PROVENANCE 1995 - 2016 Featuring a Selection of Works from the Archives of Lino Tagliapietra

October 26, 2020 Kim Saul

We are very pleased for this special opportunity to present these works from the archives of Maestro Lino Tagliapietra.

Several of these works represent the few remaining in a particular series. Some of these works have been included in museum exhibitions during the past two decades. These include the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Museum of Glass Tacoma, WA; the Flint Institute of Arts, MI; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the three museum exhibits which Schantz Galleries helped support, include the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah WI; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL, and the Morris Museum of Art, Morristown, NJ. It is true, that it would take another museum retrospective to bring the full oeuvre of his work to date into the broadest possible perspective, however, we have made this effort to share a collection of works from 1995 - 2016. We are honored to represent Lino Tagliapietra and hope you will enjoy this presentation.

Jim Schantz and Kim Saul

October, 2020

tagliapietra studio focus

view works currently at the gallery…

Hopi, 1995 13.75 x 13.75 x 13.75 — *Hopi,* 1995 13.75 x 13.75 x 13.75

STUDIO FOCUS | DAVID HUCHTHAUSEN

October 15, 2020 Jeanne Koles

no risk, no reward…

David Huchthausen embodies the figure of speech “no risk, no reward.” He doggedly preservers in everything he does, driven by an internal motivation to explore, learn, invent, push. From an early age, he wanted to figure things out, work hard, and pursue his passions. His artwork, which references his interests in architecture, astronomy, history, and the curiosities of humanity and the spirit, is a deliberately enigmatic invitation into a universe of ever-shifting perspectives and synergetic forces.

Huchthausen sees his 50 years in glass in an arc, one thing building upon the next. His first love was architecture, but early on he predicted the waning of the one-man architecture firm and set his sights elsewhere. While a work-study student in the ceramics department at the University of Wisconsin, Wausau, Huchthausen discovered an old glass furnace. He had always been fascinated by glass in architecture, so he blew the dust off the furnace and learned how it worked. Huchthausen knows how to weld, is a good woodworker, and in general subscribes to the philosophy that if you want to know how to do something, you put in the work and figure it out. Soaking up the sparse glass knowledge of those around him, he taught himself the basics. He melted 475 glass marbles developed by Dominic Labino for pulling fiberglass strands, for lack of access to other materials. Soon, he was teaching a night class and selling at fairs. In the early 1970s, he became one of Harvey Littleton’s graduate assistants at University of Wisconsin, Madison, helping to build his first electric furnace, revitalizing equipment, and rebuilding the coldworking shops. Huchthausen has since become a pioneer in coldworking techniques—complex processes that he developed “by the seat of his pants over a long period of time” which suits his hardworking and tenacious disposition. In 1974, at the invitation of glass innovator Joel Myers, Huchthausen went to Illinois State University to finish his MFA then take over their glass program while Myers was on sabbatical. In 1977, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in the J&L Lobmeyr Studios in Vienna. After Vienna, Huchthausen served as Design Director for Milropa Studios in New York and as a university professor in Tennessee.

Huchthausen has been a collector since childhood, and as soon he as could he started accumulating. He acquired copious amounts of material—like Vitrolite (a commercially-produced glass made as an inexpensive substitute for stone in architectural facades), grid glass made by the Corning factory in the 1930s for fluorescent light diffusing screens, palettes of C-grade stock from Schott Optical, and three tons of thick black glass tabletops from an Art Deco restaurant in the Buffalo, NY train station. The sculptures he makes today, often using a dozen types of glass, are a history lesson and homage to the variety of glass produced over the past 80 years. His love of architecture and collecting led him to purchase, among other buildings in Seattle, the extraordinary 150,000 square-foot Bemis Brothers Bag Building, which he redeveloped into artists’ lofts, office, manufacturing, and warehouse space. His two-story loft there is a visual panoply of 20th century decorative arts and glass items that fascinate and influence him. He is also drawn to primitive sculptures, ritualistic objects that embody a spiritual realm he feels complements the metaphysical space of his own, technologically modern, hard-edged glass art.

….the final polish of an Asteroid Sphere in the studio.

Even during the pandemic, in a large studio about one mile south of his loft, Huchthausen and his assistants continued their tag team operation, devoting countless hours to individual pieces. To begin the labor-intensive process, colored glass fragments are thoughtfully arranged then placed atop or within carved optical glass. Through careful lamination—then repeated cutting, sawing, machining, polishing, buffing, and curing— pristine and riveting sculptures slowly emerge. Light rays passing through the fractures and lenses of the sculpture are halted and redirected. Embedded color patterns either bend in hard-edged distortions inside the sculpture or reflect in diaphanous pools of color around it.

