Kristin Qualls

Kristin Qualls discusses CGCA fellows’ obligation to donate a finished work to the Museum of American Glass. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:56.

Kristin Qualls: Yeah, an excellent way to develop a contemporary art collection is to have these contemporary art fellows that come in as part of the fellowship. They’re asked to donate a piece to the museum that represents their time here. So we have, over the years, from ‘83 to now, amassed what I find to be a particularly amazing collection, if not necessarily—I mean, there obviously are some wonderful highlight pieces, but I also think as a whole the collection really speaks to trends that are happening in the studio glass movement, so you can kind of see what colors were popular, what techniques were popular at different times as you go through it, as well as you can see some experimentation, which, as a museum leaves us with these sort of interesting concepts of—we have pieces that no longer hold what I would consider the artist’s vision because, for example, the ‘archival’ adhesive they used has yellowed, so it’s in—from a museum point of view, in terms of putting on display, it doesn’t really follow the artist’s original vision. But I also find it a very interesting piece to maintain in a collection because then it speaks to people working with the medium, new techniques that were being developed, like what kind of adhesives, what kind of silicones, what did you do before Hxtal was around? As they’re exploring this medium and where they can push it and where they can take it, so while a piece like that might never go on display I think it’s good from a research point of view, again, to show these kind of trends, or to show what kind of materials were being combined with the glass at different times. And also what worked and what didn’t work. So now we know that that adhesive turns yellow. So, if you don’t want it to turn yellow, maybe you shouldn’t use it. But if you do, here’s this interesting adhesive that can change the color of your piece over time.

Kristin Qualls discusses scheduling of demos and events at Wheaton’s Glass Weekends. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:23.

Kristin Qualls: In general for the Glass Weekends, for example, it’s a multiple day event, and then usually there’s slots when the glass studio is doing demonstrations, so it might be, say, Saturday afternoon demonstrations in the glass studio. And then that sort of split out since we have multiple benches, they try the best they can to organize it, so while one artist is just doing the setup, another artist is in the really high-intensity part of their piece, and then another artist is maybe breaking it off in his put it in the anneal—like you’re trying to set it up so that you’re not, you don’t want to eclipse each other, but you want to keep the action going, because it gets boring to sit there and watch someone set up the perfect bubble for half an hour, so you have that happening to balance it out. So that’s a lot on the studio manager to bring all these artists together at once and see how they can work together in the same studio in front of an audience, and make their pieces. So it would usually be specific demo times during these long weekends, or again more recently we had Studio Wide Open, which would be an open late evening that we’ve now merged with Wheaton Wednesdays, that again would be more of a local—folks to come in just for the evening, and get studio tours with the fellows. Or again, it’s an open studio, so we’re open to the public 10 to five; at any given moment you’re walking in and an artist is making something.

Kristin Qualls speaks about Wheaton’s open studios during artists’ residencies. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls conducted by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:23.

Kristin Qualls: And it is a difficult balance. And one thing that I think is somewhat unique about what you’re seeing happen at Wheaton is that it is an open artist studio. So, for example, if you go to Corning and you go to their demos, that’s a stage set, that’s a scripted—that’s a studio just for demonstrations for your general audience. Whereas for us, no, that’s our working studio. That’s where it all happens. We don’t have another studio in a building behind the museum or behind all this where the artists are actually working. So it is always a balance to make sure it doesn’t become a dog and pony show, to make sure those artists that are there feel respected and not like we’re using them to gain an audience. And I think that’s part of what I mentioned to you the other day, the studio’s open longer than just the public hours, and within any given set of fellows or visiting artists we might have, there are going to be some who love hammin’ it up in front of the audience and really get into it, and get really excited about kids being engaged with the art and that being a connection and that’s part of their practice. And there’s other artists that are going to not want that at all, but then they can work in the studio after five, or on Mondays when we’re closed. So we do work hard to try and strike that balance between making them an exhibit and honoring them as artists and giving them the sanctuary they need to get their work done.

Kristin Qualls discusses Frank Wheaton and the origins of Wheaton Village. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:14.

