Jen Elek is a Pacific Northwest studio artist and educator working primarily in glass, neon and steel. She utilizes blown glass to create sculptural objects that display the materials ability to reflect, magnify and represent bold color. Traditional and innovative processes combine in Jen’s work to create colorful landscapes of glass.
Elek holds a BFA from The New York school of Art and Design at Alfred University. Since moving to Seattle in 1995, she has worked as both a glass artist and metal fabricator for many notable Northwest artists. Elek was a key member of maestro Lino Tagliapietra’s glass blowing team for 15 years. Elek has been awarded multiple residencies at Museum of Glass in Tacoma and has received the Museum’s Red Hot auction grand prize juror’s choice award. Elek has had residencies at Pittsburg Glass Center and Pilchuck Glass School. She has lead art education youth programming at the Schack Arts Center in Everett, WA and Remann Hall program at Museum of Glass. Elek has taught workshops at Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School for Crafts in North Carolina, Urban Glass NY, The Studio at Corning, in Australia at Sydney College of Art and Jam Factory in Adelaide. She has been a visiting lecturer at Jacksonville University and University of Washington. Elek serves on the Board of Trustees of Pilchuck Glass School. She shares a studio with husband Jeremy Bert who she often collaborates with on neon projects in South Seattle. Traver gallery in Seattle, WA represents her work.

Raya Friday is a member of the Lummi nation whose tribal lands are situated on the edge of the Salish Sea near Bellingham, Washington. She was born and raised in Seattle where, from an early age, she focused most of her time and energy in the arts. Friday was introduced to glass by an elementary school ceramic teacher at the young age of 11, but did not start actively pursuing the craft for another six years. By 2003, she had spent seven years working in and around the Seattle area for both production shops and independent artists, at which time she moved to New York to earn a degree in glass sculpture at Alfred University. While still in school, Raya started working at the renowned Corning Museum of Glass, first as a technician and later as an instructor in the education department until 2008.
Friday returned to the Pacific Northwest to be close to the land and community she loved. In 2019, after continuing to work in the glass industry and while pursuing an independent artistic career, she decided to return to school to pursue a humanities degree in Indigenous Studies in the Native Pathways Program at Evergreen State College. The intention of Friday’s work is to explore how the unique and haunting vocabulary of glass can amplify and encapsulate both the historical and contemporary issues of her community.
Friday is the Outreach & Education Supervisor for Pilchuck Glass School.

Therman Statom - sculptor, glass artist, and painter - is most notably known as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement for his life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, constructed box-like paintings, and small-scale houses; all created through the technique of gluing glass plate together. Sandblasted surfaces become a canvas for spontaneous vibrant colors and line work, which take nuances from Abstract Expressionism and concepts of Minimalism, while simultaneously incorporating a twist by using blown-glass elements and found objects.
Born in Winter Haven, Florida, Statom spent his adolescence growing up in Washington, D.C. His interest in the arts grew from a fondness of painting and he began to investigate ceramics at RISD. However, after an experimental glass blowing session with Dale Chihuly, he was soon hooked on the spontaneity of glass blowing and its limitless possibilities. Statom went on to pursue studies at Pilchuck Glass School during its inaugural year, completing a BFA in 1974 from RISD, and later studied at the Pratt Institute of Art & Design.

Throughout his career, public artworks have been permanently installed at prominent locations including the Los Angeles Public Library, Corning, Inc. Headquarters, the Mayo Clinic, San Jose Ice Center, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Jepson Center for the Arts in the Telfair Museum, Savannah as well as several hospitals across the country.
His artwork appears in numerous exhibitions annually, including solo and group shows around the nation and internationally. Over the span of his career, he has completed over thirty large, site-specific installations. Most notably in recent years, his 2009 solo exhibition “Stories of the New World,” at the Orlando Museum of Art, which spanned over 5,000 square feet, has been his largest installation to date.

Much of the latter half of Statom’s career has been focused on the importance of educational programming within the arts. He has taken a deep interest in employing workshops as a catalyst for social change and in affect, positively impacting a community. Working directly with the artist himself, adults and children alike share a combined experience of exploring art making via a hands-on experience. Inhibitions and limitations are left by the wayside, and the practice or act of “doing” becomes a journey of self-discovery, creating an opportunity for the participant to go to a new place within themselves.