Austin Stern's Little Monsters series is a body of work where cartoon-like creatures interact with physical manifestations of their own anxieties. These worries which assail the monsters, gleefully weighing down their minds and bodies, are simultaneously sinister and comical representations of our daily setbacks and stumbling blocks. By approaching this subject matter from a playful perspective, the viewer is invited to find the humor in the small battles we fight daily to find positivity, peace, and happiness.

States Stern: "I am inspired by the bright and highly saturated colors found in the toys and cartoons of my childhood, and the patterns found in both nature and the world of fashion. My current work explores interpersonal relationships and mental health. The ways in which we support each other, take care of ourselves, and how we cope with various anxieties and fears are all concepts my work explores through a cheerful lens of brightly colored playful creatures."

Blowing glass since the age of 14, Stern attended high school in Palo Alto, California. After earning a degree in glassblowing from Emporia State University in Kansas, the artist moved to Seattle to develop his own artistic practice in the vibrant glassblowing community of the Pacific Northwest.

Stern exhibits his work nationally and internationally, and has been a resident artist and instructor in the United States, Thailand, and Sweden. His work is in private collections around the world and in the permanent collections of The Corning Museum of Glass, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The Bangkok Glass Company, and the Samcheok City Public Art Collection in South Korea. He was selected as one of 100 artists included in New Glass Now, a Corning Museum of Glass global survey of contemporary glass that travelled to the Renwick Gallery of Smithsonian Art Museum.

In 2026, Stern's work will be exhibited in June at Klüber Gallery in Weinheim, Germany, and he will teach a summer workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass.

An abandoned, dilapidated swimming pool in the forest. A pile of trash smoldering in a secluded backyard. A dark and deserted highway flanked by an unexplained light. Michael Endo's kiln formed glass is about the potential of empty spaces and how people inhabit the subliminal area between the civilized world and wilderness. It begs the question: Is our world real or manufactured?

Says Endo: "Locked in a loop of familiarity and strangeness, my gestural paintings, drawings, glasswork and sculptures exist in a moment of tension. By depicting the boundary between a wild space and the city, I present scenes where my interest in alternative communities, the relationship between space and psychology, occult knowledge, eschatology, ecology and the uncanny converge."

To reveal and examine the experiences people tend to gloss over is Endo's primary aesthetic goal. He states: "Some people get turned off by what they perceive as a darkness to the work. But it doesn't bother me. They are entitled to their own opinion, and I don't consider it while I am making the work. I don't think the work is exclusively dark. People read that into it, but I am interested in exploring these marginal spaces and experiences and bringing them forward."

Endo's work is currently on view in What Remains, the fourth exhibition at The Byre, a centuries-old stone barn turned into an exhibition space by Bullseye Projects in Caithness, the northern-most county in mainland Scotland. What Remains features site-specific installations and works by Celia Dowson, Katharine Dowson, Endo, and April Surgent that reflect on stories and experiences reconstructed from fleeting shadows in memory and the earthed-over remnants found in the landscape. The show will remain on view until March 2026.

Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1979, Endo received an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan, in 2009 and a BA from Portland State University, Oregon, in 2005. His studio work has been included in national and international exhibitions at venues such as The National Glass Centre (Sunderland, UK), Disjecta (Portland, Oregon), Yuan Yuan Art Center (Jinan, China), and Bullseye Projects (Portland, Oregon and Mamaroneck, New York). Endo is currently the curatorial consultant at Bullseye Projects, organizing exhibitions at The Byre and assisting with traveling exhibitions and art fairs. In 2019, he moved to Yucca Valley, California, where he founded High Desert Observatory with his partner Emily Endo. Michael is currently the Artistic Director at Pilchuck Glass School.

This year was "a banner year" for both interest in and enrollment at Pilchuck, says Endo, who sites the school's successful casting conference and upcoming design conference as high points. Enjoy this conversation with the artist about his studio practice and the balance he maintains between curation, administration, and studio as well as the role Pilchuck plays in glass education around the world.

