Refract | The Seattle Glass Experience: Introduction
Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience is a very exciting glass event for those in the glassblowing and glass sculpting community. People across the nation who collect and love this unique medium are well aware that Refract, now in its sixth year, is a unique opportunity to experience the diversity of glass as well as gain access to otherwise private studios. Artist participation ranges from open studios to demonstrations and unique partner exhibitions with local galleries like METHOD in Pioneer Square.
Refract was co-founded in collaboration with Chihuly Garden and Glass and Visit Seattle. Most of the events are free and open to the public - yet, with all the excitement within the community, Refract is not as well-known or integrated into the greater arts and culture. There seems to be a schism between glass and other mediums, both in participation, integration, and funding - but why?
In 2018, the New York Times named Seattle the “City of Glass” - yet even the journalist herself ‘did not expect’ Seattle to be a hub for North American glass art and practice. Within the glass community itself, this can only be described as equally shocking and irritating; no one seems to have internalized the deep rooted history of glass in the Pacific Northwest as known. For example: did you know that Refract Seattle has been repeatedly mentioned on the Netflix competition show “Blown Away”? Or that sculptor and Seattlite Morgan Peterson recently won Season 4? Did you know that at least one glass artist from Seattle, sometimes even more than one, has been featured on Blown Away every season? Did you know that two years ago The Pilchuck Glass School, located in Stanwood, Washington celebrated fifty years? Pilchuck is arguably the epicenter of PNW glass, and the sole reason glass making has endured the changes overtaking Seattle. People travel from all over the globe to teach, be residents, and take classes at this school - and yet, the question remains: how do we get the city of Seattle, not just those in the glass scene, to proudly identify with this “City of Glass” nomen?
Refract aims to assist in this with the mission of providing a platform for all the glass artists and organizations to be 'illuminated for the public.' Tracey Wickersham, of Visit Seattle, says, "Visit Seattle’s goals are to make this a destination event—to welcome in visitors from across the country and around the world, and to make it known that our region is home to more glass artists and studios than anywhere else in the US. And to make this fascinating, complex and popular art form discoverable to visitors." To aid in this, many events at Refract intend to democratize the artform: glassblowing demonstrations give the public a rare view into the world of glass arts, and free events include Open Artist Studios, a SAM Open House, and a guided tour of the Chihuly Boathouse. Still, the festival mostly attracts tourists and collectors who can afford the high prices of glass sculptures. This is not because of the artists or the efforts of Visit Seattle and Chihuly Garden and Glass - instead, it comes down to issues of funding and resources. The cost of living in Seattle is so high that artists, especially in glass, have to make countless sacrifices and cater to wealthy collectors rather than prioritizing a deeper engagement with other community members.
Events and programs like Refract could provide the necessary community aspect for glass-based art to survive in our city, but The City of Seattle should do more to aid in navigating the need for collectors and the importance of community inclusion. Events that should be fun and accessible for all demographics and interests instead become collector's gatherings rooted in monetary exchange rather than the exchange of creative ideas and collaboration. This could be accomplished through more visibility on the public scale.
Why isn't there a massive, immersive, public glass installation in key neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill or at Pike’s Place Market? If we are supposed to be the New York Times' “City of Glass,” where is the influx of glass incorporated in the city's advocacy for public art? Semi-public glass installations are often in paywalled institutions like the SeaTac airport or the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum. The Chihuly garden is stunning, but is geared towards tourists and requires a fee of $35 for a standard ticket. The stained glass installation at SeaTac, one of the most beautiful transportation hub art pieces in the collection, requires you to pay for a plane ticket to view it. Funding for artists and affordable spaces is the only way to improve this situation - and that funding can come in the form of public art infrastructure investment. When considering a downtown revitalization project, engage the glassblowers and sculptors who embody Seattle’s “City of Glass-ness,” and bring this artform to the piers, terminals, neighborhoods, and waterfronts. For Refract to fulfill its mission, Seattle needs to embrace glass as a key component of its identity.
More information:
Artists can participate in Refract through exhibitions, public demonstrations, artists’ talks, and the Open Artists Studio Program.. There’s an easy online participation form that comes out in early Spring. Contact refractseattleinfo@gmail.com to get on the email list. Refract has a designated website that is designed and created by Visit Seattle, it’s the perfect place to see what is going on during Refract, and to plan an itinerary. www.refractseattle.org
By Elise Glaser
Manolo Aguilera-Santos grew up in Veracruz, Mexico. He never planned to be a glass artist. As a teen, he immigrated to Mukilteo, Washington. New to Seattle and the United States, he did not know much English and was simply looking for a job: “I always knew I would be working with my hands, but I never knew I would be a glassblower.” By chance, Manolo’s high school neighbor was an accountant for a local glass blower, James Mongrain. James hired him to work in his shop a few days a week due to Manolo’s former experience in carpentry. James’ studio was his first exposure to glass: “I saw the vibrant colors, the smoke, and I fell in love” he recounts.
