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Talking Out Your Glass podcast

Podcast Talking Out Your Glass podcast
Shawn Waggoner
Former editor of Glass Art magazine Shawn Waggoner interviews internationally respected artists and experts in hot, warm and cold glass. For questions or c...
ArtsVisual Arts

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  • Flameworking Pioneer Sally Prasch
    Combining technical skill with a strong aesthetic, flameworking pioneer Sally Prasch is known for her work that places other-worldly figures in glowing globes filled with rare gasses. She has also constructed portraits from broken shards of glass and is well known for her goblets made with coiled stems that allow them to bounce when handled. Her latest work incorporates cast bronze with glass. But perhaps Prasch’s greatest fulfillment has come from teaching. She has taught flameworking workshops at UrbanGlass, Brooklyn; the famous Niijima Glass School, Japan; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA; Penland School of Craft, Penland, NC; Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, PA; Grove Gas & Light Co, University of CA, San Diego, CA; Ingalena Klenell’s Studio, Sweden, and many more. States Prasch: “Teaching has always been a part of my life. My parents were teachers, and both my brother and sister have also been teachers. Lloyd Moore, my first teacher, found it very important not to have any secrets but to share your knowledge with others – share your love of glass and making things. He taught thousands of people, and I continue in his tradition. Lloyd started me teaching at age 15. It was scary for me to teach adults, but made me practice things over and over again. We started people on soft glass tubing and then worked them up to borosilicate.”  Prasch began her career at age 13 with Moore working as a part-time apprentice at the University of Nebraska and then worked as a glassblowing instructor for the City of Lincoln Recreation Department. Later on, she took workshops from some of the best glassblowers of the time including William Bernstein, Ray Schultz, and Lino Tagliapietra. She attended the University of Kansas from 1977 to 1980 and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art in Glass and Ceramics.  After college, Prasch started her glass art business that is still active today. She soon began to receive recognition for her artistic work and was selected for the Corning Museum of Glass’ New Glass Review in 1993. The artist has been attending Glass Art Society (GAS) Conferences since 1978 and continues to participate by giving demonstrations and lec-moes, serving on the GAS Advisory Board and working with the organization’s History Committee. In 1985, Prasch received her Certificate in Scientific Glass Technology from Salem Community College (SCC), Carneys Point, New Jersey. Soon afterwards, she obtained a position with AT&T doing large quartz work for the semiconductor industry. Continuing with her studies, Prasch earned her degree in Applied Science from SCC in 1986. Later that year she got a job as a scientific glassblower and glass instructor at the University of Massachusetts. She has worked as a scientific glassblower at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst), Syracuse University, and the University of Vermont, Burlington.  Currently, Prasch is the scientific glassblower and also teaches Scientific Glassblowing and the Properties of Glass to graduate students in Chemistry, Art and Physics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a member of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society (ASGS) and the director of the Northeast section. Her ASGS experience includes participating in seminars on such subjects like vacuum technology, quartz technology, and glass sealing. She has instructed a neon class with David Wilson, presented a paper on her work with the discovery of the gravitational wave, and co-chaired symposiums.  In 2025, Prasch will exhibit her work in Glass Lifeforms at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, opening February 7 and running through April 20. Her work will also be on view in Glasstastic at the Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro, VT, March 22 through November 1. The artist will teach at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, PA, from July 28 – August 1. After curating the annual glass exhibit at Leverett Crafts and Arts in Leverett, MA for the month of November, Prasch will have a one-week fall residency with George Kennard at SCC, as well as a residency at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2026, the Herter main gallery at UMass Amherst will host a solo exhibit of Prasch’s work from January 29 through May 8. The opening will take place Friday, April 24, 2026, from 5 to 7 p.m. with an artist talk from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Her work will also be on display at the Science Library and at the Durfee Conservatory at UMass during the show.  As Prasch develops new work, including pieces for Laura Donefer’s 2026 Glass Fashion Show to be held at GAS, she continues to teach and fabricate scientific glassware at UMass. She says: “I have taught on average 25 students a month for my entire career, only taking a break during the pandemic. Obviously, teaching is a part of me, and I gain so much. It is not about teaching, not about glass, not about notoriety, not about pay – it is about the energy between people. It is about trust.”  