Ethan Stern's work is rooted in traditional craftsmanship, contemporary design, and a deep connection to the natural environment. As a glass artist, he draws inspiration from historic craft traditions such as cut crystal and classical ceramic design, while reinterpreting these forms through a modern lens. His practice seeks to explore the interplay between utility, beauty, and narrative, bridging the realms of functional objects and sculptural expression.

Stern states: "Central to my approach is the concept of light as a dynamic medium. Glass, with its inherent ability to refract, reflect, and transmit light, becomes a canvas through which I explore optical phenomena and color. I am particularly drawn to the ways in which light interacts with texture, pattern, and form, creating ever-changing visual experiences that invite viewers to engage with my work in a multisensory manner. This exploration pushes the boundaries of materiality, transforming functional objects and sculptural forms into vessels of light."

Pushing form beyond the expected anatomy of the vessel, Stern uses glass to investigate the emotive potential of objects. Each piece begins with the creation of a blown, geometric form composed of multiple layers of color and pattern. After the piece has cooled, he carves into the surface, creating patterns and textures through engraving. This process, while reductive, allows him to shift the glass's inherent reflective qualities, creating a richer, more luminous effect. The engraved marks, like the stroke of a paintbrush on canvas, leave evidence of the artist's hand and create a sense of motion, rhythm, weight, and depth. The act of carving—removing material—demands careful consideration, and each choice shapes the relationship between the surface and form, adding an emotional resonance to the work.

Stern began examining the effects he could achieve through engraving in 1999 while at the Pilchuck Glass School. Carving the surface of the glass allowed him to pull together elements of color, form, pattern and texture to express his unique voice through the material. In 2010, he received the Best Emerging Artist award from the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and is featured in the collections of The Eboltoft Glass Museum in Denmark, The Corning Museum, and The Lowe Museum of Art. He has taught at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Pratt Fine Arts Center, Penland School of Craft, The Pittsburgh Glass Center, and The Appalachian Center for Craft. In January 2026, Stern will teach Beyond Battuto – Advanced Coldworking Techniques at the Corning Museum of Glass Studio, Corning, New York.

Says Stern: "In addition to creating art, I am committed to sharing the craft of glassblowing through teaching and community engagement. Ultimately, my work is an ongoing exploration of the intersections between design, craft, and the natural world. It is a dialogue between tradition and innovation, utility and beauty, light and form. By creating pieces that resonate both functionally and emotionally, I hope to inspire reflection, curiosity, and connection to the larger world around us."

Born in Ithaca, New York, Stern resides in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where he runs a glass studio alongside his wife and creative partner, Amanda McDonald Stern. Their studio specializes in sculpture, design, education and glass fabrication fostering a sense of community around glass. Ethan obtained his Associates degree in Ceramics from TAFE College in Brisbane, Australia, and his BFA in Sculpture and Glass from Alfred University.

Of his work, Stern states: "The natural environment offers rich inspiration, from the organic forms and colors of coastlines to the shifting hues of the sky. Through glass, I aim to evoke a sense of interconnectedness, using the material's elemental relationship to earth and fire to bridge the natural and the man-made. While my work draws from history and nature, it is forward-looking, blending traditional techniques with contemporary approaches."

Chaiah (pronounced 'Kaya') Sullivan has been impressing the glass world and Instagram followers with his beautiful and intricate cactus-inspired functional glass to the tune of a 94K following and growing. He came upon the cactus after a friend mistakenly referred to another plant pipe he had created as a cactus and decided to give making a realistic cactus pipe a try. "I never really expected to be the cactus guy," Sullivan says.

