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June Issue 2005
Fine Arts Center in Highlands, NC, Offers Works from the Littleton Studios
The Fine Arts Center in Highlands, NC, will
present the exhibition, The Harvey Littleton Studios, in
the Bascom - Louise Gallery. The exhibit of glass and vitreographs
will be on view from June 25 through July 20, 2005. Littleton's
work and the work of artists such as Dale Chihuly, Erwin Eisch,
Shane Fero, Therman Statom, Rick Beck, Katherine and William Bernstein,
Fred Birkhill, Gretel Eisch, Richard Jolley, Italo Scanga, Patrick
Wadley and Ann Wolff will be included in the exhibit.
Just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Spruce Pine, NC, is an art
treasure! Harvey K. Littleton, born in 1922 in Corning, New York;
resides in the mountains where he maintains a vitreography studio
and gallery of studio glass.
After receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of
Arts in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Littleton pursued a career in ceramics.
He received recognition for his work as a ceramist in a national
exhibition sponsored by the American Crafts Council and at the
First International Exposition of ceramics in Cannes, France.
Littleton's art career was placed on hold when he served as a
soldier in World War II. Later he began a career as a successful
potter and educator.
But why is Littleton called the father of the Studio Glass Movement?
The studio glass movement began in the 1950's in the hands of Littleton, a professor of ceramics at the University of Wisconsin. He began to explore glass as a possible medium for individual artists in small studio spaces. By the late 50's-early 60's, Littleton was melting glass in a crude furnace he had constructed himself, carving simple shapes from small cast glass forms and blowing his first glass into bubbles. In 1962, at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, workshops led by Littleton, were the founding events of studio glass. The participants used black American iron pipe purchased from a local hardware store, for gathering glass at one end and blowing from the other. It was in that seminar that Littleton introduced the idea that glass could be mixed and melted, blown and worked in the studio by the artist.
Up to that time it was widely believed that glass objects could only be made in the highly structured, mass-produced world of the glass industry where the labor of making glass is divided between designers and skilled craftsmen. In 1963 he established a graduate course and glass studio at the university that attracted students such as well-known artists Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly.
Museum recognition for Littleton's work in glass soon followed in the form of solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (1963) and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York (l964). His work has been collected by the American Craft Museum, New York City; Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design, Smithsonian Institution, New York; Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Detroit Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and The White House, Washington, DC among numerous others.
Littleton developed the printmaking technique
of vitreography in a cold working glass techniques seminar he
taught in the summer of 1974. Part of the seminar was devoted
to resists for sandblasting. A sandblasted piece of plate glass
was created during the seminar by Littleton using a resist of
hot glue. It was the first vitreograph to be successfully printed.
Littleton retired from teaching in 1976 to devote his time fully
to his work. He moved to Spruce Pine, where he set up his glass
studio and produced his most technically demanding and beautiful
series of studio glass works.
Vitreography produced such fertile ground for Littleton's inquisitive
nature that he installed an etching press with which he could
print vitreographs in his studio. At the end of 1981 he hired
a full-time master printer, Judith O'Rourke, and encouraged visiting
glass artists to try their hand at making prints. Over the years
Littleton invited painters and printmakers, as well as glass artists
and sculptors to create vitreographs at Littleton Studios.
A vitreograph is a print from a glass matrix. These hand-pulled prints are achieved through intaglio or planographic processes. Float glass plates 3/8" thick, commonly used for windows or shelving, are run through an etching press for both the intaglio and planographic prints. Vitreography uses inexpensive, readily available materials and is a relatively non-toxic form of printmaking.
Littleton Studio's Master Printmaker, Judith O'Rourke will also provide a Vitreography Workshop for artists of all levels at the Bascom - Louise Gallery on July 7-9, 2005. Register for the workshop by calling 828/526-4949.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 828/526-4949, e-mail at
(bascomlouise@earthlink.net) or at (www.bascom-louisegallery.org).
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