Image courtesy of Michael Glancy.

Michael Glancy

American artist Michael Glancy (1950–2020) first encountered glass visiting New Mexico while he was an undergraduate student at the University of Denver; he built his own hot shop and began teaching himself glassworking before he graduated with a BFA in 1973. Another chance encounter in New Mexico—this time with the glass artist Dale Chihuly—led Glancy to pursue a second BFA (1977) and an MFA (1980) from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied glass with Chihuly and metals with Louis Mueller. Glancy incorporated electroplating—a metals technique—into his glassmaking, producing distinctive sandblasted glass forms fused with copper and other metals. Based in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Glancy taught in RISD’s Jewelry and Metalsmithing Department for most of his artistic career.

Works

Hidden Inner Armature, 2018. Image courtesy of Michael Glancy.

Hidden Inner Armature, 2018. Image courtesy of Michael Glancy.

Magna Eclipsed, 1986. Blown glass, industrial plate glass, copper, silver. H: 8 in, W: 25 in, D: 10 in. Image courtesy of Michael Glancy.

Michael Glancy discusses James Carpenter’s experience as a designer at Corning Glass Works.

Playing01:19 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses James Carpenter’s experience as a designer at Corning Glass Works. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:19.

Michael Glancy: The difference between the Americans—the American studio glass artists design and make their own objects. This became pretty apparent when Jamie Carpenter was hired by Corning Glass Works [Corning Glass Works, now Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York] in the ’80s, I think it was. And he designed objects in the tradition of—the European tradition of a designer in a studio on paper. He took them down to the floor to have prototypes made, [clears throat] and the blower said, ‘You can’t do that. It just—you can’t do that. That won’t work.’ And Jamie said, ‘Oh, sure you can. Here, let me show you.’ And then bells went off in the factory—‘woop woop woop’ [mimicking the sound of an alarm] ‘Designer is touching a blowpipe.’ And they had to stop and rewrite the Flint Glass Workers [Union] contract to identify a studio glass artist as someone who designs and makes his own pieces, and for the purpose of educating the workforce can demonstrate how he wants them to be done. And that’s a true story.

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Michael Glancy talks about going to Scandinavia to make his work.

Playing1:23 Transcript
Micheal Glancy

Micheal Glancy talks about going to Scandinavia to make his work. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:23.

Michael Glancy: I’m not sure what year that was, but I went on to go to Scandinavia because their tradition, unlike Venetian paper-thin tradition, is of a massive wall, and I needed that material to carve. And so I was attracted to that. Well, the Scandinavians work very slowly, because the mass—that’s how—you move at the speed of the glass itself, and if your glass body is much thicker, then it has an entirely different working range. And so the Scandinavians were viewed as slow and silent, really; they don’t talk a lot. And that can be misinterpreted, for whatever reason, probably because Benny [Benjamin Moore] was going to Venice, and Dale [Chihuly], too. They would bring a Venetian with them, and these Venetians were teaching Venetian glass techniques—which is very fast, and thin, and so there’s a—that’s the predominant tradition, European tradition in America, is Venetian-based.

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Michael Glancy discusses how Lino Tagliapietra felt the glass tradition in Murano was dying.

Playing00:58 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses how Lino Tagliapietra felt the glass tradition in Murano was dying. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:58.

Michael Glancy: The—glass, because of the Venetian tradition, I think, glass has always been very secretive, from the alchemists’ time to the fact that no Venetian glassworker would reveal their techniques outside of Murano because it’s a state secret, and their families would be imprisoned if they did—and so this is really quite controversial for Lino to have brought so much information out of Murano, but Lino said that the glass industry in Murano was dying making candy, glass candy and clowns for the tourists. You know, the only people that were doing anything significant were the Americans, and he’s going over there.

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Michael Glancy discusses studio glass artists “sharing it all.”

Playing1:24 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses studio glass artists “sharing it all.” Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:19.

Michael Glancy: When we’re teaching ourselves, we’re blatantly honest, because the entire mythology is to not share—that’s the tradition. That’s the big problem with Venice now; they just had the GAS [Glass Art Society] conference in Murano, and the Venetians were very reluctant to let the world into their studios because they’re still trapped in this non-sharing mentality. We share it all. And the Europeans don’t think we do, like Ulrica [Vallien]—or they’d be—watching me teach a class on electroforming and saying, ‘Oh, you’re telling them almost everything, but not everything.’ And I tell people everything. And to me, that’s the motivation. I mean, I want to h—I want to feel people biting at my heels. It’s the only way I can stay valid. And so Americans don’t—the ones I know—don’t hide this stuff. We share it. Totally. And you know, I’m gonna test that theory soon. I test it all the time by asking someone how to do something, and they’ve always shared their experiences. Totally. You know, it doesn’t seem to be proprietary the way it is in a lot of places.