Growing up in Paonia, a small town on the Western Slope of Colorado, Sullivan first discovered flameworking in 2005 at age 14. Two years later, he started working as an assistant at a local hotshop, North Rim Glass LLC. He practiced as a hobbyist while finishing high school, then put all his focus into glass. In 2010, he attended Penland School of Crafts, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. There he studied with Janis Miltenberger, a Washington-based artist who works with borosilicate glass to create large-scale narrative sculpture. Like Sullivan, much of Miltenberger's glass art is inspired by botanical elements found in nature such as leaves and flowers.

In 2013, Sullivan took a series of collaborative classes at Glasscraft in Golden, Colorado, where he had the chance to learn from artists such as Salt and Robert Mickelsen, from whom he learned the hollow sculpting technique he uses today. Says Sullivan: "The inside of my pieces have the same contour as the outside. I put all my ridges in and then along each ridge I add dots; once those are all melted in, I pluck each spike out individually. Sometimes I do get a little sick of plucking thousands of spikes over and over and over again. But once you see all your work come to fruition, it makes it all worth it. There's something about making it functional on top of it being a beautiful art piece that really pushes me."

After learning many different styles and techniques, Sullivan explored and experimented to develop his own style of work under the name Unparalleled Glass. He was awarded Dr. Dabber Glass Masters 1st Place in 2023; the Puffco Glass Open 1st Place in 2022; and Champs' Emerging Artist 1st Place in May 2017.

Enjoy this conversation about the progression of Sullivan's cactus designs, the device attachments he's been developing and his recently released foot pedals and oxygen systems. He also discusses recent lighting and installation pieces as well as some fun projects in the works.

At the Glass Art Society's (GAS) 2025 conference, Trailblazing New Traditions, held in May in Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas, Zachary Layhew and Hoseok Youn presented a unique collaborative glassblowing demonstration where Youn's Venetian fantasy vessels intersected with the baroque, cubist influences of Layhew's practice. The artists shared their unique approaches to traditional techniques and designs, both makers transforming the context of tradition through the lens of their original personalities. The result was a figurative sculpture constructed from historical goblets and decorative stemware, combined with the line patterns of cane. Goblets and cane are common and popular in the glass tradition, but this demonstration showed the community a creative and innovative way to elevate those methods to new frontiers while paying respect to their origins.

Layhew started his glass career at the age of 14 by taking an introductory intensive at the Pittsburgh Glass Center (PGC) called Teen Bootcamp. He quickly fell in love with the material and the community surrounding it. Through the years, the artist has focused on his technical skills in glass and developing his personal voice through sculpture. His work revolves around a combination of glassblowing, cold working, and then further reheating, manipulating, and assembling the pieces.

Working as an artist and instructor at PGC, Layhew assists other Pittsburgh artists in his spare time. He will teach Lines, Rings, and Patterned Things at Foci, the Minnesota Center for Glass Arts, from November 12 through 16. In December, the artist has a residency at Keystone College, Factoryville, Pennsylvania, and through the rest of 2025 and 2026, he will teach eight-week classes at PGC. Additionally, Layhew creates production work that is sold online and in person.

A South Korean glass artist specializing in glassblowing, Youn holds a BFA degree in glass and ceramics from Namseoul University, Cheon Ahn, Korea, and earned an MFA in glass from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois. He has taught at Bowling Green State University as an adjunct professor, was a studio artist at Toledo Museum of Art and a studio lead at Belger Arts in Kansas City, Missouri.

Youn's artistic practice focuses on Venetian traditional glass, figurative sculptures, and photography. He is inspired by heroes and villains based on pop culture and toys. His work reflects the image of his ideal successful self, combining crystal clear glass, elaborate vessel forms, intricate stemware, and abundant details. In 2026, he will teach a workshop at Pilchuck Glass School, session 7. Click this link for details https://www.pilchuck.org/programs/sessions/lost-and-found

Enjoy this conversation with Layhew and Youn about their individual work in glass as well as their groundbreaking collaborative demo at the 2025 GAS conference.

