Gay LeCleire Taylor discusses the Wheaton fellowship and its development. Oral history interview with Gay LeCleire Taylor by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, March 9, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:43.

Gay LeCleire Taylor: I feel like it was sort of a real community back then. Where we were located, we were really rural. You had to find your way to get to Millville. But Philadelphia had Tyler [Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]—had a really good glass blowing program, Philadelphia College of Art had a small one with Roland Yan as the professor, and so there was glassblowing in our immediate area, and so tapping it into those kinds of things—and at first it was our board, or Mr. [Frank] Wheaton and those people, only wanted American artists to be given a fellowship, but we opened that up, and Hiroshi Yamano was sort of the first Japanese artist that came in. And it was learning from each other, really exposing things. We would have these evenings where the artist would talk and they would be sort of explaining their background and how they came into their work and how they chose to work and all of that. And, I don’t want to say we felt young, but it felt like, especially in the 1980s, that things were really happening and colleges were putting glass blowing into programs, and people were visiting and traveling around and doing all of that, and the Glass Arts Society was beginning and having meetings and having lectures and exhibits were happening.