Charlie Parriott, Cappy Thompson and Dick Weiss

Charlie Parriott is an American born glass artist and consultant living and working in Seattle, Washington and Prague, Czech Republic. Parriott has been working with glass in commercial and artistic application since 1972. He is one of the few Americans to have studied with and later taught with Czech sculptor and pedagogue, Stanislav Libensky, in the 1980s. In 2001, after a 12-year stint as colorist and consultant tor the Chihuly Studio, Parriott moved to direct construction and program development of the hot glass studio for the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington. Parriott set the Guinness Book world record for producing the world’s largest bottle of wine in 2004. Currently, Charlie pursues his own artistic career while continuing to fabricate challenging works for other artists and companies. He is a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

For his most recent body of work, featured in the Traver Gallery exhibition Old Friends, New Work, Charlie worked with master engraver Pavlina Čambalová, to realize his designs. Recognized internationally for her accomplishments as an engraver, Čambalová has been the recipient of several awards including the Main Award for glass engraving from the Symposium of Schools of Applied Arts, the Moser Company Award, the Commendation of the Jury of the Internationaler Glaskunstpreis der Stadt Rheinbach in 2007; and a 2012 award from Craft and Art in Glass in the engraved glass category. Click here to watch a video by Material Times about Pavlina Čambalová engraving process.

Cappy Thompson has been painting glass since 1976. She started her career as a stained glass painter and became internationally recognized for her reverse-painted narratives on glass using the grisaille (or gray-tonal) painting technique. Her works have been shown and collected internationally. Recent works include architectural-scale public art installations in painted glass at Sea-Tac Airport, The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and other Public sites.

“For me, as a narrative painter, the issue has always been content. The issue wasn’t glass, the material that I chose some 37 years ago. Nor was it the painting technique—grisaille or gray-tonal painting—that I taught myself to use. My work—which spans several decades and a variety of scales from the intimate to the monumental—has always been driven by content.

Early in my career I was drawn to the images, symbols and painting of the medieval period—but not just the Christian tradition of Western Europe. I loved the content of Hindu, Pagan, Judaic, Buddhist and Islamic painting as well.

These were images created before the invention of “art” as we know it—before painters controlled the content of their work. These were works decreed by religious and political authorities to depict the magnificence and beauty of the natural and divine order.

What I loved was the naïve naturalism and devout simplicity of that period—like the folk art of any period.

I started by designing and painting glass panels based on the narrative content of mythology, fables and folktales, drawn in oblique projection, with transparent jewel-like colors. Later I painted similar narratives on glass vessels.

About fifteen years ago I found myself moving away from mythological narrative and toward compositions on vessels that drew upon images and themes from my personal life. Elements would drift up and assemble into picture-poems that seemed to have a life of their own.

I began to understand these works as reflections of the spiritual and psychological issues in my life. I painted members of my family and myself in a kind of autobiographical fantasy, working with the mythopoetic materials of my life. I cast myself into scenes from various spiritual traditions.
This began an autobiographical exploration of world culture and spirituality that continues to the present.
I see now, after more than three decades of work, that I am like those medieval painters striving to express magnificence and beauty. But my expression focuses on the human experience of goodness, of hope and of love”.

Weiss was born in Everett Washington and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University. He began teaching at Pilchuck Glass School in 1982, and has completed commissions for the Bellevue Art Museum, Washington, the Port of Shanghai, Shanghai, China, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Washington, and the University of Washington, Seattle. His work can be found in impressive collections around the world including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.