Studio Focus | Dan Friday

offering gratitude through creativity

Dan Friday, with a blown glass canoe paddle.

A member of the Lummi Nation, Dan Friday has grown up around traditional Native American and Lummi Tribe artistic practices his entire life. In his own work he immortalizes these traditional artistic practices in the new contemporary art format of glass, making his work both of the moment and grounded in the past.

Having studied under the very best at Pilchuck, Friday moved to work at the highly established Chihuly Boathouse Studio, Pilchuck Glass School, and Tacoma Glass Museum Teams. In 2007 he began his own studio, Friday Glass, in Seattle’s historic Fremont district, a fitting home for this lifelong Washington State resident. Here in his studio he creates his own work often influenced by his Lummi tribal roots and artistic family traditions.

“Creativity was fostered in me by my family from an early age. Living without TV and knowing our rich cultural heritage of the Lummi Nation, meant that making things with our hands was a regular activity.” 

In Friday’s studio, these long practiced traditional tribal art forms are adapted; totem poles and baskets take on new meaning and form along with animals of importance to the Lummi Tribe. All now made to last for generations in the medium of glass and creating a new method of storytelling. Much of Friday’s work also memorializes his family in making these pieces and are full of history and personal meaning.

“My great-grandfather, Joseph Hillaire, is a pretty well renowned totem pole carver, and he is a large influence on me. I do some work in totems...obviously they are not the same because of the nature of working with glass. That is one of the things I really enjoy quite a bit about glass - being able to explore these forms and ideas. I say it is a contemporary medium, but also that in this area, (Seattle), it also has such a long history. “…Like when I studied at the Corning Museum of Glass for my recent residency, you go in there and look at a 4000-year-old face of Cleopatra that looks like it could have been made yesterday. Even though glass is considered fragile, it has such a resilience. Many of my grandfather's totem poles have returned to the earth just through decay, that is just the nature of artwork of native people in this area.”

Joe Hilliare with some of his totem carvings.

Going on to explain, “it is exciting to think these glass creations I make will live on for quite a while. Whether or not they break or come apart, they will not deteriorate. There will be a glass totem thousands of years from now with my name scratched on it and that is an interesting feeling.”

 Friday’s great-great-grandfather was also an influential Lummi tribal artist. He established a popular dance troupe in the 1930’s who went on to perform at the World’s Fair in 1962, where he also had a Totem Pole commissioned and displayed.

Xa-Tel-Ek, Frank Hillaire

The Setting Sun Dancers

Dan’s aunt continued the tradition of artistic expression through her baskets and was a Lummi Master Weaver, some of her blankets can now be seen featured in the Smithsonian in DC. In Friday’s own work, a series of woven glass baskets forever pay homage to his aunt and are known as Aunt Fran’s Baskets Series.  

Aunt Fran James with some of her baskets.

“The Basket Series is something I started after my Aunt, Fran James, passed away about 6 years ago. I really wish she could have seen them, because she was so paramount to me when starting my career.” Dan says of his Aunt’s encouragement to make his pieces and explore his own creativity (instead of following a career as a hired hand on various glass teams). “She was paramount in saying “you have got to find your own voice” and I can’t thank her enough (for that).”, he says with fondness.

Likewise, his statuesque bear figures stand as shining glass symbols of his family. “We are the bear family.” He told us, “Named for my great-grandfather Frank Hillaire, it is the “Hillaire Bear”. He was not a chief, but a very prominent member not just in our tribe but the whole region. As he got older, he would say ‘keep my fires burning’.”

 

Keeping those creative fires burning is something Friday takes to heart in his molten works of bear and other animals significant to the tribe such as owls and ravens. These pieces dance with of color and patterns, often in unexpectedly delightful ways.

“A lot of it comes from my time working with Dale.” Friday says of his inspirations and the way he has come to see color. Friday has been a glassworker at the Chihuly Boathouse since 2000, helping bring to life Dale Chihuly’s designs and working with one of the largest teams in glass. “He (Chihuly) is famously quoted for saying ‘there is no color I don’t like’ and he uses all of them within the color palette. And that has definitely broadened my appreciation of just the large spectrum of color.”

