrors the subjects I explore – the delicate equilibrium between beauty and decline, abundance and desolation.”
In recent years, Olwen’s focus has turned toward two main directions – landscapes that hover between the real and the imagined, and Memento Mori-style pieces that explore mortality. He approaches the landscapes not as faithful depictions of place, but as emotional and environmental reflections of a planet in flux. Each work is painted and assembled by hand, the glass is layered with paint and fired many times to achieve the highest quality glasswork.
“This work is a labor of love, and I believe working with glass is my life’s purpose. Glass artists in 2025 have a responsibility to keep interest in this artform alive, and that can be done by testing the limits, breaking the rules and drawing attention any way they can. Personally, I aim for a balance of paying respect to the traditional compositions, subjects and techniques while portraying contemporary messaging. In this way I feel like I’m wrapping new flesh on the bones of an ancient craft.”
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Rick Beck
CLICK TO LISTEN TO Season 11, Episode 4
Rick Beck: Casting Large-Scale Industrial Objects and Figural Forms in Glass
Rick Beck’s modern cast and carved figurative glass sculptures are inspired by industrial and architectural works as well as the human form, with an emphasis on formal aspects. Interested in playing the volumes of mass against the rhythm of the lines, Beck enjoys the interplay of the visual versus the verbal, creating art that challenges the eye as well as the mind.
Beck states: “My wife, Valerie, got me a book about the competitive relationship between Picasso and Matisse. Their artistic dialogue about the figure has fired my imagination, especially the way they shared and borrowed images and ideas from one another, as well as from history and literature. Between this book and visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, I’ve been inspired by the use of shape, form, and mass to create something more universal than the literal subject.”
A studio artist who was based in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, for 30 years before moving to Hawaii in 2020, Beck began working in glass at Hastings College in Nebraska, where he received his BA. The artist received his MFA from Southern Illinois University, where he studied with Bill Boysen. He was awarded residencies at the Appalachian Center for Crafts 1989 to 1991, and in 1994 received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council, followed by a National Endowment for the Arts regional Visual Arts Fellowship from the Southern Arts Federation in 1995. A student of the Studio Glass movement, Beck has assisted at Pilchuck Glass School, assisting artists Curtiss Brock and Jan Mares, as well as at the Penland School of Craft.
Beck currently shares a studio with wife Valerie Thomas Beck in Hakalau, Hawaii. Valerie has been a designer and co-conspirator to Rick since 1984. Both artists have been artists-in-residence at Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina, (1991-94) and have also been instructors there. Their blown glass work consists mainly of vessels – canvasses for imagery based on dreams and experiences ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. These vessels document their lives while providing beauty and pleasure.
Since moving to the Big Island, Beck’s challenge in making glass work is two-fold. First, to create work without using fossil fuels or adding to the demand for capacity on the electrical grid. Their new studio is powered by a solar/photo voltaic and battery system. Second, to create work that excites and challenges his concepts of art inside these new energy parameters. For him, formal aspects are crucial. Beck stretches and manipulates common shapes and objects, reducing the objects to pattern and geometry. Currently, he is producing work focusing on the geometry of life, plant, and human forms.
Beck’s work will be on view in 2026 at Blue Print Gallery, Dallas, Texas, opening February 26; at Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina, in May; at Blue Spiral 1 group show, Asheville, North Carolina; and at Ken Saunders, Chicago, Illinois. His work is also represented by Raven Gallery, Aspen, Colorado.
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Chaiah Sullivan
CLICK TO LISTEN TO Season 10, Episode 19
Device Attachments (below)
Foot Pedals
Lighting and Installations
Chaiah Sullivan: The Cactus Guy
Chaiah (pronounced ‘Kaya’) Sullivan has been impressing the glass world and Instagram followers with his beautiful and intricate cactus-inspired functional glass to the tune of a 94K following and growing. He came upon the cactus after a friend mistakenly referred to another plant pipe he had created as a cactus and decided to give making a realistic cactus pipe a try. “I never really expected to be the cactus guy,” Sullivan says.
Growing up in Paonia, a small town on the Western Slope of Colorado, Sullivan first discovered flameworking in 2005 at age 14. Two years later, he started working as an assistant at a local hotshop, North Rim Glass LLC. He practiced as a hobbyist while finishing high school, then put all his focus into glass. In 2010, he attended Penland School of Crafts, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. There he studied with Janis Miltenberger, a Washington-based artist who works with borosilicate glass to create large-scale narrative sculpture. Like Sullivan, much of Miltenberger’s glass art is inspired by botanical elements found in nature such as leaves and flowers.
In 2013, Sullivan took a series of collaborative classes at Glasscraft in Golden, Colorado, where he had the chance to learn from artists such as Salt and Robert Mickelsen, from whom he learned the hollow sculpting technique he uses today. Says Sullivan: “The inside of my pieces have the same contour as the outside. I put all my ridges in and then along each ridge I add dots; once those are all melted in, I pluck each spike out individually. Sometimes I do get a little sick of plucking thousands of spikes over and over and over again. But once you see all your work come to fruition, it makes it all worth it. There’s something about making it functional on top of it being a beautiful art piece that really pushes me.”
After learning many different styles and techniques, Sullivan explored and experimented to develop his own style of work under the name Unparalleled Glass. He was awarded Dr. Dabber Glass Masters 1st Place in 2023; the Puffco Glass Open 1st Place in 2022; and Champs’ Emerging Artist 1st Place in May 2017.