Author and architectural glass artist Robert Sowers wrote that lead should be considered a design element and not just a matrix to hold stained glass. That idea spoke to Richard Prigg, who has developed a body of work that celebrates lead and solder as much as it does breathtakingly beautiful glass. Though historically stained glass windows conveyed the teachings of the church, Prigg's work intentionally tells no stories, but rather impacts the viewer by combining more expressive lead work with various light-modulating elements of and beyond the window itself.

States Prigg: "I have an aversion to storytelling. I feel that it can often move the viewer away from the work so that instead of observing and considering what is in front of them, they fly off to the never-never land where the story takes them. Of course, I recognize that storytelling is an integral part of being human. We tell stories to one another to help define our identities. The stories in our culture give us a we that can guide our ways of living. But there is a dark side of storytelling, and it is intrinsic to the spoken word. It is our human tendency to use story to deceive. So, I am distrustful of art with a story, because a story can be a lie. I am distrustful of religion with a story, too. Religion and art – they are such good friends."

A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Prigg started his career at Beyer Stained Glass, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He later joined Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, the largest stained glass studio in the US, where he served as General Manager from 1999 to 2011. There, he oversaw challenging projects such as restoration of the Alcuin and Charlemagne and The Death of Sir Philip Sidney windows, which included re-creating missing plates for areas of the windows where the glass had chemically decomposed. He also oversaw the creation of $3.5 million of gothic stained glass fabricated by Willet Hauser for St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston. It was huge job that took 2.5 years to finish.

Says Prigg: "I worked closely with Crosby Willet, who was incredibly generous to me and taught me a lot about stained glass. He introduced me to everyone in the business more or less. That included Charlie Lawrence who became a mentor and friend as well."

In December of 1999, Prigg left Willet Hauser and opened Sycamore Studios with his wife Ellen Lustgarten, where in addition to repair, restoration and new work, he developed a unique body of personal work featuring mouthblown antique sheet glass in conjunction with calligraphic lead lines built up with lead came. These works include Spin for a Western Light and Two Circles and a Dot. Later, he began to explore concrete as a matrix, resulting in works such as Blue Moon, Tossed and his recent Tower series. Prigg also uses his Lansdowne studio to showcase the work of young artists who often can't get into galleries.

Prigg is a member of the Stained Glass Association of America and has served on the board of directors of the American Glass Guild (AGG). He is the recipient of two AGG AGNX Awards for Excellence in the Art of Stained Glass. In 2025, he presented From Artist To Artisan To Artist: How I Painted Myself Into a Corner and Escaped through a Stained Glass Window at the AGG conference. Recent exhibitions of his work include: 2025 at the AGG AGNX Show, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, Mesa, Arizona; 2025, Juried Show: Vibrance at the Aston Mills Art Center, Aston PA; and the 2023 Juried Show: 100 Skulls, Aston Mills Arts Center. His work can be found in private collections in Philadelphia as well as at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

Says Prigg, about goals for his personal work: "When I began working with glass, I was so in love with these materials – lead and glass – that I just wanted to find ways to show people what delighted me. I wanted people to be presented with these materials in a way so that they would be engaged in the textures, the colors, the voices of the materials."

Jason Christian's work pushes the boundaries of his craft, combining the delicate complexity of reticello with intricate detailing inspired by Fabergé eggs. Through series such as his Bumbershoots and Yo-Yos that reflect classic Venetian technique to more sculptural works including Dragons and Volpe, Christian's art is deeply influenced by his family, personal experiences, and the nostalgia of growing up in the Pacific Northwest.

A renowned glass artist based in the Seattle area, Christian was born in 1976 on Whidbey Island, Washington, to a metal fabricator and a cardiac nurse. His artistic journey began at the age of 21 when he was introduced to glassblowing as a factory charger, where he gradually developed his skills and knowledge through hands-on experience. His formal education in glassblowing includes workshops and classes with notable artists such as Pino Signoretto, Jeff Mack, Janusz Pozniak and Preston Singletary. Throughout his career, Christian has worked with numerous well-known artists in the Seattle glass community, including Martin Blank, Preston Singletary, James Mongrain and Nancy Callan.

