Flo Perkins

Flo Perkins talks about going to Pilchuck, Mass Art, and then UCLA with Dick Marquis. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:10.

Flo Perkins: I went to Pilchuck. Again, I think it was five weeks for three hundred dollars or something like that. I have the original poster, which is cool. And I ended up staying in the area a little while longer than the program and got back to Massachusetts. Once you get into glassblowing you have to go where the facility is. So I went back to Massachusetts, where I grew up, but I had never lived in Boston. So I moved into the city and connected with Dan Dailey, who said, ‘Well, you have a bachelor’s degree, so why don’t you make some work and apply as my first graduate student?’ And so I did all that and he let me be the monitor in the studio at night, and work on the equipment, so that I was sort of the senior presence. And I opened and closed the studio and made some work and that would be the summer of seventy, and that would have been—so for the fall of ‘76. And unfortunately that fall they had a fire in the glass shop—it ruined the equipment in terms of the—there weren’t a lot of computers, but the instruments. And they closed the hot shop for the year, I think. So we all had to do cold glass. And I did do it, and I stayed, but it wasn’t my interest. So by the spring I had met the man I ended up marrying, Bill Agnew, and I left, and I just went, ‘I know there’s people on the west coast.’ Bill had been in New England for 12 years at school and stuff, doing different things, and he wanted to go back out west and I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’ And I knew that Marvin [Lipofsky] was out there and that’s the most I knew, but I figured there was other stuff. And I found Dick [Richard] Marquis at UCLA and I was like, ‘Sign me up.’ And so I—we, Bill and I first moved to Santa Barbara for one year, and then I found Dick at UCLA, so I got in, he accepted me the next year, and so I did three years of graduate school with Dick: 1978—9, ‘80, ‘81. So it must have been seventies. ‘78 to ‘81 or ’82.

Flo Perkins talks about the impact of Dale Chihuly making Pilchuk international. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:50.

Flo Perkins: Well, the most brilliant thing that Dale did was get the school to be international. That was brilliant and to get Ulrica [Hydman Vallien] and Bertil [Vallien] over and bring the Italians in, but he didn’t bring the Italians in until the early eighties,’82-3? I’m not really sure. I was having babies. And I sort of missed the initial Italian thing, but Dick [Richard Marquis] got me in a class with Lino [Tagliapietra] at Haystack [Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine] in—my child is—‘89 maybe? And that’s when I met Lino [Tagliapietra], and met—and understood the Italian thing and I went for three weeks to Haystack, and Lino was a teacher. And that was a crazy experience, but it changed my life. Because I love to blow glass, and I finally saw—he taught me how it works.

Flo Perkins talks about being a woman in a male-centric glass world. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:10.

Flo Perkins: Well, one of the things, I mean, I used to say if I was—it would be very hard to get into this when I was older, because when I was young, it was, ‘Hang out in the glass’—honestly—‘in the glass studio drinking beer and blowing glass till all hours of the night.’ Pilchuck used to be 24/7. And so it was a really interesting situation of hanging out, and watching, and trying. There were no videos. Later when I went to Lino’s [Tagliapietra] class. I was like, ‘How do you guys all know how to do this so well? Cause they look at videos. We didn’t have that. It was like you had to be there and see somebody do it, and ask them about it, and these men can’t say a word in concept in sequence to tell you how they’re doing something. That’s the other thing, it’s really interesting. The men are so nonverbal about doing this. And they go, ‘You just have to watch and try,’ you know? And it was—and so when I got older I was really trying to explain to people what I was doing, why, and how it worked and this and that, but the guys really don’t approach it that way. It’s very funny. It’s interesting.

Flo Perkins discusses the history of studio glass artists working for Venini and her time there in later years. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:54.

Flo Perkins: And so who knows? But there’s this whole history of Venini and American glassblowers, Dale [Chihuly] being the first one who went there. Do you know this? Dale started in textiles, and he somehow got into work at Venini. Now, I forget that detail, it’s in the books, and he worked with—I want to say Checco [Ongaro] who was Lino’s [Tagliapietra] brother-in-law. But anyway, Dale worked at Venini and Dick [Richard Marquis] did too. And see, Dick worked in there, but he brought stuff to them they hadn’t seen. And Toots [Zynsky] worked there, and Jamie [James Carpenter] did it. I don’t think Jamie did a piece there. Someone named Thomas Stearns was the first American who did a piece there. And so there’s a history of that with Venini. And—because—interesting cause Lino sort of—gave me that, you know? He—well he just helped me manage to do something like that, by being supportive of me. And before that Venini thing. I actually—you know, something like, ‘Do you think I could work in a factory over here?’ And somehow, how’d I figure this out—he told me about someone who had a factory, so I contacted them, and I went and blew glass there. I had them make some pieces of mine. I just wanted the experience, cause I figured I would never in my wildest dreams get to be in Venini. And I did that, and it was an odd thing, because when I was there Lino was out of town, and I guess I didn’t do something quite correct in that I contacted the factory directly, I didn’t go through Lino. So I don’t know if I offended him, but I had that experience. And that was very interesting. Certain things came about during that. But to be able to go back and work at Venini was the highlight of my career. It was absolutely fascinating. I don’t care if it wasn’t the original people and it wasn’t the same as it used to be, it was still there. And the man who was the maestro for my project sadly died the year and a half later. So they never made all those pieces. They don’t—they made one flight it was—the pieces were designed in groups, and there were three in each group and—they pretty much sold out this one group and they were lithops. They were three different designs of a lithops, which is a little tiny succulent, but they were enormous. And they sold out through Europe. Fine, I don’t think any Americans bought any, I have no idea. But I just went back there last year. Last year, it wasn’t this year, it was last year and—reconnected with Roberto, the factory’s been reorganized and he invited me to design something. So we’ll see.