Enjoy this conversation about the progression of Sullivan’s cactus designs, the device attachments he’s been developing and his recently released foot pedals and oxygen systems. He also discusses recent lighting and installation pieces as well as some fun projects in the works.
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Laura Donefer’s Glass Fashion Show
CLICK TO LISTEN TO Season 11, Episode 9
Images courtesy Laura Donefer (above)
Images courtesy Beth Hylen. (Above)
Image courtesy Susan Bloch. (Above)
Images courtesy Jennifer Hand. (above)
Documenting Laura Donefer’s Glass Fashion Show
Laura Donefer is known for artwork that pushes boundaries by exploring memory, assault, bereavement, joy and madness. Celebrated for her innovative, colorful blown glass and flameworked Amulet Baskets, the artist has been using glass as the primary medium in her work for over 40 years, all while teaching, promoting the glass arts worldwide, and producing her unforgettable Glass Fashion Show (GFS). Donefer has produced 15 of her extraordinary fashion shows, many for the Glass Art Society (GAS). In fact, at GAS Murano 2018, her remarkable and ground-breaking event included 33 glass costumes worn by models as they glided past thrilled onlookers through the canals of Murano, Italy.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker David Marshall of Blue Sky Projects Films has undertaken a years-long documentary project dedicated to capturing both the history of Donefer’s GFS and the work artists are undertaking to present a captivating and memorable show at GAS’s June 2026 conference to be held at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.
Writes Donefer’s assistant and GFS participating artist, Jennifer Hand:
“Ten years ago this June, Rik Allen stepped onto a catwalk at the Corning Museum of Glass in a full astronaut getup accompanied by David Bowie’s Major Tom and changed my life forever. I found my community in the rapturous throng of creative, compassionate and collaborative humanity who cheered alongside me that night: Die-hard lovers of glass art united by the magnificent spectacle of Laura Donefer’s Glass Fashion Show. It was my first Glass Art Society conference, and though the days before the grand finale had been filled with inspiring content and exciting connections, nothing could have prepared me for the cascading emotions I felt witnessing the wild, weird wonder of the artists who had spent years creating costumes for this one-night-only performance. It would have been inconceivable to me at the time, but two short springs later, I danced in my own glass costume on Murano’s grand canal to an equally exuberant crowd.
It may be challenging for those who have not had the pleasure of attending one of these happenings to fully appreciate their splendor, but for prior participants and audience members alike, the verdict is unanimous – there is nothing on earth like the GFS. Since Donefer hosted the inaugural show at the first Canadian GAS Conference in 1989, she has traveled around the world putting on versions of the event – including several at Corning, Toledo and Toronto, and one particularly raunchy romp in New Orleans. AACG member Beth Hylen, who has been in every glass fashion show except the first, credits the events with transforming her from a quiet librarian to a glassy diva. Hylen describes that experience as a “dream,” saying, ‘Strutting on the stage is so much fun. The energy behind the scenes is electric, and Laura encourages us to energize our performance on stage. I love working for months creating weird and wonderful wearable glass, and there’s nothing like watching the artists who put so much time to create their creations seeing it all come together.’
An evening of transcendent beauty is arguably an end goal in itself, but the GFS has impacts far beyond the moment when the last bow has been taken and the last shard of glass swept from the stage. In the years leading up to each fashion show, Donefer provides her encouragement, advice and mentorship to each participant, building a sense of community and modeling her style of unapologetically ebullient leadership to each new generation of GFS artists. GFS veterans seeing each other in the wild at glass world events have a unique bond, and, if we’re being fair, an almost evangelical zeal to lure outsiders into the fandom. Neither Donefer nor the models and artists for the performance are compensated for their time, materials or travel to participate – they work their glassy magic into exquisite wearable art out of sheer love of the community and the desire to make the audience gasp in astonished joy..
When Donefer delivers lectures on the history of the Glass Fashion Show, she shares a multitude of stories from her decades leading this singular aspect of the glass field – friendships made, injuries narrowly avoided, and institutional boundaries skirted. Profound storyteller that she is, her lectures are equal parts entertaining and educational, but alone they cannot tell the full story of this cultural phenomenon. Recognizing the magnitude of Donefer’s contribution to the trajectory of the glass community, award-winning film maker David Marshall of Blue Sky Projects Films has undertaken a years-long documentary project dedicated to capturing… the Glass Fashion Show…
Marshall has begun filming interviews with Donefer and her participating artists, including teams from Murano, Hilltop Artists in Tacoma and Project Fire in Chicago. Film crews will also be on hand in Corning this June to do cinematic justice to the detail and exquisite skilling of this year’s costumes, which have been mandated by Donefer to be the most extravagant ever – headpieces, footwear, and head-to-toe glass on every model. Between the passion and labor of the artists and Marshall’s thoughtful filmmaking, the documentary will properly honor and record the unparalleled contributions Donefer has made to glass history.”
Enjoy this podcast conversation with Donefer, Hand, and participating artists Susan Bloch and Hylen, about their memories of and contributions to the Glass Fashion Show. Supporters of Donefer’s Glass Fashion Show are welcome and encouraged to donate via GoFundMe to help defray the costs of production. Executive Producer credits are available above a certain threshold of donation, and inquiries can be sent directly to Donefer at lauraglassfashion2026@gmail.com. To donate, please visit:
