Photo courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art
The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection
Jeremy Popelka Serac 2015
It’s refreshing to learn that Wisconsin, perhaps best known for beer and cheese curds, has other, more refined victories about which it can boast. One of the least known, but surely the most striking of these Badger State achievements is its role and helping birth the studio glass art movement, examples of which will be on display starting Oct. 23 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend.
Credit the late artist and educator Harvey K. Littleton, a ceramist whose father was head of research and development at Corning Glass Works in New York, for establishing the first university-level “hot glass” program at UW-Madison in the mid-1960s. Littleton’s students melted mountains of the ubiquitous green glass Cocoa-Cola bottles and other glass castoffs into attractive vessels and stunning sculptures, spawning an artistic genre and enterprise that spread to UW-River Falls and helped introduce the international art world to a new form of sculpture.
The MOWA exhibit, “The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection,” runs through Jan. 23 and explores 60 years of this unique art form. The exhibit is timed to capitalize on the intersection of MOWA’s own 60th anniversary this year and 2022’s United Nations International Year of Glass, according to MOWA executive director Laurie Winters.
“We’ve done some small-scale single-artist glass exhibitions, but we’ve never done anything like this before,” says Winters. “I’m super excited because we’ll be looking over six decades of work that will enable us to tell the history of the art form.”
The collection on display, accumulated by benefactors James and Karen Hyde with the specific idea of presenting it to MOWA, includes more than 100 works developed by some 30 Wisconsin-based artists and educators, including works by Littleton himself and former students, gallery owners and husband-and-wife duo Jeremy Propelka and Stephanie Trenchard, who have helped turn Door County into a studio glass haven. Unfortunately, no works by artist Dale Chihuly, perhaps Littleton’s best-known student and creator of massive installations at UW-Madison’s Kohl Center and the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, are included in the exhibit.
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The individual pieces range from fine art vessels to imaginative sculptures, each bearing the distinct touches and interpretations of the individual artists, Winters says. It can be a challenging medium, but the resultant works are unique both in their construct and their styles.
“It’s a bold medium that makes bold statements,” she explains. “The intensity of color is a draw to many of the artists and something you can’t quite achieve with other mediums. But along with the color comes the fragility of the glass, which also gives it a unique quality.”
James Hyde, a retired biophysicist who worked with the Medical College of Wisconsin and holds 30 patents pertaining to MRI technology, was also attracted to the science and spirit of experimentation of the medium, Winters says. Thanks to the couple’s contributions, MOWA now owns 130 different pieces of studios glass done by Wisconsin artists.
“Studio glass is important from esthetic as well as historical perspectives,” Winters adds. “It’s going to be a beautiful show.”
“The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection” will be on display through January 23, 2022, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. It is one of numerous exhibits this year designed to help MOWA celebrate its 60th anniversary.
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Photo courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art
The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection
Douglas & Renee Sigwarth - Untitled Vessel, from the series Watercolors 2008
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Photo courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art
The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection
Eóin Breadon Leáthbhite (Half-Drowned; soaked, drenched) 2018
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Photo courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art
The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection
James E. & Renee Nielsen Engebretsonr - Untitled Vessel 2009
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Photo courtesy Museum of Wisconsin Art
The Studio Glass Movement: The Hyde Collection
Stephanie Trenchard - Falling Apart-Emmy Hennings, from the series Women in Art History 2018