Flo Perkins talks about first and second-generation studio glass collectors. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:39.

Flo Perkins: But there’s—I don’t know where everybody’s selling their work, the collectors changed, because we were all on the beginning. This is interesting. We were all in on the beginning of this. So the collectors were competing with each other. So there was actually a real audience who knew who everyone was, how they were related, where they knew about all the artists. And eventually they got older, their children didn’t want their work or want the collections or carry it on. And the new collectors sort of wanted one piece by everybody famous—which a collection does not make, that doesn’t make a good collection in my book.

Flo Perkins discusses building a larger furnace and creating bigger pieces. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:08.

Flo Perkins: I was in the old school, you go build a studio. People don’t do that anymore. They find a community program or they’re in school. Everybody’s using the school facility. And the people who teach there, it’s free labor, it’s free equipment, it’s free glass. I’m sorry, it’s not free, but it’s all right there. I had to bring people in, I had to run it all, I had to tech it all, I had to build it all, it gets exhausting. And so I did all that. I had a fantastic—I went for the big glass shop. This is funny—Lino [Tagliapietra] came here and I was rebuilding a furnace, which was the style of Dick [Richard] Marquis, where you have a big bowl and you surrounded it by bricks and put a dome on it. Pretty basic, but anybody can make it and have some hot glass. So Lino was here, and cause he came to visit, he came to see me and go to the opera and blah, blah, see Santa Fe. And—he walks in the studio and he looks at this furnace with this small pot—with this pot, it was a hundred and twenty five pound pot for glass, and he looks at it and he goes ‘Too bad a smaller pot.’ Like, in other words, ‘Too bad you’re building such a small furnace.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, I guess the thing is to build the big ass glass shop.’ So my husband was an architect and when my father passed away, I built a big ass glass shop. I built the building, I built a 300 pound furnace, and two glory holes. So I build the whole really nice big setup, and I used that for about seven years, but I had to bring people in, I had got one graduate student from Kansas who was here for three years, and that’s when I started with the bowling stuff, because  just making flowers and cactus was too—not good enough glassblowing, you know? So the bowling pieces were a result of that and the danger cones. Danger cones look really simple, and they’re really hard to make. Same with the bowling pins. And it’s just interesting—that—so then I end up with this huge glass shop, but I ran out of people. I mean, it turns out people aren’t really that willing to come down and work for two weeks out of their life. I did it for five years, six, seven years.

Flo Perkins discusses getting her glass from O. J. Gabbert. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:45.

Flo Perkins: So where did I get my glass? I use his [Dick Marquis’s] contact, which was O. J. Gabbert in West Virginia and Mr. Gabbert had been in the glass business his whole life and what he did was collect the cullet from the different factories, and I don’t think there were too many. And it came in cardboard barrels, and each one weighed, I don’t know, 300 pounds, 500 pounds? And so the glass came in these cardboard barrels with the ring that unsnaps, and you had to—I had to use a tractor with the front end loader that they—the semi-truck would show up with a ton of glass and we’d, like, unload them into the front end loader and get that over to my shop and put it down.

Flo Perkins discusses a letter she got from Dale Chihuly encouraging her to come to Pilchuck. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:20.

Flo Perkins: Because I have a letter from Dale with an original poster from Pilchuck, telling me, ‘Oh, I should try coming to this program in the summer.’ And the poster’s black and white and it’s got all the RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] ring vases on it. They’d just finished building the hot shop. It was the first summer of the hot shop, I think, 1974.

Flo Perkins talks about Dale Chihuly as a community builder. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:07.

Flo Perkins (FP): I mean Dale was smart. He found a really good school and became the head of the department, you know. Dale is smart. He’s a very smart man.

Barb Elam (BE): Yeah. I mean, he really did play an integral role in all of these kind of connections, I mean.

FP: Can I tell you something?

BE: Yeah.

FP: I’d say vital. And I don’t know, you know, people don’t give Dale the credit anymore maybe, but, you know, you notice there’s not such a buzz in wood, metal, jewelry, etcetera—fiber, because no one stepped up and did this dynamic leadership thing that Dale did. Dale took it somewhere, and at his expense. Okay? And he gave—the thing about Dale, he was unbelievably generous to everybody. He set up several people in their glass shops, so they could make pieces for him, but he set them up, you know. And were their intimate relationships involved, yes, and it was very personal and it was very ‘in-crowd’ and it remains so. And but there was not a leader like that in any of the other disciplines.

