Glass Art Blog

Littleton “Twin Arcs”

Many of you are aware that Harvey K. Littleton is considered to be the father of the studio glass movement.  Way back in the 1960′s Littleton teamed up with a glass scientist, Dominic Labino, and created the first small hot shop in the U.S.

At that time, Littleton was an art Profesor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He began teaching glass blowing to a handfull of graduate students, including Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly.  After their graduation Lipofsky and Chihuly in turn began glass programs at California School of Art and Crafts in Oakland and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence respectively.  Many of the great names in American glass art began as students of these two giants in the studio glass movement.

Harvey Littleton’s pieces can now be seen on the Secondary Market page of my website.

On a personal level, Holsten Galleries gave Littleton a one-person show in 1982 at its Palm Beach location.  This was in many ways the launching of our gallery into the big league of the glass world, even though the gallery originated in Stockbridge 4 years earlier.  I have fond memories of Harvey coming down to many of his openings in Palm Beach. He had another good reason to come down from his home and studio in North Carolina: he kept a sailboat in Florida and loved to spend time on the ocean. Harvey, thank you for your huge contribution in starting what has turned out to be a huge rennaisance in the creation of art objects in glass!

“Living Motion” by Jon Kuhn

Our busy summer season is almost upon us. This is one of my favorite times of year because we are receiving  new works by all of our artists on almost a daily basis. One particularly wonderfu piece which we received recently is “Living Motion” by Jon Kuhn. To give you an idea of the size, the height here is approximately 14 inches.  This remarkable sculpture is comprised of hundreds (thousands actually) of tiny pieces of glass. Each one has to be meticulously cut, ground, polished and then laminated to its neighboring pieces. No wonder that visitors to the gallery tend to get very excited about Jon’s beautiful pieces.  The image here only begins to hint at the complexity and optical drama of this spectacular piece of glass art.  Hats off to Jon for creating such a gorgeous piece!  Jon also makes larger scale architectural installations and furniture from time to time.

Nature Walk with Walt Whitman

What do Paul Stankard, America’s foremost paperweight maker, and Walt Whitman, America’s most beloved poet of nature,  have in common?  Paul loves Walt’s poetry and strives to capture in glass what Whitman captured in words.

Take a look at one of Stankard’s most recent creations, “Walt Whitman’s Nature Walk,” and see what I mean!  I think Whitman would feel proud to be captured eternally in this beautiful glass creation!