Inspiring Glass Artist Richard Parrish

The teaching assistant for Catharine Newell's glass class at the Studio in Corning, NY was glass artist Richard Parrish (who was off to teach his own glass class at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle WA after ours). Richard had been Catharine's teaching assistant before and fortunately their working relationship was great one. As students we benefitted the most from this combo because each artist was so dramatically different yet very stimulated by the other's art.

What on Earth? by Richard Parrish 2007 Kiln-formed and coldworked glass panel

Richard has moved on from a career in Architecture and has roots in Montana. Although often subtle or invisible Richard's work is very much informed by the figurative. The above series of work (which really resonate with topographical earth views) are my favorite. However, Richard also does architectural commissions, glass tapestries, studio productions plates. He sells some of these art pieces on Artnet if you are interested in purchasing one. While we were in class together my class mates and I were privileged to see Richard make some TESTS for future work and now you can be just as lucky too!

Check out these dimensional glass powder and kiln-formed tile- tests, in which Richard is investigating surface textures, colors relationships, dimension and landscapes!

Test1 (and my personal favorite)test2test3

More Sandblasted Glass from my time in Corning

Here are some sneak peeks at some more of my earlier sandblasted glass pieces from my time at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Since I am really interested in graphic design and illustration I really tried to combine these varied interests. Often glass surface treatment is not narrative, but more decorative in nature. However, the images that I developed for the surface manipulation was more personal with a definitive narrative, so my interest in illustration and graphic line really started to show up.

Popped Balloon by marisol diaz

With this particular image - the assignment was to blast a hole entirely through the glass...I couldn't see how I would do that in manner that made sense me, unless it was through a heart. This piece is actually slightly smaller (than the on screen size) in real life and that adds to its charm - at this scale and with the flatness of the photograph - it loses some of its graphic pop.

Paz by marisol diaz

This particular image is actually much larger than this image (8 1/2' x 11') and the assignment was to create variations in the blasting tones, such as gradations. Since I was coming up with my design ideas on the fly (with no preset plan) I was even surprised to see the imagery I formed, all of which had to be cut out with an exacto knife of a protective sheet (buttercut) in stages to blast (see the last post to understand buttercut).

Think With Your Head Not With Your Heart Fool by marisol diaz

This piece is done on 1/2inch thick glass which is lost with the photogragh...and was most time consuming since the size is around 10 by 10 inches. I also 'royally messed up' by packing the glass in my backpack one evening to work after 11pm and after riding my bike, hence the side of the glass with no protection got scratched (good lesson to learn) and so I had to lightly blast the front edges of the piece to compensate...some say you would never notice if I didn't tell (another lesson to learn).

Still, these pieces are from the first few days of class...after which my work began to evolve in quite a different direction which I will share with you all next...so stay tuned.