Talking Out Your Glass podcast

Over the past 55 plus years, John Gilbert Luebtow has become one of the most respected names in contemporary glass sculpture. Inspired by Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, the artist developed innovative technical processes in glass-making, introducing and incorporating gesture and expressive qualities into impeccably finished sculptural components. A student of Harvey Littleton, Mark Peiser and others, Luebtow explored blown, cast, and fused glass, as well as other techniques.
Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, California, presented Retrospective – From 1972 to 2023, a recent exhibition of work by 82-year-old Luebtow. Lambert wrote: "Luebtow has been creating art for over 55 years, specializing in kiln formed glass, and has become one of the most important names in contemporary glass sculpture. He is most known for his innovation in the technical processes of working with glass, developing his own methods and even building his own tools for creating large-scale glass sculptures and installations up to 25 feet tall.
At the heart of Luebtow's artistic philosophy is a curiosity about the processes of creation and a commitment to forging something entirely new. Luebtow's work integrates glass with architecture, becoming equal parts artistic expression and engineering endeavors. Despite his skilled background in drawing, painting, and ceramics, Luebtow ultimately has chosen glass as his primary medium, as 'no other material deals with light, line, movement, change, intensity…all things visual…as glass does, while also paralleling life, having an inner and outer self, and an internal and external presence or being.' 
Inspiration for Luebtow's work can be found in everything that is experienced in life, pairing beauty along with the reality of life's struggles. 'The events of our times, then and now, affect everything we do and are allowed to do. We are what we have experienced and what we remember.' Luebtow's sculptures, though not limited to, can be categorized by two different themes: political/social commentary and the abstraction of beauty. Many of Luebtow's sculptures use images of the American flag to reflect on and process political and social happenings. Other works utilize linear and geometric forms with added surface embellishment, to create technically perfect investigations of beauty and abstraction."
Exploring rhythm and movement of line in sculptural form, Luebtow developed his Linear Form Series of cast and slumped glass sculpture. Working on a large scale required engineering skills to design and build kilns as large as 14' long x 10' wide x 4' tall to produce the elements for large scale architectural installations. Working with float glass, Luebtow left his mark on architectural spaces in and around Los Angeles, where his studio is located, and the country. His art required the design and building of equipment and development of processes that were almost as much art as the art itself. Projects such as Invenire, Ventus Vitae, and Sapere Aude were groundbreaking aesthetic and technical highlights of his career as a sculptor.
Luebtow, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin native, holds a BA from California Lutheran College, and two distinct MFAs from UCLA (one in ceramics and one in glass). Since 1966, Luebtow has exhibited in over 175 exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Zimmer Museum, CA; Corning Museum, NY; Carnegie Museum, PA; Oakland Museum of Art, CA; Santa Monica Museum of Art, CA; Louisville Art Museum, KY; Manhattan Beach Art Museum, CA; and Orange County Museum of Art, CA. His work has been commissioned by major public and private corporations including Hewlett-Packard (HP), ARCO (Atlantic Richfield), American Airlines, NESTLÉ (Carnation), and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. Over 160 articles have been published about Luebtow's work.
Wrote Shana Nys Dambrot for Patricia Correa Gallery: "John Luebtow has consistently addressed a quadrum of fundamental sculptural issues throughout his career: line, form, space, and light. These are broad considerations, to be sure; to a certain extent, they are inherent to all visual art media. What is significant in Luebtow's fidelity to this set of issues is not only his tenacity in the unraveling of their mysterious laws, but also the extraordinarily wide range of approaches he has drawn to them. The mystery he pursues is the technical spiritual identity of his medium. He searches within the sovereign form of his subjects for the abstract evidence of the energetic rhythm of movement." 
For a full review of his career, Luebtow has written and published Glass, A Life Time of Creating,available now.

Cedric Mitchell is a multidisciplinary designer, glass artist, and cultural tastemaker successfully combining elements including craft, utility, and visual culture. His work is rooted in handmaking but reaches beyond any single medium. He designs objects that carry energy, emotion, and intention – pieces meant to live with people.