Since 2008, Christian has been an integral member of Dale Chihuly's Boathouse team, working with international artists like Pino Signoretto. He has also served as a glassblowing assistant to Lino Tagliapietra since 2014 and worked as a fabricator for Lindsey Adelman from 2014 to 2016.

Says Christian: "I still don't know if I chose glassblowing or if it chose me. I just knew that the moment I walked into that studio and saw what was being created I had to be a part of it. Finding glassblowing felt magical, like I was made for it. It provided something I lacked in my younger years – the urge to create, grow, and express myself through my work. To witness a person handle molten glass, manipulate it, and form it as if it were water was amazing to me. I knew that I had to be a part of it."

Christian has participated in numerous artist residencies, including: FOCI, Minneapolis, MI (2019); Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY (2019); Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA (multiple years); Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA (2016 and 2008); University of Texas at Arlington (2015); and the University of Wisconsin-Steven's Point (2015). He was Auction Centerpiece Designer at Schack Art Center, Everett, WA, in 2016 and 2010. His work is featured in several notable collections including the Hauberg collection, the Elton John collection, the Ben Bridge collection and many more private collections in the United States and Canada.

With a desire to share his expertise through teaching and demonstrations, Christian has conducted workshops at various institutions including Penland School of Craft (2019); Pittsburgh Glass Center (2019); Pratt Fine Arts Center (2018); Pilchuck Glass School (2017); Urban Glass (2016); and Seattle Glassblowing Studio (2010-2013); He has also been a demonstrating artist in Turkey (2015) and Finland (2009).

Christian states: "Beyond my relationship with glass, the camaraderie within the industry enticed me to grow beyond myself, always looking for what was within and turning that into something I could only see in my mind. It created an environment of growth and exploration, pushing me to be a better artist."

Upcoming Christian workshops include Penland School of Craft, August 10 – 15; Hilltop @ Pilchuck, September 28; and Neusole Glassworks, Forest Park, Ohio, November 17.

Beth Lipman is an American artist whose sculptural practice generates from the Still Life genre, symbolically representing the splendor and excess of the Anthropocene and the stratigraphic layer humanity will leave on earth. Assemblages of inanimate objects and domestic interiors, inspired by private spaces and public collections, propose portraits of individuals, institutions, and societies.

Through works in glass, wood, metal, photography, and video, Lipman presents a meditation on our relationship to Deep Time, a monumental time scale based on geologic events that minimizes human lives. Each installation is a reimagining of history, created by placing cycles often separated by millenia in proximity, from the ancient botanical to the cultural. The incorporation of prehistoric flora alludes to the impermanence of the present and the persistence of life. The ephemera of the Anthropocene becomes a symbol of fragility as the human species is placed on a continuum where time eradicates hierarchy.

Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art (FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Gustavsbergs Konsthall(Sweden) and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). Her work has been acquired by numerous museums including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Kemper Museum for Contemporary Art (MO), Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), Jewish Museum (NY), Norton Museum of Art, (FL), and the Corning Museum of Glass (NY).

Lipman has received numerous awards including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Grant, Virginia Groot Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Alturas Foundation, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center's Arts/Industry Program, and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Recent works include Living History, a large-scale site-specific commission for the Wichita Art Museum (KS) that investigates the nature of time and place and Belonging(s), a sculptural response to the life of Abigail Levy Franks for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR).