Flo Perkins talks about taking her bicycle on a train across Canada to meet Dale Chihuly. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:19.

Flo Perkins: And that summer I took a train across Canada with my bicycle to Pilchuck because I wanted to see, ‘Who was Dale Chihuly?’ And he had the graduate program at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design], and did I want to go there?

Flo Perkins talks about staying in tents and the weather at Pilchuck. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:25.

Flo Perkins: I’ve never been so wet in my life. Cause we were living in those tents. Pilchuck was—only the hot shop was built, that was it. Everything else was a tent. The cook tent, the—everything was an army tent, it was a riot, actually. Oh, we were soaking. All the time. And you’d come down and dry your clothes all out in the hot shop, at least there was that.

Flo Perkins talks about students at Pilchuck in 1974. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:16.

Flo Perkins: So that would be Pilchuck, 1974. And then the thing is you learn a lot from everybody else, and it was an interesting group of people. Ben [Benjamin] Moore was a student, Eric Hopkins was a student, Mark McDonald. I’m trying to think who, you know, those were people who were in that session.

Flo Perkins talks about why she chose Los Angeles as a place to study glass. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:18.

Flo Perkins: I chose L.A. because it was really open. There was no agenda. Dick [Richard Marquis] was there teaching in the sculptures—in the ceramics department, and it was a whole fine arts department, it was a great part on the campus, and it was a good situation down there. And I’d heard of Dick, I liked his work.

Glass artist Flo Perkins discusses the Penland School of Craft. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:26.

Flo Perkins: My favorite place on Earth is Penland, honestly. And—because it’s also people enjoying life. It’s not even about having a good time. They’re enjoying life, and Penland is so gentle that way. And it’s such a nice cross process, cross materials, you know? You have people making books, you have people doing photography, textiles, glass, metal, wood, ceramics. It’s fabulous.

Flo Perkins comments upon issues of gender in studio glassmaking. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:40.

Flo Perkins: Well, I have a theory, that there’s not very many women my age who succeeded in having a career—because they all they got involved with the guys. And as soon as that relationship fell apart, they lost their access to the glass shop. And I wanted to blow glass so I didn’t get involved with any of these guys. And—it was a free-for-all, are you kidding me? And— I was very focused. I wanted to blow glass, so I didn’t get involved and that’s what I mean, when I got married in 1977. There’s a reason behind it. It got that off my plate. So I got married to avoid all that junk.

Flo Perkins discusses the technique she used for her “Earthquake ware.” Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:28.

Flo Perkins: At UCLA [University of California Los Angeles] in my master’s program, Dick [Richard] Marquis was the professor and—I was making what was called ‘Earthquake ware,’ in other words I was trying to—improving my glass blowing skills and just making cups and plates and so on. And I took white silicone and I put it all over the outside in—as little prunts. A prunt is a piece of glass. It’s German technique and there is one of the glass history books has a beautiful—beer stein that’s all prunted—it’s like little chocolate chips all coming all off the glass and it’s made all in glass? So you take the hot glass and you touch it down and pull it back, snip it off. And they made those pieces in the Black Forest, because everybody ate with their greasy hands, and so then they could hold the cup. The glass cup didn’t slip out of your greasy hands. And that was a—look and a technique that I’ve always—I just loved it. It’s thorny looking, you know, but it’s not hard, and so the ‘Earthquake ware’ was that, but the prunts were silicone adhesives, and they were white. And so they were all over these cups, the concept being if you dropped it, it bounced or if there was an earthquake, it would survive the earthquake, because the glass was protected by this rubber. And you can find that in my work somewhere. The ‘earthquake ware,’ it had a moment—I moved on to something else—and that’s what started me with the silicone.

Flo Perkins talks about studio glass as sculpture. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:07.

Flo Perkins: I always tried not to do a business, I did not do production, I did not go to craft fairs, I was trying to stay purist on the sculpture track and—the word arrogant might come in there, I don’t know, but at the time that was the big topic, you know, can we get glass into the realm of sculpture? So I didn’t do craft fairs. I didn’t repeat my objects. I didn’t make it a business. I was trying to do it as a studio as someone would be a stone carver, or a metal worker. I tried to have glassblowing be my studio process and material for sculpture. And that was a hot topic in those days. And so in order, so what I could do, I built a very small studio here. And I could run the furnace, make my parts and then turn it all down low to make the pieces, I had to do a whole bunch of fabrication after I blew the parts, but I would like, idle the furnace instead of turning it on and off as it became later in life I had to make all my parts and be sure I had what I needed and turn it all off because it had become so expensive.

Flo Perkins talks about Dick Marquis bringing glass artists to UCLA. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:31.

Flo Perkins: Dick got Therman [Statom] there, which was fantastic, cause Therman is one of my inspiring people. And Dick Weiss came down. So Dick [Marquis] had a pull on all that group of people and he, after I graduated, he moved up to Whidbey [Whidbey Island, Washington] and I moved here. And he was, we—he actually invited me to come up and be his assistant, and I couldn’t do it because we’d already made this plan, and I was married, and I was married in ‘77 to get that off the plate [laughs].