Says Mitchell: "My design language is what I call modern funk. It is defined by bold color, playful geometry, and confident forms balanced by structure and refinement. I draw inspiration from music, movement, architecture, and everyday rituals. Whether I am working on lighting, furniture, or collectible objects, my goal remains the same. To create work that feels alive, expressive, and deeply human."
Cedric Mitchell Design is not just a studio; it is a platform for craft-driven innovation across categories where functional objects, sculptural works, and cultural storytelling coexist. This year is shaping up to be a big one for Mitchell, who recently launched a new body of work through JOOPITER, further pushing his practice into collectible design. Alongside that, he continues to develop new lighting and furniture pieces, leaning more into sculptural, functional objects and expanding his modern funk language across materials.
In October, Mitchell will be showing work at ComplexCon, a large-scale cultural festival that showcases design, fashion, music, and streetwear. He chose to present work in that context because, as he states, "my practice has always been about bridging craft with contemporary culture. It's an opportunity to place hand-blown glass and collectible design in front of a broader audience that doesn't typically encounter it in traditional gallery settings."
Originally from Oklahoma, where he first encountered studio glass while recording at a Tulsa music studio, Mitchell learned glassblowing at Tulsa Glassblowing School, where he eventually became an apprentice and an instructor. Now based in Los Angeles, he has developed glassware collections, collaborated with high-profile clients such as Nike, and served as the events and resource manager at Crafting the Future, an organization that supports BIPOC craft artists. Mitchell's Kinetic Glasses, which swivel on a glass ball, were featured on the cover of the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft. 
During his 2023 residency at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Mitchell successfully explored many different hotshop techniques for creating patterns paired with color theory research. He delved into chromatherapy theory and his extensive experimentation yielded unique color combinations in both transparent and opaque glass. The artist has also completed residencies at Penland School of Craft and Pilchuck Glass School. He developed Cedric Mitchell Design in 2018 where he creates blown glass for retailers nationwide and is currently developing an eclectic line of lighting. 
Mitchell will be teaching at Tulsa Glassblowing School in June and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in July of 2026. On the studio side, Mitchell continues to grow his direct-to-consumer work with glassware collections like Kinetic Glass and Chroma Stack, while building toward larger-scale projects and brand collaborations. Mitchell says, "This year is really about refining the vision and positioning the work at the intersection of craft, design, and culture."

An artist and educator, C. Matthew Szösz has established a practice that revolves around experimentation and investigation of techniques and material, with a focus on understanding the ways in which physical objects and events transform into intellectual and emotional experiences. He operates and is interested in the space that exists between design, craft and fine art.
Wrote William Warmus in Glass, the UrbanGlass Art Quarterly: "So each Szösz project represents a unique inquiry into outcomes driven by curiosity, inspiration, and technical opportunity. Attempting to wrestle these diverse series into unified categories is to limit the creative variation and diversity of each, to try to name the style. Perhaps it is best to list some of his most important investigations, summarize the findings, and enjoy the artifacts of Szösz's subversive and yet disciplined and meticulous process." 
Since receiving his MFA(Glass) from Rhode Island School of Design, Szösz has been recognized internationally with awards such as the Irvine Borowsky Prize, the Jutta-Cuny Franz Prize, and a Tiffany Foundation Grant, and has completed numerous residencies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. He enjoys working as an educator, and has taught at ASP Wrøcław, Rietveld Akademie, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Washington, University of Hawai'i, Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts, and Bildwerk Frauenau and others, and has lectured and given numerous workshops around the world. He is the founding member of the curatorial group Hyperopia Projects and was Executive Director of Public Glass, a non-profit public access studio in San Francisco. 
Szösz's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in private collections and public institutions in the United States, Australia, Europe and Japan, including at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, the Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, the Toyama City Museum of Glass, Toyama, Japan, and Het Glazenhuis, Lommel, Belgium. His career has allowed him to meet and work with friends, colleagues and collaborators across four continents and dozens of institutions. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife, Anna Mlasowsky.