Going on to explain the lessons he has picked up from working with Chihuly, “...part of the trick is how to apply colors so they complement each other, I used a load of colors and I like to use a lot of vibrant colors, but I also like them to have harmony to them too... Sometimes it isn't even a color combination that initially you think will go together, but you have to look at the proportion of a color. Like 98% of something, then just a pinstripe or accent of another color. You can get colors that may not mesh well together to find a way to fit if you are patient enough.”

 

This riot of color, which can be as seamlessly free flowing as the aurora borealis or a precise pattern of caning work, is what so often attracts viewers to Friday’s pieces. All of which have a certain soft, circular simplicity to their silhouette, which acts as the perfect form to showcase all that color.

Owl Totem

In addition to paying tribute to his roots in his work, Friday makes sure to include a little piece of himself in each work. In addition to his signature which he signs each piece, Dan has added his own personal symbol somewhere on each. One circle inside of another, it is an abstracted eye he considers his mark.

“It is a symbol I have been drawing since I was a little kid, and it has been drawn since my first carvings as a kid. It is an eye and it is typical in north west coastal works. I like to think of them as planets too. I enjoy how all things want to be round, especially when you work with glass, things spinning, that centrical force.”

As new life is breathed into tradition inside the walls of Friday’s glass studio, a new type of Native American relic is created to be passed down and tell the stories and traditions of the Lummi Nation for many years to come.

~Katy Holt

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New Form

Lightening Bear, 2022

5.75 x 9 x 2”

Sage Basket, 2018

8.5 x 9 x 9"

Polar Bear, 2022

Merletto Cane, 7 x 10 x 2.5”

Aurora Bear, 2022

7 x 11 x 3”

Clam Bowl, 2022

4.75 x 15 x 12”

Lightening Bear, 2022

7x 12 x 3”

Small Owl Totem, 2022

5 x 6 x 3”

Working at the Museum of Glass

STUDIO FOCUS | ADAM WAIMON

carving moments of natural beauty…

The artist conversing with nature.

Each piece of Adam Waimon’s glass art has a life of its own. “I create a relationship with my work, these pieces - believe it or not - travel with me. They will come from the studio with me to my home, so they can sit on my table, so I can look at them and really connect with them.” Waimon told us in our recent Studio Focus interview “It just allows me to spend more time with them. And seeing them in different settings and in different lights, that allows me to really find the right balance of the engraving and how I want to carve it.”

Adam Waimon is a young glass artist living and working in Rhode Island. Inspired by nature and often the majesty of the Rhode Island coastline, Waimon creates abstract pieces that recreate the fleeting moments of beauty he finds in nature through flowing shapes of color and texture.

Adam Working in Josh Bernbaum's Studio.

Waimon can be found in his studio space blowing glass with an assistant (or more recently solo due to COVID-19 circumstances) about once a week and spending most of the remainder of his time in the engraving studio painstakingly working on the surface of a piece. Going into the first stage of his process, the glass blowing, with an abstract and broad idea in mind and a few simple and loose sketches, he begins to create his ongoing dialogue with each glass piece.

“I have a good idea of what I want the final work to look like” he tells us “but the glassblowing portion of the process….it is so alive. There is so much movement that occurs and you have to adapt through the process.” Once a work is begun Waimon sits with it in a clean white studio space to sketch on it and study its shape before beginning his engraving process. Each work is carved uniquely to relate back to a balance within its own individual form. “That is really where a majority of the time is spent; I am taking lots of time removing the surface and trying to get a lot of depth into the surface of the piece”. Often cutting as much as half an inch of a silica soda lime glass away (which is much harder than leaded glass, and as a result much more time consuming and difficult to carve into). “There is always going to be some variation in the design” he tells us of his carving process “and I am open to that variation in the process”.

