AS IN ALSO: An Alternative Too

Scott has been working with hot glass for more than 30 years. After completing his BFA at the Appalachian Center for Crafts he moved to Seattle and worked as an assistant for many different artists. Scott also worked as the Hot Shop Coordinator at Pilchuck Glass School for 7 summers. After nearly 10 years in Seattle, he spent 4 years in Japan as Associate Professor at the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art. In the spring of 2007 he received his MFA in glass from The Ohio State University. Scott was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University from 2007-2011. He has also done two residencies at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. Scott has taught workshops around the globe, including Canada, Japan, Pilchuck, and Penland. He and his family returned to Seattle in summer 2011 where Scott is a practicing glass artist and the Glass Studio Manager at Pratt Fine Arts Center.

Jen Elek received her BFA from Alfred University in Metal and Hot Glass sculpture in 1994, after training as a welder in Allentown, PA. She was a student of Michael Scheiner, Dante Marioni, and Ann Wahlstrom at Pilchuck Glass School, and studied with Lino Tagliapietra at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. In addition to doing her own work, the Seattle-based Elek has assisted glass artists such as Dale Chihuly, Kiki Smith, Preston Singletary, Lino Tagliapietra, and others. A vibrant contemporary glass artist, Elek exhibits alongside artists of other mediums, breaking some of the barriers that have kept glass in the realm of craft and offering it as a worthy medium of contemporary art.

Eli Hansen was born in 1979 in Washington state. He studied printmaking under Master Printer Keiko Hara at Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA. His installations, comprised of an assortment of pipettes, flasks and beakers alongside rough-cut wood, rubber tubing and light bulbs, are interrelated in arrangements that reference the fragility of both the precious and the discarded, the authentic and the reproduced. His work has been exhibited internationally at the Maccarone in New York; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA; The American Academy in Rome, Rome, IT; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR; OSL Contemporary, Oslo, Norway; COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada. He has also participated to the Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama, Japan. His works can be found in the Saatchi Collection in London, Fondazione Giuliani in Rome, IT, in the Coleccíon Jumex in Mexico City, in the Boise Art Museum in Boise and in the Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, USA. Hansen currently lives and works in Seattle, USA.

Amy Lemaire is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. An explorer at heart, her work reveals an interest in currency systems, material language poetics, and the production of histories. Lemaire studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and Pratt Institute (MFA). She has taught at Pilchuck Glass School (WA), Salem Community College (NJ), and Penland School and Crafts (NC) and UrbanGlass (NY), where she serves as the Director of the Bead Project, a creative entrepreneurship program for women in NYC.

Born in 1955 in London, Robbie Miller works independently and collaboratively in glass and a variety of other media. Miller met John Drury in 1984 at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. The pair would go on to found the avant-garde art duo CUD. Through their collaborative effort, Miller and Drury have used glass alongside a wide range of media including prints, photographs, paintings, and mosaics in unorthodox combinations to bring humor and non-traditional contexts to the world of glass. As a part of CUD, Miller has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, New York, and served as a visiting artist at many universities throughout the United States. A longtime resident of Seattle, Miller is now based in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continues to make work independently, while still meeting with Drury semi-annually to collaborate on new projects.

Morgan Peterson graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2006. She is currently a member of Dale Chihuly’s glassblowing team and has been a teacher at the Pilchuck Glass School. She has exhibited her work internationally and was most recently included in the group exhibition at Traver Gallery, As In Also: An Alternative Too, curated by John Drury.

Jerry Pethick is a Postwar & Contemporary artist who was born in 1935. His work was featured in several exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including the Catriona Jeffries and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Jerry Pethick’s first artwork to be offered at auction was Untitled at Pacific Galleries in 2014; the work was sold for $20. Jerry Pethick has been featured in articles for the Artipedia and the “Canadian Art”.

George Sawchuk was born in the late 1920s in Kenora, Ontario, one of three sons of a Polish mother and Russian father. He rejected formal education at the age of thirteen to begin a thirty-eight-year career as an itinerant laborer, but his early studies left an indelible mark throughout his career. Sawchuk’s work reflects his history, including his early education in a traditional Roman Catholic school, where he took lessons in Russian language and world politics. The twin touchstones of Christian and Soviet thought remained dominant in his philosophy.

Buster Simpson was born in Michigan in 1942, and became interested in art while studying in Flint. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduating with an MFA in 1969. In the early 1970s, Simpson gave a talk at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he met Dale Chihuly, who invited Simpson to join the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. Simpson later relocated to Seattle, where he still lives and works. Simpson makes use of glass, steel, photography, and found objects in his work. His projects have included a wide array of sculptural work, as well as public art installations and street performances. In 2013, Simpson’s first retrospective, Buster Simpson: Surveyor was hosted by the Frye Art Museum.

A graduate of Emporia State University’s glass program, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, Megan decided to pursue a career in glass when still in High School. Relocating to Washington state, it is there, apprenticing under glass sculptor Karen Willenbrink-Johnson, that Stelljes was also afforded the opportunity to create ties with the Pilchuck Glass School. Stelljes has recently co-founded with her husband Conor McClellan and partners Nicole and James Anderegg, Gray Barn Studios, a glass facility in Arlington, Washington.

Leo Tecosky creates sculpture and installation using traditional glassblowing and neon-bending techniques, as well as screen printing and found and constructed elements. With a BA in Fine Art from Alfred University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Tecosky teaches at studios and schools in Brooklyn, nationally, and internationally. He lives and works in Brooklyn, blowing glass and maintaining a studio practice.

Simon Klenell was born in 1985 in Sunne, Sweden. He studied glass at the National School of Glass in Orrefors, located in southern Sweden. As a craft artist primarily working in glass, Klenell’s process is driven by his technical skills, including the intricate techniques of blowing and cutting glass into objects with a non-functional focus. Klenell now lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.