Recently, Szösz completed an IASPIS residency in Sweden, administered by the International Arts Grants Committee there. Later in the year, he will work at a residency in Lisbon organized by Maria Morales Lam, through her studio Lo Invisible. In the next two years, he will be visiting a pair of universities in China and teaching at Pilchuck Glass School in the summer of 2027.
In between, Szösz is finishing up a commission for SeaTac airport that has been the main focus of his practice for the past three years. The project, titled Jonah, converts a part of SeaTac's north main terminal, an escalator well and a surrounding mezzanine, into a highly abstracted version of Jonah's whale. The installation has been broken into two parts -  a larger, more architectural part that creates two articulated glass walls that form the body of the whale, which was installed in December, and a more sculptural part that is scheduled for installation in September - a suspended, lighted piece that roughly corresponds to a whale's mouth holding a Pearl. 
Says Szösz: "There are a number of metaphors and associations between the Jonah story and air travel, and I particularly liked the idea of the whale being a meta-space, something that has a long tradition in stained glass. I was also attracted to the apocalyptic overtones of the Jonah story in view of the current American political and environmental situation."
In contrast, the personal objects and videos Szösz creates are the result of performance-based experiments documenting a deep knowledge and unbridled desire to allow the material to lead him. The artist describes his practice as "an attempt to maximize serendipity, and to allow a project to be guided by material and consequence, arriving, in the end, in an unfamiliar and unpredicted landscape. A successful project should not only be surprising but should also achieve an identity independent of the artist, and to at least some degree, escape his control and mastery."

You might imagine that if you were born and raised on the island of Murano in Italy, with forefathers and relatives immersed in glass for generations, that one would have a mighty head start in becoming a famous glass artist. But in many ways, these connections make the goal of establishing an original voice as a glassblower a hefty challenge indeed. The artist in question would have big shoes to fill.
Davide Salvadore strives for perfection in his work, surpassing the simple notion of glassblowing as a job and entering into the realm of passion, artistry and service to the material. His incarnations reveal his unique perspective on the world, alive with memories of the past, reactions to the present and hope for the future. This original voice attracted the attention of Bill Traver, Traver Gallery, Seattle, who was instrumental in supporting and exhibiting the Italian artist's work.
"I have a great deal of respect for the artists of Murano, and for Davide Salvadore's heritage as part of a distinguished lineage of Venetian glassworkers," said Traver. "Davide is a truly amazing individual; he was raised amidst centuries-old traditions, yet is extremely forward thinking in his own work and his ideas about how glass can be used as a sculptural medium. His adaptation of techniques, as well as equipment, to create one-of-a-kind sculptural work unlike anything else made on the island is inspiring. His efforts, throughout the years, to cultivate and promote the appreciation of glass art on Murano and to share his passion for glass with future generations through his teaching are equally inspirational. In my opinion, it is exactly this kind of inventiveness, openness and enthusiasm that will help Murano maintain its position as the heart of the international glass community."
Dating back to the 1700s, Salvadore is the 11th generation on his mother's side, credited with creating glass pieces. The first of this lineage were the Rosetto brothers whose works dated to 1721 for a Piedmontese princess.
At a young age, Salvadore began following his grandfather, Antonio Mantoan, into the furnaces of Murano, first learning how to build the kilns and later working in the studios of Alfredo Barbini, who is often recognized as the ultimate glassmaker of Murano. Later, he worked as a glassblower in multiple well-known glass studios, learning from each and improving his abilities. In 1978 he began producing lampworked beads in his mother Anna Mantoan's jewelry studio, which she sold to Yves St. Laurent and other couture houses as well as to African merchants.
With his mother's encouragement, Salvadore developed his own personal style of making lampworked beads, and these beads are still featured as part of his sculptural pieces today; a tribute to his mother's talent and support. In 1987, he opened his own studio, Campagnol & Salvadore, where he continued doing lampwork and further developed his glassblowing expertise and talent.
In 1998, Salvadore made a conscious decision to turn away from traditional functional glass work. At approximately the same time, he began demonstrating his unique murrine technique at Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Pratt Fine Art Center, and others in the United States. It was then that he was introduced to the American Studio Glass movement, which Salvadore embraced. As a result of his ingenuity and the inventiveness of his creations, the artist's glass design became instantly noteworthy.