Kristin Qualls: If I’m understanding correctly, the origins of Wheaton Village was, again, Frank Wheaton thinking about, you know, Henry Ford has a historic vision and Rockefeller had a historic village, and Rockefeller had his historic site in Williamsburg, and so all these industry magnates—that he was, because Wheaton Glass Company was one of the biggest glass companies in the country, had factories all over the world—so I think he had this vision of this tourist attraction that was going to draw all the people to come here. So not so much for local folks, but this tourist attraction that would be this village that represented when his grandfather founded Wheaton Glass. And the original plans for this place was to be twice as many buildings, including a church and a cemetery, and a boat building and a farm, and so it really was to represent in a sort of, again Sturbridge Village [Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, Massachusetts], Greenfield Village [Dearborn, Michigan], Colonial Williamsburg [Williamsburg, Virginia] kind of way, which I’ve always thought with my background in museums was partially influenced by how history was sort of being taught in that way, and what was popular in terms of these historic or faux historic contexts in which to learn it, especially as you’re heading into the Bicentennial era and that kind of idea. 

Kristin Qualls discusses glass factories in South Jersey and the Clevenger Brothers. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:26.

Kristin Qualls (KQ):  Right, that factory connection, and so down here in South Jersey—and again, I think it was more insular. So that’s why it’s not really part of the broader story. But these guys that had been working at all of these hand—when they still made stuff by hand and then as we went automated, and Wheaton Glass Factory went automated in 1930, I want to say, early thirties. They were pretty late, actually, in comparison—Whithall Tatum [Whithall Tatum Company, Millville, New Jersey] went in 1915, I think. So you had this group of workers who had the skill and my sense is from reading about the Clevengers [Clevenger Brothers Glassworks] and stuff like they knew they had a sense of not wanting to lose this. So they would start their own backyard shops because they had the knowledge because they had worked in a factory or they could call the guy who made the furnace and just be like, ‘Hey, can you make me a little furnace?’ and then they would do stuff like collect Coke bottles until they had enough, and they’d all pool together their money and go get some gas and then melt these Coke bottles in this furnace and then stay up for 48 hours until the melt was gone, and just make things. And so the Clevenger brothers are one I bring up—and they were up in Clayton, which is just north of us, who ran a studio for a long time: twenties until the nineties.

Dianne Wood: ’96 I believe. I could be wrong. 

KQ: Yeah. And a lot of that was preserving that South Jersey tradition—making the lily pad pitchers. And in the collectors’ world there was frustration because it felt like you’re trying to mimic historic glass and trick the collectors, and that was never what the Clevengers meant. That might have been what some unscrupulous dealers were trying to do, but the Clevengers never tried to pass anything off as actual Colonial—and they were trying to, again, preserve these—and they did make some unique stuff that was a modern—or at the time contemporary—design for the time. But they also, again, mimic Pitkin flasks and lily pad pitchers and that sort of stuff that represented these historic designs that they knew about and were seeing go away because you need machinists and not glassblowers to run the automatic machines. And so these smaller studios that existed all around here with these old factory guys, I think our connection between keeping that hand skill alive before the1962 [Harvey] Littleton/[Dominick] Labino furnace that was able to go in fine arts studios to then switch that skill from the factory infrastructure to art school/art studio infrastructure. And so down here, I feel like our studio kind of represents that too, cause the original guys we had did come from those backyard studios or from the local companies, and they were interacting with the fellows that were coming in, the artists that were coming in. And even Hank [Adams]—who ran the Studio for 15 years—he had worked at Blenko [Blenko Glass Company, Milton, West Virginia] So while he had an art background he had also had an American production background. So I think there is something there about that, again, that just that, ‘Who’s keeping that hand skill alive?’ and the knowledge of those patterns and specific techniques that might have been used in the American factories particularly down here as opposed to the Italian tradition, which obviously is very strong much older than the American tradition, and definitely influenced the studio glass movement. And whereas that sort of balance about the interest in Murano and that Italian technique, balanced with preserving some of these less glamorous factory-based American traditions, that happened, that certainly don’t have as nice names as some of the Italian.

Kristin Qualls talks about Wheaton’s open studio. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls conducted by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 00:34.

Kristin Qualls: We’ve always had demonstrations, that’s always been part of Wheaton. And how we share this wealth of knowledge we have with us is to have that open studio that the public can go watch artists work, that it’s not a theater set. It’s not a scripted demonstration. It’s not—you can go in there and watch actual production happening, whether we’re making pumpkins, or goblets or whatever, or whether it’s an artist—could be a paperweight artist, any fellow who’s here—an Emanation artist, throughout our time working right there in the studio.

Kristin Qualls talks about WheatonArts’ large mold collection and its connection to Wheaton Industries. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 02:30.

Kristin Qualls: We do have a large number of molds because of our connection to Wheaton Glass Industry, the Wheaton Industries who had molds, so they had revived—was it the Wheatonware line that they revived the old molds from, like Kemple [Kemple Glass Company]? 

