Mary Shaffer | |
---|---|
Born | 1947 (age 76–77) Walterboro, South Carolina, US |
Alma mater | Rhode Island School of Design |
Known for | Studio glass |
Mary Shaffer (born 1947) [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]
Shaffer was born in 1947 in Walterboro, South Carolina, [5] and 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]
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]
Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks in the fine arts. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement, and typically serve no useful function. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftsmen in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.
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.
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.
Claire Zeisler was an American fiber artist who expanded the expressive qualities of knotted and braided threads, pioneering large-scale freestanding sculptures in this medium. Throughout her career Zeisler sought to create "large, strong, single images" with fiber.
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."
Italo Scanga, an Italian-born American visual artist and educator. He was known for his sculptures, ceramics, glass, prints, and, paintings, working as a neo-Dadaist, neo-Expressionist, and neo-Cubist; his art was mostly created from found objects and/or ordinary objects. Scanga taught for many years at the University of California, San Diego.
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.
Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.
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 an 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.
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.
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.
Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.
Daphne Farago was an art collector and philanthropist.
Michael Sherrill is an American ceramist and sculptor. Primarily self-taught, Sherrill's early work in the 1970s and 1980s focused on creating functional pieces in clay before turning to sculptural artwork in porcelain and metal in the 1990s. Sherrill lives and works in Bat Cave, North Carolina.
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.