Jane Glass: Enamelist and Metal Designer Craftsman

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass

Jane Glass (1919-1970) 

Catharine Jane Glass was born in Ames, Iowa, August 31, 1919. She graduated from Iowa State University in 1942 with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Art and she received her Masters of Fine Art from Columbia University in 1949. Glass subsequently taught at Radford College in Virginia and at the University of Tennessee summer program in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where she taught jewelry making.

Throughout her education and in all of her teaching activities, Glass always placed an emphasis on working with metal, whether creating enamel-on-copper artwork or examples of modern silver jewelry. But it was a chance opportunity to teach a summer course alongside Master Enamelist Kenneth Bates that solidified her lifelong pursuit of the enamel arts, which she also applied to her modernist jewelry.

In 1953, Glass decided to stay in Gatlinburg to open a studio and to build an enameling kiln. Her career as a studio artist in the art of producing enamels was in full swing. Examples of Jane Glass enamels can be found in the permanent collection of The Southern Highlands Craft Guild and the Arrowmont School of Crafts.

Navajo Button Covers

Robert D. Shorty: Navajo Sculptor

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty

Robert D. Shorty, is an award-winning sculptor, writer, dancer, and actor. He was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, in 1944. Shorty has been involved with both the performing and the visual arts. He is an actor, dancer, writer, and sculptor.  He studied at the Institute of American Indian Art in Sante Fe, at Bacon Junior College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, had a scholarship in modern dance at the Connecticut School of Dance, and at the Mary Antony Dance Studio in New York City.  He is an original member of the American Indian Theatre Ensemble, La Mama Experimental Theater Club, in New York City, and has appeared in dancing and acting roles across the country

Robert D. Shorty, Diné, statement

"In 1964, I heard of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My father drove me there from Northern Utah. Next morning we prayed a long prayer leaving me to start my life changing adventure. It was a melting pot of creativity! It was then I took my first sculpture class.  Mr. Allan Houser was my teacher from 1964 to1967. It was then my journey in three-dimensional design began … within the time I took my first sculpture class. Prior to that I took classes at the largest off-reservation boarding school at Intermountain Vocational Indian School, in Brigham City, Utah. Mr. Houser was the art teacher, he taught painting. Mr. Houser was amused by my curiosity as I gazed at his painting. He encouraged me. All I knew I was having fun. Always unconsciously creating and enjoying myself."

Roger M. Rittase: Pennsylvania Impressionist Church Scene Painting, 1940

I found a recent auction listing featuring a painting by one of the Magnificent Marvin's art mentors, Roger M. Rittase (1899-1975). The seller writes that this work is c. 1940.

Roger M. Rittase

Roger M. Rittase

Roger M. Rittase

The Fine Art of Decoys

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constanin Brancusi

Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who made his career in France. Considered a pioneer of Modernism, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th Century, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of Modern sculpture. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. His art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Brâncuși sought inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, and others. But other influences emerge from Romanian folk art traceable through Byzantine and Dionysian traditions.