NEW GLASS STUDIO AND GALLERY FURTHERS LOUISVILLE’S REPUTATION
AS EMERGING GLASS MECCA
Opening exhibit: “Centred on Glass,” contemporary glass
art by 13 Centre College graduates and three friends
LOUISVILLE, KY (June 29, 2004) a Glass artists, Brook Forrest White
Jr. and Susie Garbee Slabaugh are further cultivating Louisville’s
status as a destination for contemporary glass art with the July
2, 2004, opening of Flame Run studio and gallery, the largest
glass blowing studio in the region. The renovated 12,500 square-foot
building at 828 East Market Street in Louisville’s East Market
Street Arts District., showcases contemporary and original glass
creations, a working glassblowing hot shop, and classes for beginning
glass artists.
Louisville is quickly gaining recognition from the international
glass community as the glass center of the Midwest because of the
synergy between local glass artists, the University
of Louisville,
local collectors and the arts community. Introducing Flame Run to
Louisville is part of White and Slabaugh’s vision for further
developing Louisville’s status as a destination for glass art. “ We
are poised roughly halfway between Murano and Seattle,” White
said. “ In this past year, starting with the Celebration of
Glass exhibits, Louisville is drawing thousands of people to watch
glass being blown and to visit exhibits featuring glass,” Slabaugh
added.
The gallery will open with “Centred on Glass,” an exhibit
by 13 artists who graduated from Centre
College in Danville and three
artists who are friends of the gallery, including Slabaugh. White
and two of the studio’s resident artists are Centre graduates.
The exhibit opens on July 2nd Gallery Hop night and runs through
August 31st. TARC has extended the route of its Gallery
Hop shuttle to include Flame Run.
White’s work has been shown throughout the United
States, including the Kennedy
Center in Washington, DC, the Huntington
Museum of Art, the Asheville
Art Museum and the Evansville Museum
of Art. In 2003, White received the
Distinguished Young Alumnus Award from Centre College, and in 1998
he received an Al Smith
Artists Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts
Council. White used the grant to
refine his technique and study international glass making by traveling the
world, visiting and studying
glass making from some of the world’s top glass artists.
Flame Run Co-Founder, Slabaugh, is a Lexington native who discovered
her passion for glass making at Pilchuck
Glass School in Seattle.
Working under the instruction of renowned artist Fritz Dreisbach,
Slabaugh found inspiration in the intensity and immediacy of the
glass medium. Her studies continued at Penland
Craft School with
glass artist Richard Ritter, and she worked for a year as a production
glass artist in Tennessee. Susie holds a BFA from Washington
University and is an MFA candidate at the Savannah
College of Art & Design.
The resident Flame Run team of glass artists also includes Paul
Hugues, a Louisville native and Centre graduate; Paul Nelson, a native
of Nashville, and a graduate of Centre with an MFA in sculpture from
the University of Southern Illinois, and Devyn Baron, a Louisville
native with a BFA in Glass from the Cleveland
Institute of Art.
White’s first studio was founded in 1995 in Danville, KY
under the name Glassbrook©, and was put on hold while White
managed and built the Louisville hot shop, Glassworks, into the prominent
glassblowing studio it is today. White partnered with Slabaugh to
purchase and create Flame Run. His works are featured in fine art
and craft shops in 30 states and at well known galleries across the
country.
“ White has been the most consistent glass artist in Kentucky, merging
production work and artistic, one-of-a-kind pieces,” said Stephen
Rolfe Powell, an internationally respected glass artist and Professor of Glass at Centre. “His
dogged desire to maintain a functioning glass studio has provided a base of operation
for many other Kentucky glass artists.” |