Golden Hour, 2020, (Detail) Blown and Engraved

“Instead of trying to push it into what I want it to be” He goes on to explain the dialogue he has with each work,  “I try to work with the piece and learn how to make those uncertainties in the process work to my advantage. I think that is really coming through in my most recent work at Schantz Galleries. Though they are very much a series of work and cohesive, they are all a bit different. That comes from the variations of what comes in the process. And it can be as simple as using a certain color with a different working property, so I try to use those uncertainties to my advantage and see what comes of it.”

In his pieces currently on display at Schantz Galleries Waimon is moving into a new stage of his work, the use of color. “I always tried to use a minimal amount of color because I was always studying the glass blowing process and focusing on the form. And to do that I decided it would be best to keep my color palette very simple. As I have improved, and my artistic practice has become stronger I found it was time for me to start adding color” he told us. “You have to be an artist and a technician” he went on to say of the new challenges adding colored glass has presented to his work. There is an emotional charge to this new layer of dialogue presented in Waimon’s pieces on display at the gallery. The glowing colors and depth and emotion behind the textured surface that has been sandblasted then fire polished to mimic in both mood and visual presence of the shimmering glossy yet rigidly sharp surface of waves rippling over the ocean.

This is showcased exquisitely in Waimon’s piece Golden Hour, 2020 where the cascades of ocean blues and sunset orange dance together perfectly to capture the feeling of that moment where we all look our camera ready best and feel the soft glow of the beauty held in our own dialogue with nature. His other works in the gallery swirl with magnificent sea blues a viewer could get as easily lost in as an ocean. While color may be a newer theme in Waimon’s work, it is something he has been studying his whole life.

Born in Connecticut to a family of artists, few people have spent as much time in an art studio as Adam Waimon. His mother is a painter and printmaker, his father a ceramicist, and his grandmother a painter and all of them exposed him to art and creativity from an early age. Prints and paintings by Waimon’s mother surround him at home giving him daily inspiration in color use. In fact, his family's artistic eye for color goes back many generations “my great grandfather worked at a hardware store in Harlem in the 1930’s that sold only a few paint colors but he would mix custom colors for customers before this was a common thing. Our family’s fascination with color spans nearly a century.” He told us. And it was on a family trip to Italy just before he entered high school that he found his love for glass. On this trip Waimon made his first visit to the island of Murano, known internationally for its time-honored traditions of glassmaking, and was instantly mesmerized with the malleability of the molten medium.

Some of Adam’s photos illustrate his source of inspiration, derived from his time spent at the edge of the land and water where they meet the sky.

In his own work Waimon draws stylistic inspiration from his mother's use of atmospheric coloring, his grandmother's abstracted depictions, and his father's use of 3D sculptural forms to create a style that is his own culmination of their influences to depict moments in nature that spark interest and inspire him. “I am interested in how land, water, and the atmosphere interact” seeking to depict a balance in each of his works that he finds in this natural relationship. Most often finding strong inspiration on the coastline of Rhode Island. Waimon finds inspiration in the colors and textures created by these fleeting moments of natural beauty that wash in and out with the ocean tides.

It was also Waimon’s family that introduced him to Schantz Galleries. Years ago, his family took a then young Waimon to visit the gallery on day trips to the Berkshires. Little did he know one day he would find his way back to the gallery as an adult, this time to showcase his own work.

Katy Holt for Schantz Galleries

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AVAILABLE WORKS BY ADAM WAIMON

ADAM WAIMON BIOGRAPHY

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New Form

Sea Pods, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 13 x 14 x 6”

Shallow Waters, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 20 x 7 x 3”

July Waters, 2021

Blown and engraved glass, 16 x 6 x 6”

Golden Hour, 2020

Blown and engraved glass, 15 x 8 x 3”

Arial Seascape, 2019

Blown and engraved glass, 15 x 8 x 3”

STUDIO FOCUS | JASON CHRISTIAN

Growing up in a small town on Whidbey Island in the heart of the Puget Sound of Washington State, Jason Christian was almost destined to fall in love with glass art. Originally he believed he was bound for a blue-collar career; he was a truck-driver and worked various odd jobs until the age of 21 when, after following a suggestion from his mother, who read about hot shops in a magazine, Christian found and fell in love with the medium that would become his trademark – glass.