Kristin Elliot working at Huchthausen’s Studio.

In 2019, Huchthausen’s long-time studio manager, Kristin Elliot, moved to Tacoma to set up her own studio. A recent hire, Nathaniel Gauthier (who turned out to be great), took over the position. Both to facilitate Nathaniel’s training, and in sensitivity to the economic turndown during the pandemic, Huchthausen chose to create smaller works at a more accessible price point. Enter the Asteroid series, a fully volumetric, 360-degree experience of visual transformation unfolding as the viewer moves around or shifts the piece. While these works resonate visually and metaphorically with the infinite expanse of outer space, at certain angles the inner reflections take the form or architectural elements such as stairs and windows (a nod to Huchthausen’s background), as though the viewer is traveling both beyond and within.

A few years ago, Huchthausen acquiesced to the persistent encouragement of Susan Warner (then Director of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma) to do a residency in their hotshop. There, and later in the studio in with works such as Stardust Reliquary and Birth of a Star, he experimented with combining cast and blown pieces, embedding spheres, and adding figures cut from Spectrum sheet glass to the surface (a full-circle orbit back to his early Fantasy Vessels, in which thick glass forms were decorated with layers of abstract landscapes, and floating figures cast shadows onto the backgrounds). According to Scientific American, “A star is born when atoms of light elements are squeezed under enough pressure for their nuclei to undergo fusion. All stars are the result of a balance of forces … As long as the inward force of gravity and the outward force generated by the fusion reactions are equal, the star remains stable.” It is an apt metaphor for the work and life of David Huchthausen, who balances the historic with the cutting-edge, the ethereal with the material, vibrant color with translucence and clarity, physical labor with the joyful respite of vintage cars, old wooden boats, and trips to the Philippines (where he owns a small resort). Lastly, there is the balance of control over the creative process with the release of sharing the work. Huchthausen has said:

“Creation is a continual and evolutionary process, constantly digesting and reevaluating past experiences and current perspectives … I constantly strive to generate a strange and curious quality that both tantalizes and challenges the viewer to develop his own response system. The work must have an existence of its own to have any real significance.”

David Huchthausen’s Echo Chambers

This 2004 PBS DVD shows the technical details of David’s sculptural process. Craig Sawchuck Productions.

Available Work by David Huchthausen…

Asteriod Series, 2020

Each sphere is 8” in diameter.

Horizon Line, 2017

Constructed glass sculpture , 10 x 10 x 10"

Jupiter Sequence, 2014

Cut, laminated and polished glass, 10" diameter

Matrix, 2001

Constructed glass sculpture, 15 1/4 x 7 1/4 x 6"

New Form

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About the Artist…

David Huchthause in his studio. M Stubblefield photo.

David Huchthausen was one of the first artists of the Studio Glass Movement to emphasize cold working fabrication techniques such as cutting, sawing, laminating, and optical polishing. Within his crystal-clear geometric forms, Huchthausen integrates complex shapes, concave lenses and intricate color panels, refracting light as it hits the shapes and reflecting colored glass patterns in the fractures and lenses below and around them. The colored glass patterns occasionally include dichroic glass, a composite non-translucent product made by stacking layers of glass with micro-layers of metals and oxides which, depending on the angle at which they are viewed, can cause an array of colors to display. Huchthausen’s sculptural narrative has always been enigmatic by design, challenging the viewer with its curious and unknowable quality.

With hundreds of one-man and group exhibitions on his resume, Huchthausen is considered a leader in the field. His work is represented in over 75 public collections, including: The Corning Museum(NY); The Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); The Detroit Institute of Arts (MI); The High Museum(Atlanta, GA); The Hokkaido Museum (Sapporo, Japan); The Los Angeles County Museum (CA); The Metropolitan Museum (New York, NY); The Museum of Fine Art (Dusseldorf, Germany); The Museum of Fine Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland); La Musée de Verre (Liège, Belgium); The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); The Tacoma Art Museum (WA); and many more.

STUDIO FOCUS | PAVEL NOVAK

October 4, 2020 Kim Saul

working with the 4th dimension…

An interview with Pavel Novak by Schantz Galleries Associate, Katy Holt.

SG: Tell me about your studio space?

PN: My studio is attached to my home. It is an intimate space packed with machines and raw glass. I tend to work in a whirlwind, and have many pieces in various states of being made at any given time.

SG: Where do you get inspiration from?

PN: My work is inspired by clean lines and vivid colors. I work hard to create complex, kaleidoscopic reflections within a seemingly simple outer shape. My work has a geometrically architectural feel that often contains a surprisingly complex interior, and changes as the viewer moves around the piece.

SG: Can you tell me a little bit about your process? Do you design everything ahead of time? How much do you improvise?