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Michael Glancy talks about whether or not the studio glass movement is over.

Playing0:45 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy talks about whether or not the studio glass movement is over. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:45.

Michael Glancy: I can understand the need for historical framing. There’s a lot of debate as to whether the studio glass movement is over, and when did it die, you know? And I wish someone had told me [laughs] cause it’s under attack, you know. Just talk to Heller Gallery [Heller Gallery, New York, New York] and there’s the galleries are closing, people aren’t into objects anymore, they’re—you know, I’m just gonna keep doin’ what I do, and hopefully they’ll come back to the objects and say, ‘Hey, these were pretty good. They’re still pretty good,’ you know.

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Michael Glancy talks about Dale Chihuly and the crossover between RISD and Pilchuck.

Playing01:49 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy talks about Dale Chihuly and the crossover between RISD and Pilchuck. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:49.

Michael Glancy: It kind of goes back to Chihuly and the Rhode Island School of Design and the remarkable number of people that were involved in that program and then went out into, literally, the world, with Toots Zynsky going to Amsterdam, with Bruce Chao being head of Ohio State’s program, and then that was replaced with Richard Harned. And there were West Coast kind of realities, but Pilchuck was created by Dale Chihuly while he was in his tenure at Rhode Island School of Design, and populated in great part by his friends, who were asked to be faculty, and his students, who were then given the opportunity to be teaching assistants. Like, 1977, you lived at Pilchuck in tents. It’s the Pacific Northwest, incredibly beautiful, but trees don’t grow unless it rains, and it rains all the time, and people there don’t talk about it because it’s so important. If it doesn’t rain, the trees don’t grow, and here Pilchuck is in the—is 50 square acres in the middle of a five-square-mile experimental tree farm, so, and so in ’77 it was wet and damp—and you’re in a platform tent, and you have to walk up the hill, and you had to lie on your sleeping bag for 30 minutes just to get enough body heat in it so you could separate it and get into it, this clammy sock, you know.

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Michael Glancy discusses his use of “the European model” of designing from a notebook.

Playing0:28 Transcript
Micheal Glancy

Michael Glacy discusses his use of “the European model” of designing from a notebook.  Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:28.

Michael Glancy: So I sort of combine both of these traditions in my view of the material. So there are times I work with master craftsmen, and—and I—basically I’m working in the European model of—I worked on a notebook, and I tell ’em what colors to do and what size and shape to make it, and he does that.

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Michael Glancy discusses Paul Hollister’s article on Glancy in which he compares Glancy’s work to “Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels.”

Playing02:01 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses Paul Hollister’s article on Glancy in which he compares Glancy’s work to “Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels.” Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:01.

Michael Glancy: August/September ’82, he actually says, ‘Who would have thought’—these are his, Paul Hollister’s, words—‘Who would have thought, for example, that the young American glassblower Michael Glancy had no familiarity with Sasanian and Islamic wheel-cut Persian vessels of the sixth to tenth century, which appear to have influenced his work.’ Now, I can remember, you know, going to Paul’s apartment in New York to be interviewed, and Paul was like, really excited, you know, and it was a guarded excitement, cause he had these Sasanian books, and he wanted to know if I knew about this work. And 1982, no, I did not know about this work. And to me it was a major epiphany and validation that what I was doing—I was emulating my—my mentor was really Maurice Marinot, from the 1920s, and so this actually pre-dated Marinot and in my mind, this was inspiration for Marinot and possibly Art Deco. I mean, as a student, I was searching for things that would resonate with me as a practitioner. This resonated in a gigantic way. And Paul goes on to say that I was traveling a lot and taking a lot of influences, including Maurice Marinot, but it was a particular—he was so excited to share this. And I was excited for the information, for sure.

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Michael Glancy talks about Paul Hollister teaching him to make connections to his own work through ancient glass.

Playing01:00 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy talks about Paul Hollister teaching him to make connections to his own work through ancient glass. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:00.