UPCOMING EVENT LINKS Spring and Fall semester classes and weekend workshops at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst https://www.umass.edu/natural-sciences/research/scientific-glassblowing-laboratory February 7 – April 20, 2025 – Glass Lifeforms Exhibit, Pittsburgh Glass Center https://www.pittsburghglasscenter.org/event/exhibition-lifeforms/ March 22 – November 1, 2025 – Glasstastic, Brattleboro Art Museum, Brattleboro VT https://www.brattleboromuseum.org/2024/09/06/glasstastic-2025/ March 21 – 23, 2025 – International Flameworking Conference, Salem Community College, Carneys Point, NJ https://www.salemcc.edu/glass/international-flameworking-conference April 5, 2025 – Northeast American Scientific Glassblowers Section Meeting, Cornell University https://northeast.asgs-glass.org/ May 14 – 17, 2025 –Glass Art Society Conference https://www.glassart.org/conference/texas-2025/ July 28 – August 1, 2025 – Teaching at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh PA https://canvas.pittsburghglasscenter.org/classes/1632 Fall, 2025 – one week residency with George Kennard at Salem Community College, Carneys Point, NJ https://www.salemcc.edu/glass Fall, 2025 – one week residency at the University of Massachusetts https://www.umass.edu/natural-sciences/research/scientific-glassblowing-laboratory January 29 – May 8, 2026 – Exhibit at the Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Opening April 24, 5 – 7 p.m. with artist talk 6:00 – 6:30pm https://www.umass.edu/herterartgallery/herter-art-gallery January 29 – May 8, 2026 Exhibit at the Science and Engineering Library and the Durfee Conservatory https://www.library.umass.edu/sel/ https://www.umass.edu/natural-sciences/research/greenhouses/durfee-conservatory  
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  • Oceans of Emotion: Kait Rhoads’ Glass Sculpture
    Childhood experiences of life on a sailboat in the Bahamas and Caribbean left a profound mark on Kait Rhoads. The experience of growing up on the water has provided great inspiration for her artwork. The artist’s Sea Stones series hints at its watery origins. Each sculpture is a small world in itself, an intimate object you can hold in your hand. A talisman, the work looks almost molecular, like plankton carapaces as observed under a microscope. Rhoads states: “My work is inspired by nature and informed by memory. And, three oceans—the Caribbean, the Indian and the Pacific – delineate the imaginative boundaries of my practice. I grew up on the water of the Caribbean in a ship with my family where my deep affinity for biological systems began. I lived surrounded by nature; the liquid light and aquatic life imprinted upon my senses. The sculptures I create emanate from my early experiences within and curiosity about the natural world. While exploring the waters around Bali, I experienced the extraordinary biodiversity and extensive architecture of coral colonies there. This has been a deep influence on my sculptural forms and process of making.” Best-known for her innovative use of Venetian techniques such as murrine and filigrana, she applies these decorative processes to sculptural forms as well as to vessels. She was influenced early on by Lino Tagliapietra’s work with cane and Richard Marquis’ use of murrine as a structural material. Rhoads’ unique process involves weaving pieces of blown and cut glass tubes with copper wire to create flexible looking “soft sculptures.”  States Rhoads: “My method of construction mirrors how my life has formed me, with individual elements woven together to create a strong whole. I consider the individual units, conical hexagonal forms known as hollow murrine, as architectural elements that fit together to create a fluid or floating object. The concept of the work develops slowly, and the production of a complicated piece can take months to years to complete.” Rhoads is also well known for her public art installations including Bloom, commissioned in 2018 for the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art’s two-story tall window space. In 2022, Bloom was chosen to be permanently installed inside of the biology department at Highline College, Des Moines, Washington. She also created Salish Nettles, her largest work to date, for the Pacific Seas Aquarium, Tacoma, Washington, and Proto Kelp, which was on view through October of 2024 at Method Gallery, Seattle, Washington. In 2025, the artist will apply for residencies and funding to expand the project sustainably. In all of these public projects Rhoads hopes to inspire in the viewer empathy, curiosity and interest in ocean ecology.  Receiving her BFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, Rhoads earned her MFA in glass from Alfred University, New York in 2001. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doug and Dale Anderson Scholarship, The Anne Gould Hauberg Award, and a Fulbright Scholarship for the study of sculpture in Venice, Italy. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Her work can be found in many collections, including the Seattle Art Museum; the Toyama Institute of Glass in Toyama, Japan; the Glasmuseum in Ebeltoft, Denmark; Shanghai Museum of Glass, China; and The Corning Museum of Glass. She maintains a studio in Seattle, Washington. “The cold, deep green waters of Puget Sound are a more recent source of inspiration in my work.  Since moving to the Northwest over two decades ago, my fascination extended from coral colonies to kelp forests. Seaweed’s pliable forms continually inspire me—they stretch up from the depths, undulate in the shallows, and lie on tidal surfaces. Aquatic life infuses my sculptures with animated forms, sparkling surfaces and faceted exoskeletons.” In 2025, Rhoads will continue to work on a community generated art project called Fused Together (2021-2025), for which she is the lead artist. She shepards stained glass windows made by the public that are donated to Tacoma libraries. She will also participate in group shows including Habatat’s Glass Coast show at Ringling School of the Arts in Sarasota, Florida, and Women Who Make Glass at the Vashon Center for the Arts, Vashon, Washington, in March 2025.   Of her work Rhoads states: “I desire my work to be emotionally affective—that it evoke for audiences a similar sense of wonder in our blue planet that continues to inspire me. And even, perhaps, to instill a desire to conserve our fragile aquatic ecosystems.”  
