Joanna Manousis
The most important recent change to my work occurred in 2011. My career and business was in the dumps due to the recession. Every previous method I had ever used to sell my work and promote my career over almost 40 years had disappeared or become untenable. I really thought my career might be over. My wife was saying things to me like, “I hear they are hiring over at Home Depot”. Then, in March of 2011, I accepted a three day teaching assignment at a private studio in Austin, Texas hosted by the owner, Kevin Ivy. Kevin and Luken Sheafe (Salt) spent the entire time trying to convince me I should try my hand at making glass pipes, something I had been very reluctant to do before. “You’ll be a Ninja”, they told me. Having nothing to lose, I finally agreed to give it a try. It has been a transformative experience. Far from dumbing down or compromising my work, making glass pipes has completely liberated me, and not just because I have had the four bestselling years of my career since then. It has opened doors for me that I never dreamed were there. It has taught me to love my craft anew. I have learned more about glassblowing in the past four years than in the previous twenty. I work frequently with the best and most creative glass pipe artisans in the country. My entire family is now involved blowing glass so we are now looking for a bigger home and studio. I am reborn in glass and am having the time of my life.
- Joanna Manousis, 2016
Robert Mickelsen
“Painting and drawing from an early age has prompted me to look at the world and the individuals in my life with a close eye to detail. I draw connections; quite literally between beings and place, objects and their use and past histories that shape the way we live today. At the age of 19, I decided to put down pencil and brush, taking on a BFA in Glass that would allow we to express my personal narratives in three-dimensions with a new material. Not only did glass allow me the flexibility to translate objects of the material world with the precision to detail that I strived for in my drawing, but its ability to act as a reflective surface, embodying its environment, while acting as a magnifying lens to interior spaces and objects within it, amplified glass’ ability to connect the self with the inanimate art object, whose purpose is to provide meaning and understanding in our lives”.
Perhaps most importantly, the success I have derived from making pipes has made it so that I no longer am dependent on marketing my work through galleries such as Habatat. Don’t get me wrong. I love showing my work in the best glass gallery in America. I just don’t *have* to in order to survive anymore. So I can now make whatever I want! The two pieces in the show are prime examples. They are not pipes, and I don’t care if I sell them. I just want to show them. Art is now pure creative fun, as it should have been all along. - Robert Mickelsen, 2016
Resurrection Rabbit - 2016 (top) Opaline Tear - 2016 (top) 21 x 11 x 1.5” Negative-core cast glass, stainless steel, aluminum
Veil - 2015 (bottom)
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36 x 24 x 2.25” Water-jet cut mirror, fused glass murrini
(Anthropomorphic Oddity Series) 14.5 x 11 x 10” Flame worked glass
Crow Flies - 2016 (bottom) (Anthropomorphic Oddity Series) 13 x 9.5 x 5” Flame worked glass
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