Become a Pilchuck Magic Maker
Become a Pilchuck Magic Maker
First 100 to join receive a limited-edition tote
Participants may select one workshop per session, during which they will be fully immersed in a vibrant educational environment on the breathtaking Pilchuck campus for the duration of the session. All participants eat, work, and sleep on campus for the entire session. Days include intensive instruction and demos throughout the day and evening, as well as ample opportunities for personal exploration and studio time. Housing is warm and rustic and most accommodations require a brief walk through fields and forest to reach the studios.
In this intensive class, students will learn how to make representational images in borosilicate glass through stringer drawing. Techniques covered include cut and flip, disk flip, and sock flip, as well as hybrid combinations of these elements. Demos and hands-on torch work will guide students to create images and apply them to vessels, pendants, and functional sculpture. Previous drawing experience is not required.
We will explore different ways to visually communicate ideas, feelings, and stories. Using various kiln-forming techniques such as casting, Pâte de verre, and slumping, we will create small scale narrative objects which will then be combined with each other, the environment, prints, or found objects, to convey one’s mental state, emotion, or personal stories.
Through careful observation we will consider the potential of glass. Various collaborative and experimental demonstrations will explore how one manages optics and sound to broaden the student’s understanding of the material’s possibility. We will delve beyond physical manipulation of glass with respect and thoughtfulness for the material. This class will encourage investigations into the innate properties of glass. Our studio process will be taught in a traditional glass studio as well as a computer media lab.
This course focuses on different methods of transferring imagery onto blown glass. Students will learn the fundamentals of applying glass enamels via screen printing and calligraphy pen. With an emphasis on story telling through imagery, we will divide our time between the hot shop, making forms, and the print shop, creating images on screens. Emphasis will be placed on teamwork, sketching, and ideation.
We will take a wide-ranging look at the History of Glass with an eye towards providing inspiration and source material for your contemporary artmaking. We will look for ideas across a broad spectrum of human endeavor, not only in the aesthetics of the glass, but also in the social, economic, scientific, and political circumstances of the times which shaped it.
In this course you will discover the traditional techniques of Victorian reverse-glass signmaking. This includes such methods as 23kt gold water/oil gilding, gold leaf burnishing, Boston-style gilding, damar varnishing, brush blending, and signwriting. Using all of these techniques, you will create a beautiful gold leaf-mirrored glass sign.
Mercedes Mühleisen (b.1983, Austria), is an Oslo-based artist working primarily with video installation and performance. Through her work she seeks to give language and expression to processes and situations that lie outside, or to the side of, an anthropocentric logic, and which bring up previously neglected voices.
Ben Wright holds degrees from Dartmouth College, the Appalachian Center for Crafts, and Rhode Island School of Design. He has taught and exhibited his unique approach to art making at numerous schools across the US and abroad in Germany, Turkey, Denmark, Japan, Belgium, Poland and Australia.
Every summer since 1971 the glass world has come together for innovative and rigorous workshops with an international cohort of instructors and artists. In 2025 we will host seven sessions.
The summer is filled with an all-star roster including Jen Elek, Annette Blair, Ben Edols, Jessica Loughlin, Sibelly, Danny Coyle, Dante Marioni and more. An advanced topics Spring Session will include an opportunity to be a part of Pilchuck history by rebuilding one of the program furnaces with Fred Metz. Session 3 will see the return of lampworking maestro Lucio Bubacco for a 30-year reunion of his Flame to Furnace collaboration with Brian Kerkvliet and Ed Schmid. Preston Singletary and Martin Janecký will bring their combined approach to Session 4. Silvia Levenson returns during Session 5, Pilchuck’s first bi-lingual (Spanish/English) session.
Join us for another transformative year on the hill.
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