In 2012, Salvadore founded his own studio, Salvadore SRL, where he continues to work today with his two sons, Marco and Mattia in Murano. Davide is a founding member of Centro Studio Vetro, a Muranese nonprofit association that aims to promote the culture and art of glass. After demoing at GAS Corning last week, Salvadore taught Mastering Muranese Magic at the Corning Museum of Glass, from June 8 – 14.
Currently, Salvadore creates passionately expressive one-of-a-kind sculptures that push the boundaries of centuries-old traditions. He combines traditional Italian techniques and elements in innovative ways in his work, which reflects diverse influences such as African tribal imagery, Muranese roads, and the smokestacks of glasshouses.

Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C. Mace consistently invite us to enter a meditative state. Whatever the medium, each piece seems to raise more questions than provide answers. The artists, respected for their innovative work, have concluded the series for which they are most known, large-scale blown glass fruit and vegetable forms. Their subsequent work includes life-size figurative wood and glass sculptures as well as outdoor bronze installations and glass work that features blown vessels and cast panels with illustrations of the 'first facts' of bird identification realized through applied glass powder drawings. Most recently, the artists have been working on their Botanicals, a body of work that preserves real flowers in composite and glass. 
Kirkpatrick and Mace have worked collaboratively for the past 47 years after meeting at the Pilchuck Glass School in 1979. The artists have consistently explored seminal themes: principles of drawing as incorporated into glass, the metaphoric content of human relationship to nature and the appropriation of materials to support a visual idea. They recently installed a large public art project at the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington. 
Kirkpatrick (born in Des Moines, Iowa, 1952) and Mace (born in Exeter, New Hampshire, 1949) have exhibited, lectured and taught extensively throughout the world. They taught for 12 years at Pilchuck Glass School. Their collaborative work is included in collections and museums around the world including the Corning Museum of Glass, NY; The Detroit Institute of Art Detroit, MI; The Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Hokkaido Museum, Japan; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Toledo Art Museum, Toledo, OH and The National Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 
Mark Doty, wrote in the introduction of the book, Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C Mace: "This might be the most complex yoking of all, the way that two sensibilities overlap, merge, separate, conflict and resolve. A continuing dynamic, itself both unstable and solid, evolving, transforming materials and processes as it transforms itself."
Kirkpatrick and Mace were recognized in 2019 for their outstanding achievement in the field of contemporary glass art by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and have been elected to the American Craft Fellows in 2005, interviewed for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in 2006 and given the 2001 Chateau Ste. Michelle Libensky Award by Pilchuck Glass School honoring outstanding contemporary artists working in glass. Kirkpatrick served as a trustee on the board of Pilchuck Glass School for 16 years. 

Now, the artists split their time between a home and studio in Seattle, Washington, and a farm on the Olympic Peninsula near the Washington Coast. Their current Botanical sculptures grew out of a desire to capture the essence of a plant by preserving it through portraiture. Each plant is harvested as it shares its bloom, brought into the studio, deconstructed, dried and reassembled. The specimen is then suspended within layers of composites and glass. The finished work has been recreated through the artist's hand and dependent on the artist's view of the specimen by observing in life, the plant's structure, the result, a portrait of a flower.
Of their Botanical sculpture, Daniel J. Hinkley, plantsman wrote: "The works of Joey Kirkpatrick and Flora C. Mace capture the improbable if not the impossible, the apprehension of not just a moment reflecting the magic and majesty of our natural world but the abduction and amplification of a precise moment of perfection. To say that the paragon of their subjects has been frozen in time implies incorrectly that what you observe in their work is not simply an expiration and preservation of a plant at its floral zenith. These flowers embody the mystery and beauty, comprehended and embraced by the artists, to such a degree that one might actually perceive its ultimate drop of petal, abscission of leaf or growth of root."
A selection of Kirkpatrick and Mace works is also on view now at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, in Tough Stuff: Women in the American Glass Studio. The exhibition showcases the groundbreaking creators who shaped the past and future of glass art.