Dianne Wood: Yes. 

KQ: Yeah. So a lot of the molds we have came from—they’re made in the McKee Glass Factory in Jeanette, Pennsylvania around the turn of the last century, 1915, 1920s. Then they were sold to Kemple Glass in Ohio, then they were sold to Wheaton Industries, I think it was at that time, who then revived this—again, the sort of historic idea to revive some of these old patterns. And then when the Wheaton Factory was sold off, the story is that the day that the workers found out they’re going to change the locks and so no one who had worked there was going to be allowed back in, they were going to sell everything. And of course, this is an overseas conglomerate who doesn’t necessarily have an interest in glass, certainly not an interest in American glass history. So they snuck in and stole—put on their truck beds, and they’re all their pickup trucks all the molds they could find and that they could carry, and get out of there before they changed the locks, and then brought ‘em and dumped him here just to save them. I mean just to save them, the whole point was preservation. So that’s how we came by this large amount of molds plus other glass factories in their—Skip Woods, for example, donated a lot of molds to us, so we do have some molds from that. So we do have a lot of molds, which gives us the opportunity to have them be used so that they—again that idea of they serve as inspiration for artists coming through now, they serve as new tools, unique tools that they might not be able to find and other glass studios that they can experiment with and use while they’re here; again, you’re just connecting it back. You can find the piece maybe that was originally commercially sold—

Catherine Whalen: Mm-hmm.

KQ: —in the 1900s in our collection and then get a new piece that they’re making from the same mold. So it for me again, it’s that idea of it’s not necessarily a linear history. But these molds might have been used very much in 1920 and then all of a sudden today, someone’s re-engaging with them on a different level and bringing a modern sensibility to it and an artistic sensibility to it. So we do have, again, a number of them that are in use and a few in the collections that they’re preserved and Rembrandt rule and all that good stuff. But to let them continue to be muses for today’s glass artists and into the future, I think is, again, an important way of keeping—preserving the history and keeping it alive by allowing it to change and morph and become relevant to today.

Kristin Qualls talks about the origins of the Millville Rose. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:50.

Kristin Qualls: The Millville Rose comes from Millville. So Ralph Barber who was most well-known within the glassblowing world as [an] excellent x-ray tube maker, so again, this is an example of that factory worker who’s brought up through the apprentice system and learns from the factory from making these utilitarian items and then on his off time creates this paperweight motif. He was also a rose gardener. So it was—for him, I can imagine it was he loves roses, can I make a rose paperweight, and develops this crimp that allows you to blossom the rose as you’re rounding out the paperweight. And there are stories about again that being a secretive technique—arguments between him and Emil Larson about who came up with the technique. And I know I’ve heard stories that Tony DePalma, who is our king of the Millville Rose—he would lock down the Wheaton studio. So Tony had sort of been handed—it was almost like ‘the handed down to certain mentor protege’—hand down how this happens. Tony DePalma hands it down to Don Friel who’s the one who makes our Millville Roses now. And so certain people again in this insular community kind of pick it up if they show interest that sort of it’s happening so if you make yourself present and that you want to learn this and you get the trust you eventually learn and then—I mean, I think education changed how things—how people learn information changed, and it stopped being so secretive. Because now I think my instinct is that people understand you have to have a skill set in order to make a beautiful Millville Rose so you can show anyone in the world you want about how to make a Millville Rose, there’s still only going to be a handful of people who are going to be able to make it well.

Kristin Qualls talks about Wheaton’s Paperweight Weekends. Oral history interview with Kristin Qualls by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, July 26, 2019, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Clip length: 01:12.

Kristin Qualls: I can only say what’s happening more recently with the Paperweight Fest and how that’s developed, but definitely the Delaware Valley Paperweight Collectors Association, part of the Paperweight Collectors Association, has—have always been actively involved. I’m not sure if that was the exact format of the partnership then or if those are all the same names of the organizations, but the paperweight collectors and artists have always been extremely involved in developing this programming. And so, again, I was at the meeting for next year’s Paperweight Fest on Tuesday. So it’s fresh in my mind. But again the idea of who are the people that the community wants to hear from, that are recognized experts, that we want to talk to; and again, it runs the gamut from just private club hobbyists to put a name to it, people who do it on their own free time, to people who are like curators that are paid to work with paperweights, to the artists who are working with them, to the dealers. So it really has to do with whom people in the community want to hear from and who’s a good speaker and engaging speaker to put on the Paperweight Fest. So it’s always been—the community’s been—the paperweight community has been very involved with creating the fests with us.