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  • Contrasting Forces: Weston Lambert’s Stone and Glass Sculpture
    Weston Lambert transforms semi-precious stones and found rocks into profoundly beautiful, time-defying glass sculptures. By incorporating an original process for laminating the two materials and by cold-working the surfaces of the glass and rock, the artist is able to bring his skill to bear on these objects that seamlessly transform from stone to glass and back again. Lambert’s work is about dualities and the balancing of contrasting forces. He’s looking for the place where transparency/opacity, and ephemeral/eternal coexist, each taking part in creating equilibrium. This dynamic relationship turns fragility into an asset and rigidity into liability. Lambert states: “In the studio, I accelerate the slow violence of geological processes. My materials are engaged in a condensed passage of time—modified by my brief tenure, on a timeline charted by millennia, not decades. The heat of the kiln allows molten glass to nestle into stone and days of grinding/polishing simulate eons of erosion. In my pursuit of permanence, I create invulnerable, seamless objects that have been broken and mended outside of geological time.” A sculptor based in Tacoma, Washington, Lambert’s primary media are glass, metal and stone. In 2007, he earned a BFA (Maxima Cum Laude), from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and in 2012, his MFA from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2010 and again in 2020, the artist was awarded a full-tuition scholarship at Andersen Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Career Opportunity Grant, one of two such grants awarded nationally per year. Lambert’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including SOFA Chicago, The Toyama International Glass Exhibit, and the Cheongju Craft Biennale in South Korea. As a public artist, Lambert has completed prominent commissions including Untitled, at Western State Hospital, Lakewood, Washington, 2023 and Currents, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington, 2020. His works have been included in such publications as Sculpture Magazine and Glass Quarterly Magazine.  In 2024, Lambert’s work was exhibited at Smith and Vallee Gallery, Edison, Washington, and Taoxichuan Glass Studio Gallery, group exhibition, Jingdezhen, China, where he also lectured and demoed. The artist lectured/demoed at Chico State University, California, and on November 23 taught an online class, Making it on Social Media: Aligning Creativity, Integrity, and Studio Success. He has over 350K followers on Instagram. In March 2025, Lambert will participate in a group exhibition at Visu Contemporary, Miami Beach, Florida, and film a class on his process of combining glass and stone at Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, Oregon, available in late Spring. Of his artwork, Lambert explains: “In the context of human lives, rock embodies strength, consistency, and timelessness. There’s safety in its solidity, but the natural world is in constant flux. Granite and sand share each other’s future—forever shattered and recast. Glass is delicate, but when combined with the durability of stone, the pairing embodies harmony.”  
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  • Jeremy Sinkus’ Geologicalized Glass
    Current work by Jeremy Sinkus includes his Contemporary Art Nodules, inspired by collecting and focusing on the top 10 attributes that the artist and viewers found intriguing about glass objects. Simultaneously ancient and from the future, his Nodules combine texture and form with transparent windows that allow the viewer to explore unknown inner worlds. A former mineral collector and digger, Sinkus put down his chisel and picked up a torch when he realized his fondness for minerals and natural history was all encompassed in glass.  Sinkus says: “Glass is geological. The material bit me hard in the late ‘90s and opened a future of infinite expression for my fascinations of the subterranean world. I constantly dream about finding objects beneath the surface of either the sea or the earth – the feeling of finding something exceptional and spirit engaging. Maybe that is what spending all this time in the studio is? Digging, searching, revealing important concepts from deep inside myself. Intentional forms should be both something to recognize and something to ponder or be awakened by.” Sinkus now works out of a 2400-square-foot studio in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It is entirely powered by a waterfall on the nearby Deerfield River and functions as a green energy studio. He uses flameworking, metal fuming/deposition, cold working (lapidary), welding, woodworking, laminating and casting techniques to manipulate the glass daily.  “Minerals have always captivated me with their color, clarity, and infinite geometric permutations. Of all the images, objects and art I have seen, still it is these natural crystalline forms that strike me. They express something enormous that is otherwise almost impossible to voice. Akin to the felt language underlying a resonant piece of art, minerals speak precisely of their making. They require no interpretation. I am fascinated by the sheer fact of their existence and circumstantial nature of their variety. Human participation was absent but nonetheless, I wanted to be part of it.” The opportunity to experiment with hot glass came in 1998 at a studio in central Massachusetts. The roaring furnaces, smell of burning bees wax and graceful movements impacted Sinkus. He admired the team aspect of glass blowing but needed a more independent approach to satisfy his ambition. In 1998, he began flameworking borosilicate glass as an obtainable approach to working glass on his own. He studied with Milon Townsend, Sally Prasch and Emilio Santini as he developed a body of work inspired by scuba diving, ocean conservation and ocean arts and evolved into a professional working artist. In 2015, Sinkus began his journey in cast glass, studying with Daniel Clayman. This allowed him to apply the techniques necessary to make more authentic and precise mineral designs and increase the scale of his designs. The use of familiar tools and techniques for working stone from his gem cutting years connected him to glass sculpting.  Sinkus says: “These tools allow me to venture into the deep process and experience of what made the mineral world so appealing to me creatively. Cast glass has taught me patience and channels a version of a 100,000,000 year geological process. This body of work gives me human participation in a form that would otherwise only be a geological event. My geological designs have reconnected me to the gem and mineral world. Though realistic, they are seen as art. In the art world they are seen as contemporary.” In 2025, Sinkus will have an exhibit of his recent works at the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and launch his new designs at a couple of U.S. galleries. He’s also designing a class that combines casting, flameworking, coldworking, surfacing and adhesives in the creation of glass art sculpture.  
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  • The Artistry and Craftsmanship of Dan Alexander
    From his Micromorphisms to his Opticals and Pinwheels, Dan Alexander explores the mesmerizing world of optical illusions, where intricate designs and mind-bending patterns come to life in stunning glass artistry. From captivating sculptures to breathtaking installations, each piece in this collection is a testament to his artistry and craftsmanship. Much of Alexander’s inspiration comes from photographs he has taken or his travels. Looking at one micro-aspect of an object, he envisions how that small segment could be used in repetition to create an overall pattern. An example would be looking at one single coral in the ocean and repeating its colors and shape over and over again to make a large glass tile. By rolling that glass tile up hot around a glass bubble or collar, he makes a large vessel. The artist uses the blown glass process to create a three-dimensional canvas on which his murrine and patterns can be displayed.  Says Alexander: “The work I am currently exploring is inspired by nature, textiles, travel, and architecture – more specifically patterns therein. Being an artist and world traveler, I look at the world around me and try to determine how it could be translated to glass.” Having grown up in a small farming town in northeast Ohio, Alexander has always been interested in art, history, nature, and creating. Upon seeing glass being made for the first time at Hale Farm and Village, Bath, Ohio, he knew this was a trade he had to master. He received his BFA in glass from Kent State University, where he was able to explore glass as an artistic medium while being introduced to working with other materials, history, color theory, and composition.  Following graduation, Alexander studied with some of the top glass artists in the field today and worked in Murano, Italy, with Maestro Davide Salvadore creating large scale blown glass art. Later, he worked for the Corning Museum of Glass as lead gaffer, where he spent six years traveling the world and educating the public about the science and history of glass art. Eventually Alexander decided to take on a new role as the studio director of Third Degree glass factory, St. Louis, Missouri, producing higher volume work, site specific installations, and overseeing studio operations and glass production.  In 2016, Alexander began to branch out and create a name for himself as an independent artist. In recent years he was awarded an emerging artist residency at Duncan McClellan’s Gallery in St. Petersburg Florida, the AACG professional artist residency at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Empire of Glass exhibition/residency in Vienna, Austria. He was nominated for the Glass Art Society’s Saxe Emerging Artist Award and received an international exhibiting artist award from the Effect, Dream, Transform exhibition in Uskudar, Turkiye. Alexander is currently building a private studio and 501C3 nonprofit in St. Petersburg, Florida, called Art, Education, Gathering Inc. or AEG. Its tagline is: From Glass to Growth – Building Communities Together. AEG will offer community outreach, using glass as a form of STEM education, residencies, mentorships, classes and an emergency program for artists affected by disaster. Says Alexander: “Education is an extremely important aspect. If the public wasn’t interested in art, many mediums would suffer. The more knowledge we can share with the public, the more sales, donations, and funding will be put into the arts.”    
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About Talking Out Your Glass podcast

Former editor of Glass Art magazine Shawn Waggoner interviews internationally respected artists and experts in hot, warm and cold glass. For questions or comments [email protected]
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