As Christian came of age in his 20’s, so did the glass art movement around him. He was surrounded by the biggest and best names in glass art while at home in Seattle, Washington. He began his training and subsequent career as a batch charger, ensuring the raw materials enter the furnace correctly and result in the desired batch of glass. The glass art scene in Seattle was in full force and becoming a destination for artists and collectors, evolving right alongside Christian himself.

During that time, Jason learned via his assistance to artists including Lino Tagliapietra, Martin Blank, Preston Singletary, and Nancy Callan. He has been a part of Chihuly’s team for almost a decade now, where he has had the opportunity to work alongside other skilled artists, including Jim Mongrain and the late Pino Signoretto.

Green Reticello Vessel, in the gallery.

Christian also honed his skills through residencies, at the Corning Glass Museum, the Pilchuck Glass School, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, as well as sharing his expertise through demonstrating internationally in Turkey, and Finland, as well as in the United States at Pilchuck, Urban Glass, and the Penland School of Craft. While he has become familiar with many of the best hot shops in the United States, it is in his own Seattle studio next to his home where he creates commissions for other artists as well as his own unique works.

While the normally bustling city of Seattle turned into what Christian described as a “ghost town” during quarantine he was able to keep busy. Christian works in his studio, which he built slowly over several years, inside what was once a detached garage. Residing in a small section of the large “Best Family Farm”, Christian has put much of his own time into improving and personalizing the home over the years.

As he is currently getting back to his role in the Chihuly Studio, Christian can see things changing actively throughout the glass medium as he works “we are taking extra measures to distance as much as we can and we’re all wearing either a face shield or a mask and the team is much smaller than before … maybe half the size” Christian remarks. “It’s weird, because I started blowing glass at the height of what we know as the Seattle glass scene, now we are seeing it change along with the city itself, and it is all (changing) dramatically.” Going on to explain the way he learned just over 20 years ago, by riding his bike into downtown and showing up in Seattle Studios (which were in abundance at the time due to low rents in the city of Seattle and the booming success of Pilchuck) taking whatever available spot he could to learn from experience or observation, “wouldn’t be possible today”.

Detail of reticello.

In Christian’s work, we see the result of years of practice and technical study under Italian masters combined with the spirit of a modern American boldness which runs through the heart of Seattle. The Italian influence can surely be found in Christian’s work with his use of the classical Venetian technique of reticello. Two separate bowl forms with cane-work, combined hot, one inside the other, trapping hundreds of tiny bubbles of air, one between each crisscrossed cane. Christian most notably uses the technique to develop a series of work referencing 18th century Fabergé imperial coronation eggs, objects known for the intricacy of their small, ornate adornment.

Christian’s eggs are scaled up to be large, blown forms carefully rounded, embellished with sculpted shapes. Jason says that creating the reticello egg is some of his most challenging work, and a “labor of love”, tested by getting the reticello tight and consistent, the proportions correct, and the gold leaf clean and level. Many of Christian’s works are clear or white, leaving the viewer with the impression of a lace-like pattern. When he incorporates color, it is with obvious intention, resulting in a stunning, modern boldness. The effect is a tribute to the inherent beauty of classically designed glass originating in Italy centuries ago, beautifully juxtaposed with a contemporary, innovative creativity.

Video of Yo-yo.

In a recent conversation with the artist, he told a heartwarming story about his newest series, Yo-Yo. It is about the small gestures, which make big impressions, that we carry with us…

Growing up on in a remote town on Whidbey Island, Jason lived with his father due to the divorce of his parents. His mother lived in Manhattan, and as a young boy, the first time he visited her in the city, he was completely taken with everything there, as you can imagine. He met his step-father for the first time, who bought him one of those two toned yo-yo’s, and taught him how to work it. That memory has stayed with him throughout his life, and with the approaching birth of his own, first child this past August, he has titled one of the sculptures, Around the Corner. It’s a nice circle of reflection, not only in regard to the birth of his own son, but also a nod to the fact that his mother gave him the impetus to try his hand at glass!

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New Form

Volpe, 2022

20 x 9 x 9"