Lipman's work is on view now in three independent installations including: Hive Mind at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), Toledo, Ohio; and the permanent installation One's-Self I Sing at theMuskegon Museum of Art (MMA), Muskegon, Michigan. To celebrate the official unveiling of One's-Self I Sing, the MMA is hosting an Artist Talk and Unveiling Reception this Thursday, July 17 at 7 p.m. The event is open to the public and free to attend. Find out more at

www.muskegonartmuseum.org

Suspended in the museum's central atrium, the sculpture explores the interconnectedness of time, culture, and nature through materials such as glass, wood, metal and gypsum. Measuring approximately 240 x 120 x 60 inches, One's-Self I Sing functions as an "exploded" still life – an expansive, suspended constellation of objects that invites viewers to reflect on humanity's place within Deep Time and the Anthropocene. Says Lipman: "The marriage of transparent and opaque forms alludes to what is seen and known juxtaposed with what is concealed and lost over time."

The sculpture spans both floors of the museum, encouraging viewers to encounter it from multiple vantage points. Braided suspension cables carry the piece vertically through space, suggesting both ascent and descent, growth and entropy. Lipman incorporates subtle visual references to the Muskegon Museum of Art's permanent collection, binding the sculpture to the museum's history while extending its meaning outward across time.

"One's Self I Sing is a showstopping first impression when visitors walk into the museum," says Kirk Hallman, Executive Director of the Muskegon Museum of Art. "It's a powerful and visually stunning complement to the museum's new Bennett Schmidt Pavilion and a bold reflection of the MMA's ongoing commitment to celebrating women artists."

Enjoy this conversation with Lipman about current installations, artistic motivations and the behind the scenes challenges of creating site-specific work that communicates to viewers.

Using over 17,500 letters of handmade murrine tiles, Mathieu Grodet composed La Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen, which translated means the Declaration of Human Rights, which was written in 1789. Recreated in mosaic style, dark red was used to represent blood, with the ivory-colored background symbolizing the ivory tower that freedom must be taken from. Intense attention to detail combined with a contemporary message defines Grodet's multi-disciplinary works in glass.

A French-born artist living and working in Canada, Grodet also creates thin and elegant glass objects in classic Venetian style, engraved using a Dremel tool with imagery that addresses modern-day ideas and issues. Says Grodet, "Several themes are recurrent: the memory, the inventories, but also the lie (propaganda) or the secret." His work reflects a deep interrogation of the world and its violence.

Later, Grodet learned to paint on various glass shapes using enamel, and through these techniques was able to make his illustrations more fanciful and full of color. Though it provided an alternative way to express on glass, the enameling process can be time-consuming and technically difficult. Firing can be stressful, and mistakes are unfixable. In one instance, Grodet invested three months of work on one piece, which he had to abandon after issues with the firing. He hasn't worked with enamel since, but toys with the idea of revisiting these processes that afford so much artistic space.

In parallel with glassblowing, Grodet learned flameworking and quickly discovered it was far easier to put together a small flameworking studio than a hot shop. At a Loren Stump workshop presented at the Corning Museum of Glass, Grodet learned the ancient technique of murrine. When the pandemic hit, he finally had some time off from teaching to focus on flameworked murrine and now spends most of his studio time on the techniques.

Says Grodet: "Glassblowing will always have a special place in my heart. Your entire body is needed to work the hot shop, and I love the physicality of engaging with fire and water – it is playing with terrestrial forces – something bigger than us. However, now I am enjoying the art of murrine and its technical and strategic aspects. It is like building a house; you need to carefully plan every step over weeks. It also involves other diverse techniques, such as cold working, marquetry and mosaic. I am in uncharted territory on the murrine planet."

Grodet was born in Orleans, France, where he first studied art and drawing at the Visual Art Institute of Orleans. In 1999, he discovered the medium of glass and began his career in this ancient art by training at several studios across France and Europe. He began learning flameworking at CERFAV (the European Centre for Research and Training in Glass Art). After many travels, he dropped his suitcases in Canada, where he now applies the various different techniques acquired over the years to his artistic practice. With all his work, Grodet explores themes of contradiction, power, duality and the absurdity of life.