Michael Glancy: And so that connection allowed me to realize that there are a lot of potential connections, and that we should all look for those, you know, and so I have. And I’ve found a lot of them through ancient glass, but this article by Paul is really pretty good cause he sort of talks about, you know, I’m influenced by everything from the Islamic glass to the Roman pieces to the pattern on a tire, on a Michelin tire on a Ferrari, or—you know, all sorts of things. And that’s all true. None of them really are as potent as the ancient stuff for me.

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Michael Glancy talks how he became involved with metalwork at RISD.

Playing02:49 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy talks about how he became involved with metalwork at RISD. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:49.

Michael Glancy: I was a student at Rhode Island School of Design. I came with an undergraduate degree, and four years of liberal arts, and that equipped me with the knowledge that—to do what I wanted to do as opposed to what someone expected me to do. And so I wanted to study glass with Dale Chihuly; I went to the School of Design with that specifically in mind. And the school, itself, requires you to take professional electives, and outside your department. I was only interested in—they had waived all of my liberal arts credits because I had all of that. I was just taking studio courses, and—to get a second BFA, and then to continue and get an MFA. And the school required that we take things outside our department, and so Dale was a good friend of Louis Mueller, the head of the jewelry department. And, you know, there’s just this symbiotic relationship between glass and metal that could be characterized through [René] Lalique’s work, for instance. Lalique was a goldsmith in Paris, when they passed a luxury tax that made his work prohibitively expensive. And to circumvent the luxury tax he got into glass, because it’s like in gems. And so the link between metal and glass, as well as—you can go all the way back to Egyptian times, the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, for instance, it took them 20 years to realize that it’s all glass except for the lapis lazuli and the turquoise and the coral in the face. Those were real materials. And that’s not because it was a long walk to Turkey to get the lapis lazuli, which it was, but rather because to the Egyptians, to emulate nature so effectively was to put you on a parallel with the Creator. And so they were particularly interested in their ability, and their skill was of such a high level that it took 20 years after [Howard] Carter had discovered this find, for them to realize that this is glass, not lapis, or the other turquoise. And so, you know, smoke and fire, blip, blip, blip.

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Michael Glancy discusses RISD’s early glass program and the department’s limited resources.

Playing05:44 Transcript
Michael Glancy

Michael Glancy discusses RISD’s early glass program and the department’s limited resources. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 05:54.

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Clip 1: Michael Glancy discusses buying a used sandblaster for RISD. Clip length: 01:45.

Michael Glancy: Sandblasting, that’s a carving of the glass with a sandblaster. I encountered that in 1977, right after being married. I went to Pilchuck [Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington], and enrolled in a Dan Dailey course, and with that—that’s the first time I saw sandblasting. We didn’t have a sandblaster at the Rhode Island School of Design. And so after that summer, I said to Dale Chihuly, ‘We need a sandblaster.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t have the budget for a sandblaster.’ He was more interested in the hot glass stuff. And so I went out and found and issued grant money—you know, applied to grants, got enough money to buy a sandblaster. It was used, but it was a sandblaster. We found it in a machine place in Boston, and the school—so I got the money, I got the machine. The school wouldn’t pay to have it transported, so I had to rent a truck with an Australian friend. We took the sand machine apart. Took it—put it on the truck, took it to the School of Design. We had a room for it but had to take the doors off the elevator to get the pieces in, take it up to the fourth floor, put the doors back on the elevator, push it down the hall, and put it in a room, and then the school took, I think, close to six months before they actually plumbed the sandblaster to the air compressor, which was four stories down. [laughs] But we did get one.

Time stamp: 01:48
Clip 2: Michael Glancy talks about RISD’s cold working shop being in the men’s bathroom. Clip length: 00:18.

Michael Glancy: And I mean, Dale [Chihuly] had the cold working shop. He really didn’t care about the cold working. He was only interested in hot glass. He had the cold working shop in the men’s bathroom. And the women in the department—or the students—had to do their cold working in the men’s bathroom.

Time stamp: 02:09
Clip 3: Michael Glancy discusses the lack of space and materials budget at RISD. Clip length: 00:42.

Michael Glancy: The big problem with a school that’s over a hundred years old is space. And so there was no space for cold working at the time, and [laughs] now—it didn’t last that long. But for instance, another thing, the sandblaster needed the abrasive—it’s not sand, it’s an abrasive, aluminum oxide. And he didn’t have a budget for that, so we had to put a coin-operated—like a washing machine, you get 15 minutes for a quarter—[laughs]—to generate funds to buy the abrasive. I tell you. It was—it’s a jungle out there.

