Keila Glassworks Award winning glassblower Charles Keila has recently returned to Florida after a decade of pursuing glass training with internationally recognized glass masters. Charles spent the last 6 years in Tucson Arizona blowing glass in the studio of Tom Philabaum, and teaching at the Sonoran Glass Art Academy. Charles is currently working on his innovative new drawn together series of glass vessels. This series of vessels is inspired by the lush landscape and flora of Charles' Florida childhood and brought to fruition by the melding of techniques and tools of off-hand and flameworked glass that is the signature of Charles career. This past year has been busy for Charles and his family. They moved from Tucson's Sonoran Desert to Central Florida to bring home the experience of studio glass blowing and to open a public studio in the new City Arts Factory in the heart of downtown Orlando, in the historic Dr. Phillips building on Orange Ave. and Pine St.
Guy Kemper is a painter who creates distinctive spaces using blown glass, color, and light. He works closely with master craftspeople to translate his paintings into blown glass, distinguishing his art from mere glass painting or stained glass. Active in the corporate, liturgical and public art fields, his designs are inspired by their particular setting and the surrounding community. Celebrated for its strength and emotional expressiveness, Kemper's internationally recognized projects have won several prestigious design awards. They are installed on time and on budget.
Rick Keppler's family moved from Long Island, NY to Colorado when he was six years old. His new friend's family were passionate hot glass artists, and he soon was involved in learning to work with hot glass. He apprenticed to a Native American master artist who ingrained into Rick a love of graphic arts and a very powerful sense of color. Glass was a stress-relieving hobby as he advanced in a management career in the automotive industry. At the age of 45, he re-evaluated, left the corporate world and opened his own studio.
A resident of Philadelphia, Ray King began working with stained glass in the early 1970s. In 1975, he received a Louis C. Tiffany Fellowship to travel to England and study with master stained glass artist, Patrick Reyntiens, at the Burleighfield House Trust in Buckinghamshire. When he returned, King became involved with the craft art movement of the mid-1970s and has exhibited his work internationally since 1976, including exhibitions in Italy, Japan, England, Spain and France. His modern glass creations were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan, and other venues.
The scale and scope of Ray King's art has evolved dramatically over the years as he moved into the three-dimensional, public art realm. His selection of materials has expanded to include holographic and laser-etched, light-responsive laminate films, and he has mastered the use of advanced 3-D computer technology that allows him to design elaborately engineered sculptures. His unique tectonic, site-specific works are in demand by universities, municipal art commissions and corporations around the world.
Founded in 1857, Lamb Studios studio is the oldest continuously operating facility in the United States. Over 15,000 new stained glass windows and 8,000 restorations have been completed, many of which that can be considered some of the most important artistic works in our nation's history.
In 2007, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC formally recognized J&R Lamb Studios long storied commitment to excellence through the acquisition of our archives.
Today, J&R Lamb Studios continues that tradition. Experienced and involved ownership, along with a skilled and tenured staff, commissions stained glass artists that are known around the world for the artistry and stunning beauty of their works.
"Glass allows us to built up a harmony between shapes and penetrating light, and to thus define the essence of light - space and to touch the secret of this space. Nevertheless, although glass is a prime medium for us, the character and the qualities of this material are something more than only a means of artistic expression. Therefore, we cannot do anything but be all the time nearby glass."
Florida artist Duncan McClellan's work depicts emotions relating to family, personal growth and the spiritual connections between each of us as souls. His fascination with glass began at age five, when he visited a glass factory in West Virginia. He never forgot the image of the glowing, molten mass being formed by an expert craftsman.
McClellan studied the creation of larger forms with Fred Kahl and John Brekka, two instructors and artists working at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop. He now works out of his own studio in Tampa, Florida.
Leonard Nierman, the "Jackson Pollock" of Mexico, is considered a forerunner in modern Mexican art. His work features imagery of landscape and reoccurring references to earth on fire with billowy plumes of smoke and ascending lava flow. In He earned a BS in science at the University of Mexico. In 1964, he won an award from the Aquarelle Museum. Nierman's works were highlighted in a major exhibition at them Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City in 1972. Nierman's work is renown internationally in Italy, Japan, Australia, Spain, and Mexico.
As the guiding spirit for the Overbeck Studios, Margaret studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy under J. H. Sharp, L. H. Meakin, Lewis Cass Lutz (Cambridge City native), Vincent Nowattny, and Otto W. Beck as well as from Arthur Wesley Dow and Marshall Fry of Columbia Univeristy. She would teach at the Sayre Institute in Lexington, Kentucky and at the Megguier Seminary in Boonville, Missouri. She would be the one to provide early instruction to her sisters before they attended art schools. From 1899 to 1911, Margaret taught drawing, watercolor and china painting at DePauw University, Greencastle Indiana. In August of 1907, she suffered severe head injuries from an automobile accident in Chicago. During that period, while home recovering, she organized and taught classes in Richmond. Later she worked as a decorator at Zanesville Art Pottery in 1910 and returned to Cambridge City after the pottery factory burned.
From the start, Margaret's goal for the studio was to concentrate on originality and quality as opposed to quantity. The studio would be the family home. Located at 520 East Church Street, the two story home is still standing and is faithfully cared for by Jerry and Phyllis Mattheis. The sisters did not have state of the art equipment, but rather simple and primitive materials including a small motor driven potters wheel. The sisters would do all of the work from design to firing. They adhered to the ideals of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Objects must be at once simple, beautiful, functional and hand wrought.
Unfortunately, Margaret would never see the pottery studio develop. She died in August 1911, believed as a result of her injuries from the automobile accident in 1907.
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