Mary Shaffer

Last updated
Mary Shaffer
Born1947 (age 7576)
Walterboro, South Carolina, US
Alma materRhode Island School of Design
Known forStudio glass

Mary Shaffer (born 1944) [1] is an American artist who has worked primarily with glass since the 1970s. [2] She was an early artist in the American Studio Glass Movement. Her works often take slumped (or molten) form, in which found objects are embedded in the glass. [3] She has work in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [4]

Contents

Life

Shaffer was born in 1944 in Walterboro, South Carolina. [5] She grew up in South America. She studied illustration and painting, earning her B.F.A. in Illustration in 1965 from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). [6] [7]

Shaffer has taught at RISD, Wellesley College, and New York University as the Director of the Crafts Program in the 1970s and 1980s. She also managed the Art Center at the University of Maryland. [8]

Work

Shaffer's first experiments were with plate glass slumped over metal bars that were originally intended to be a canvas for painting. [9] During her time in Providence, RI, Shaffer experimented further to test glass' reaction under various conditions, and how it could be manipulated and combined with other materials. The early metal forms used were predominantly made using found objects such as discarded nails, spikes, brick, pulleys and wire. [10] Instead of manipulating the glass herself, Shaffer used gravity creating natural shapes made as a result of heat being applied to glass. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assemblage (art)</span> Art form and technique

Assemblage is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium. It is part of the visual arts and it typically uses found objects, but is not limited to these materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Graves</span> American painter

Nancy Graves was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), the Des Moines Art Center, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Museum of Fine Arts. When Graves was just 29, she was given a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time she was the youngest artist, and fifth woman to achieve this honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ginny Ruffner</span> American glass artist

Ginny Ruffner is a pioneering American glass artist based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her use of the lampworking technique and for her use of borosilicate glass in her painted glass sculptures.

Sherrie Levine is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.

Judy Jensen is an American artist who resides in Austin, Texas. She is best known for her reverse painting on glass, although she incorporates other mixed media into her glass pieces. According to Nancy Bless, Jensen's works "lie somewhere between a collage and a collection."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhode Island School of Design Museum</span> Art & design museum in Providence, Rhode Island

The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the United States, and has seven curatorial departments.

Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific installations in which his glass structures dwarf the visitor. Sound and projected digital imagery are also features of the environmental works.

Jungil Hong also known as Jung-li Hong is a Korean-American artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. She is best known for her psychedelic, cartoon-inspired silkscreen poster art and paintings. More recently she has expanded into textiles.

Linda MacNeil is an American abstract artist, sculptor, and jeweler. She works with glass and metal specializing in contemporary jewelry that combines metalwork with glass to create wearable sculpture. Her focus since 1975 has been sculptural objets d’art and jewelry, and she works in series. MacNeil’s jewelry is considered wearable sculpture and has been her main focus since 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosanne Somerson</span>

Rosanne Somerson is an American-born woodworker, furniture designer/maker, educator, and former President of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). An artist connected with the early years of the Studio Furniture, her work and career have been influential to the field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Falkenstein</span> American artist (1908–1997)

Claire Falkenstein was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry designer, and teacher, most renowned for her often large-scale abstract metal and glass public sculptures. Falkenstein was one of America's most experimental and productive 20th-century artists.

Lila Katzen, born Lila Pell, was an American sculptor of fluid, large-scale metal abstractions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edna Reindel</span> American painter

Edna Reindel was a subtle Surrealist and American Regionalist painter, printmaker, illustrator, sculptor, muralist, and teacher active from the 1920s to the 1960s. She is best known for her work in large-scale murals, New England landscapes, and later for her commissioned work of women workers in WWII shipyard and aircraft industries as published in Life magazine in 1944.

Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.

Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman's works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an associate professor at Wayne State University.

Jes Fan is an artist born in Canada and raised in Hong Kong, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work looks at the intersection of biology and identity, and explores otherness, kinship, queerness and diasporic politics. Fan has exhibited in the United States, UK, Hong Kong, and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merry Renk</span>

Merry Renk, also known as Merry Renk-Curtis, was an American jewelry designer, metalsmith, sculptor and painter. In 1951, she helped to found the Metal Arts Guild (MAG), and served as its president in 1954.

Objects: USA (1969) was a groundbreaking exhibition considered a watershed in the history of the American studio craft movement. It "blurred lines between art and craft, artist and artisan". The exhibition featured a survey collection of craft works by artists from across the United States. Artists were approached and works chosen by New York gallery owner Lee Nordness and curator Paul J. Smith, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. The exhibition was funded by S. C. Johnson & Son, which purchased the pieces for the exhibition and later donated many of them to American museums. The Objects: USA exhibition appeared at thirty-three locations in the United States and Europe. The accompanying exhibition catalog Objects: USA (1970) became a classic reference work.

Jean Blackburn is an American artist and educator known for her paintings, sculptures, installation arts, and illustrations. She is also a professor in the Illustration department at Rhode Island School of Design, since 1982. She has lived in New York City, and Rhode Island.

References

  1. Koplos, Janet; Metcalf, Bruce (2010). Makers: A History of American Studio Craft. University of North Carolina Press. p. 366. ISBN   978-0807895832.
  2. Kingsley, April (1999). "Mary Shaffer, Pioneer". Glass Quarterly. 74: 30–36.
  3. Kangas, Matthew (1996). "Mary Shaffer". Sculpture. 15: 70–71.
  4. Mary, Shaffer. "Mary Shaffer". Artist's own website. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  5. "Mary Shaffer Bio". Grounds For Sculpture. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  6. "Mary Shaffer papers, 1969-2002". Archives of American Art. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
  7. "New: RISD Alumni Win 2010 USA Fellowships". www.risd.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-12.
  8. Art, Archives of American. "Detailed description of the Mary Shaffer papers, 1969-2002 | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
  9. 1 2 Chambers, Karen S. (February 1989). "Modern Alchemist: Mary Shaffer". The World & I. 4: 204–209.
  10. Kingsley, April (Spring 1999). "Mary Shaffer: Pioneer". Glass Magazine. 74: 32.