Manolo fell into the craft of glassblowing by accident, but stayed with it for 20 years due to a deep passion for the artform. When James Mongrain offered Manolo a job as a “loader” at a studio, Manolo arrived ready to work. Upon arrival, he realized he was at Dale Chihuly’s famous boathouse. However, this significance was lost on the young Manolo: “I had only been in the states for three years and I had zero knowledge of art and I didn’t know who Dale Chihuly was.” Manolo walked into the boathouse and saw a team of people working on Chihuly’s chandeliers and sculptures and was enraptured by the environment. Every year following this first magical day, he learned new skills and was promoted through the stages of glassblowing at the Chihuly Boathouse. 20 years later he still works at the Boathouse and James Mongrain remains his mentor and collaborator.
12 years into working at the Chihuly Boathouse, Manolo decided it was time to start working on his own pieces. He expanded his knowledge by working with other local artists. Working with Native American artists inspired him to honor his own heritage through art. For the past eight years he has been focused on his own work and built a hot shop in his garage to work on his own projects. He explains how he is inspired by “Ancient Meso-American people, art, and history. Every day, I am working to find ways to bring this incredible history back to life through my artwork.” Manolo is known for his Nopales Series honoring the beautiful cacti of Mexico and his Meso-American sculptures inspired by the Colossal Olmec Heads of his hometown Veracruz, Mexico.
Manolo has participated in the last three years of Refract and is a big proponent of the festival. He explains: “Events like this bring the whole community together. It’s a great event for the artist to showcase their talent, their passion, and gives them an opportunity to share what we love the most with an audience.” Manolo was supposed to lead a demo with his mentor James Mongrain at this year’s Refract, but was accepted into a residency program at the same time at Corning Museum of Glass in New York. James Mongrain will still be giving a live demo on Venetian Goblets on October 17th, 2024.
Due to Manolo’s extensive experience in the festival, he was able to shed light on must-see events for Refract 2024. He recommends attending the City of Shoreline Refract event that he participated in last year. A hot shop is set up in a parking lot for the audience to watch live glass demos. This year, Dan Friday will host a Glassblowing demo and there will be glass art pop-ups for the public to peruse. For many people, Refract is their first exposure to the world of glassblowing. Manolo remarks, “Refract last year was very exciting because the kids were excited and the adults asked a lot of questions about the process. It brought a lot of business, other artists had a lot of good sales.”.
By Leah St. Lawrence
For Kait Rhoads, the process of glassmaking is all about community - it requires patience, flexibility, teamwork, and most of all: resources. “The barrier to entry is high and even then, there is no guarantee that you will make anything…The resource needs are so heavy and you need partners. It’s not as simple as having a pottery wheel in your garage, [glass] is more like theater, it's an ensemble. Sometimes we work together, sometimes we don’t - it’s a dance.” Her perspective on the medium of glass, and how it might differ from other plastic or sculptural arts, rings true. Glassblowing requires you to collaborate constantly, whether it be for much needed resources like shared hot shops, kilns, or coldworking equipment, or simply just to help lift, mold, bend, and heat the material. The pressure of resources and high barriers to entry has generated few artists who can call themselves glassblowers, -makers, or -sculptors.
Kait Rhoads is one of the few who has been able to call herself a glass artist for over 30 years. She explores political and cultural issues in her work with a strong emphasis on public engagement. “With my public artwork I really like to engage the community, [encouraging them] to learn more about oceanology, for example. I like working with the public and constructing a way to have the whole city be involved in something that is more permanent, where it’s not just for one group.” Rhoads enjoys the process, generation, and collaboration that occurs over the lifespan of her installations. The information that gets passed from one person to the next over time is a major component of the success of her work. “If everyone in the city had a hand in making something, it would make it more rich and soulful. The happiest we can be is when we are all together and participating in something greater than ourselves.”
However, even for individuals like Rhoads, who was lucky enough to become a glassblower or glass sculptor, it seems that this collaborative medium also segments artists into a unique category - one outside the visual art community and usual granting, city-funding, public art opportunities. With revitalized grantors and renewed interest in public infrastructure, is glass getting left behind? This question reminds me of a strange, seldom discussed phenomenon in which glassblowers wanting to ‘break out’ of this segmentation adjust their titles - instead of glass artist, they present themselves as “artists who happens to use glass.” And it works.
The dichotomy between the community requirements of the material and the feeling of being left out of the arts ecosystem is an aftershock of the tension between craft and fine arts; something that our city, and our grantors, should actively combat. Pacific Northwest art has a long history of material exploration unique to our region. It is, historically, a craft driven art culture. ‘Pacific Northwest Art’ is both a category and a vibe. Glass has been a major component of this PNW brand for a long time and can also be an intellectual, challenging, and contemporary exploration of both material and concept.
More about Kait Rhoads and Proto Kelp:
Kait Rhoads has been an integral part of the glass community for over 30 years. Her work is featured in over fifteen public collections; she has shown across Washington State, in France, New York, Italy and more, and received numerous awards and teaching positions. Her installation, Proto Kelp, will be on view at Method Gallery throughout Refract until the closing date of October 20, 2024. Proto Kelp is an abstraction of kelp in form and color, the large-scale sculptural installation will evoke the experience of swimming through a kelp forest. Proto Kelp is supported by a City Artists Grant from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, with additional support from the Seattle Aquarium.
.jpg)