Time stamp: 02:54
Clip 4: Michael Glancy discusses why RISD invested in a heat recycling exchange system for their glass shop. Clip length: 02:49.

Michael Glancy: When I first arrived it was summertime. And I arrived with my wife, who is—still is, and was, very pretty, blonde—but I arrived with her, her younger sister, and their younger sister. So I had these three really good-looking ladies following me in, and for the first time that I went into the glass shop at Rhode Island School of Design as an incoming student, and Dale was in there—it was the summertime, and the furnaces were on. But he and Jamie were in there just sitting and measuring the temperature at the benches. And it was like, I don’t know, 90 degrees outside and 106 in the benches, which is incredibly cool. And the reason for that was because Dale had installed these massively gigantic fans behind the hood, behind the furnaces that would take all of the air in the studio itself and remove it in under 30 seconds. Now this pumps out not just the air of the studio, which was hot, but sucked out all of the air in the building. And when RISD did this aerial survey, infrared survey, they found that the glass shop was emitting as much heat as the asphalt—open-air asphalt facility that was making asphalt for making roads, which was an open-air blast furnace, basically. And so the school then invested a quarter of a million dollars, which would have been, you know, probably three-quarters of a million dollars today—in a heat recycling—in a heat exchange, much more efficient. That was right after Dale left and Richard Harned took over as head of the department, and he convinced—the school had done this survey, and they were debating the cost of the glass program, and it’s only because of Dale’s notoriety and the students that he produced, who became ambassadors to glass in the United States and around the world, that the school continues with one of the most expensive departments that, you know, energy-wise, but it’s funny how we get where we get to.

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Michael Glancy talks about giving Paul Hollister a ziggurat he carved from a pyramid made by James Carpenter.

Playing Transcript

Michael Glancy talks about giving Paul Hollister a ziggurat he carved from a pyramid made by James Carpenter. Oral history interview with Michael Glancy by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, October 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:58.

Michael Glancy: Paul Hollister was the predominant reviewer, and as a student you wanted to catch the attention of the curators, you know. Bill [William] Warmus was the curator at Corning in the eighties, I’m pretty sure. And being Chihuly’s student at Rhode Island School of Design, these people came to us as well as we going out to them. They would be invited to participate in crits, and give lectures. I’m not sure whether Paul actually did any of that, but I know that Warmus did. And so Jamie Carpenter was working with Dale, and Jamie had made a small pyramid, an elongated pyramid mold—steel mold—that he was testing different colors. He would make these colors with Kuglers and crystal, and then pour them into this little pyramid, and it would give you a piece of glass that was thick at the base and then going up to a thin area and he could gauge the color. So I asked Jamie if I could have one of these pyramids; it was a blue pyramid. And I made it into a ziggurat, you know, I carved it—a spiral pattern. And after some years of knowing Paul, and having him speak favorably in articles about me and my work, and I saw him, you know, I was going to see him, and so I brought this ziggurat. And I said, ‘Paul, I have something for you.’ And so I give him the box, he opens the box up, and he looked, and he really likes it, and he said, ‘Michael, you can’t give me this.’ You know, ‘That would be—that could be viewed as some sort of influence,’ and so he refused to take it. And I said, ‘Well, Paul,’ you know, ‘I’m giving this to you. If you can’t take it, then maybe you should give it to somebody else.’ And so he did keep it, and said—I think he gave it to Corning or to somebody. But it was just burning a hole in his pocket. He did really like it. It was really nice. And, you know, but he was so cute. I’ll never forget; he said, ‘Michael, you can’t, you can’t give me that.’ And I said, ‘Oh, sure I can,’ you know. [laughs] ‘Here. It’s yours.’ Yeah, I just wanted him to have it because it was a ziggurat, it could have been made in Persia. Easily. Yeah, there are other stories, but we all—you know, as students, he was pretty important.

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Bibliography

Writings by Paul Hollister Bibliography

“Michael Glancy’s Glass and Metal Objects: Prunkstücke fürs Kuriositäten-Kabinett / Treasures for the Cabinet of Curiosities.” Neues Glas, no. 1 (1982): 38–44.

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“Review of Exhibitions: Michael Glancy.” Glass, no. 48 (Summer 1992): 50.

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