PN: I keep a sketchbook of ideas, and oftentimes, I make a 3 dimensional model in Styrofoam before I even touch the glass so that I can ensure the finished piece will be balanced before I waste any material finding out the hard way that my idea will not work. I like to say that I know exactly how my pieces will turn out before I start, but in reality, I’d say that I start with 80% of the idea, and leave myself some room for experimentation. Often times a new direction comes to me while I’m working with the glass in my hands that couldn’t have come to me in any other way.

SG: At what point in your career did you start working with these reflections in your work? What was the process of learning how to do that like?

PN: I choose to work in the manner that I do because, I realized early on in my glass education that the type of glass that I use, optical glass, is the only material with 4 dimensions. The first three are obvious, but I consider the reflections to be the 4th dimension. I try to exploit the reflections to their limits because, to me, it is the most important quality of my materials, and no other material can produce the same effect.

After working with optical glass for almost 30 years, I’ve come to embrace the angles and geometry that go into the creation of the reflections I so desire, but in reality, there is always a small element of surprise when I see the finished piece.

SG: You still have a lot of family and ties to the Czech Republic and visit often correct? For our Studio Focus we like to highlight the ways each artist lives have been affected by the current Covid situation and the ways it has impacted the world our gallery readers may not be as aware of… I was wondering if you know how things have been in the Czech Republic? How is your family overseas?

PN: The truth is that the Czech Republic had a much earlier start in prevention. Mask wearing was mandated almost from the very beginning, so the rate of transmission was not nearly happening in the same numbers that we see here in the US. They returned to a somewhat normal version of life, and the numbers spiked again, and starting this Sunday, they will be on a nationwide 30 day lockdown.

At the moment, my main focus is my family here. I have a 11 year old son who is attending the 5th grade virtually. While this has certainly been a challenging period of time, it has brought my family closer and given us time together that we wouldn’t have had in any other situation.

A sampling of works by Pavel Novak:

Helix, 7 x 7 x 2.5”

Pinnacle, 14 x 8 x 8”

Chroma, 7 x 7 x 7”

Red Horizon, 6 x 10 x 6”

Chimera, 6 x 6 x 6”

Golden Aura, 6 x 6 x 6”

Golden Apex, 9.5 x 7 x 7”

Infinity, 7 x 7 x 7”

Obelisk, 9.5 x 4.5 x 4.5"

The cold-work glass by artist Pavel Novak stands out for its stunning reflections and planes of color that shine prismatically. Using lenses in his laminated, optic crystal glass work, Novak’s pieces often cause the viewer to question what is physical, and what is reflected. Through his lenses the inner corners of the sculpture, colored planes, and/or etched patterns all reflect each other to create a unique composition that is revealed through the lens. This optical illusion is a hidden secret waiting to be revealed to viewers in each work that makes Pavel Novak’s pieces truly extraordinary.

Novak works with the “coldworking” process, which begins with a large piece of optical glass he then grinds and cuts away at to create his work using different grades silicon carbide. His next step is to polish the work using a felt wheel with pumice and cerium oxide, before finally coloring etching, sand blasting and/or laminating the glass to achieve his result. This type of glass work is traditional in his home country of the Czech Republic, where Novak began his education and subsequent career in glass at the age of 14.

Novak was introduced to glass by a family friend, who gave him a tour of the glass factory he worked in as part of Pavel’s search for a career (young adults chose their career after completing middle school in, what was still at that time, Czechoslovakia). Instantly drawn to the medium, Novak began studying at Glass School in Novy Bor, widely famous for its exquisite glass. It was there that a school aptitude test showcased his skills in geometry and math which lead him to the cold-working process of glass sculpting that is now his trademark.

After a short stint working at one of the largest glass factories in the Czech Republic, Crystalex, Novak went back to the Novy Bor to teach. A year and a half into his time teaching, he met Vladimira Klumpar who hired him to be an assistant to her husband Michael Pavlik here in the US on summer breaks from teaching. It was Michael Pavlik who then introduced a young Pavel Novak to Martin Rosol, his long-time friend and fellow Czech glass artist. This time working in the US sparked an interest in Novak to move to the states where he could work more freely and be better recognized for his talents. Something he eventually achieved after years of six-month long stints in the United States. A full American citizen as of 2012, Novak still has many ties back home in Czech Republic and carries in his heart and his work a love for his home and its long-standing glass working tradition.

Now able to develop his own body of work and fully explore his creativity, Novak is constantly playing with the effect of light and reflection. His pieces often feature lenses, beautifully illustrating how glass has the unique ability to create optical illusions and compositions that change with perspective and light. Novak has seemingly endless possibilities for his planes of color and never-ending corridors of kaleidoscopic geometry.

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