Represented by Sandra Ainsley Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, and Galerie Elena Lee in Montreal, Quebec, Grodet's art has been shown at SOFA Chicago, Galerie Espace Verre, and is held in several museum collections, including The Corning Museum of Glass and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught and demonstrated around the world.

From September 25 to November 9, 2025, Grodet's work will be on view at Musée du Verre, site du Bois du Cazier, Charleroi, Belgium. The artist recently taught a murrine class at Salem Community College, June 16 through 20 followed by a medieval glassblowing class at the Coring Museum of Glass, June 23 through July 4. He will teach at the Glass Furnace in Istanbul, August 4 through 14, and his final teaching gig of 2025, a murrine class, takes place in Kansas City from November 8 through 12 at the studio of Sara Sally LaGrand.

An American born artist dedicated to developing new techniques of glass working, Joshua Hershman combines optical physics with the fluidity of glass to make his contemporary sculpture. By harnessing light though hand-polished lenses, he employs unique methods of casting, coldworking, and photography in his boundary pushing work.

Hershman states: "My work offers meditations on the complexities within the concept of photography and the repercussions of the camera's impact on culture. The incredibly creative and destructive nature of photography is both inspiring and alarming to me. It has helped bring our global society closer together but also driven us desperately apart. It can teach us or deceive us, show us the furthest reaches of space, or the closest representations of matter itself. It is these contrasting realities that exist within photography, which inspire my works of contemporary art."

Being born with no peripheral vision or depth perception, decades of vision therapy led Hershman to his lifelong fascination with the complex nature of the visual system and the science of light and optics. By using cameras themselves as frames for his experimental photographic processes, he asks us to look more closely into the simple act of taking a photograph. His work focuses on the significance that film and photography have played on the development of contemporary global culture.

More recently Hershman's work has focused on the torus — the most common shape found in galaxy formations and human cellular biology. His series, Messier Objects, was named after the French astronomer Charles Messier, who famously catalogued anomalous objects that confused his search for comets in the night sky.

Originally from Colorado, Hershman was born in 1981 and first began working with glass at the age of 17. In 2004, he graduated from the Craft and Design Program at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada. In 2008, he went on to earn a BFA with Distinction from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. Most recently, he completed the Master's program at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Sculptural/Dimensional Studies.

In 2009, Hershman had his first solo exhibition at Pismo Glass in Denver and went on to participate in many group exhibitions and art fairs including Sofa Chicago, the Armory Show, Art Hamptons, SF Art Market, the Habatat Invitational, and many others. He loves to teach and has led workshops and lectures at California College of the Arts, Public Glass in San Francisco, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and at D&L Glass Supply in Denver.

Hershman has received numerous awards, was included in the Bullseye Emerge international glass competition, Young Glass 2017, and can be found in numerous private collections. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Ebeltoft Museum in Denmark, The National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, and Museum of Glass, Tacoma (MOG). In fact, MOG exhibited Hershman's sculpture in the nation's first LGBTQ+ glass exhibition titled Transparency. He has been invited to participate in several artist-in-residence programs including North Lands Creative Glass in Scotland, D&L Art Glass in Colorado, the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee, and most recently completed a semester-long residency at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The artist worked for Berengo studio in Murano, Italy, where he made work for the world's leading contemporary artists.

Living and operating a private studio in Los Angeles, California, Hershman makes his personal work and also operates the Glass Foundry, which provides casting and coldworking services to other artists. Additionally, he is employed at Judson Studios, where he's currently working on a large-scale architectural glass project for James Jean.

"Casting glass was something I could do in isolation in my studio which was a huge advantage during the pandemic. Without the need for a furnace or lots of facilities, this process allowed me to make a highly challenging sculpture without the need for a team of assistants or expensive equipment. I think what draws me most to lost wax casting is the constant challenge and problem solving that is required to get a high-quality casting."