Glassblowing

with Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez
GLASS 681 001 | 3 credits | $350 Lab Fee
May 26 - June 8, 2024

This course will cover the fundamentals of glassblowing and is designed to develop a student’s foundational knowledge and skill upon which more advanced ideas can be built. Students will learn to gather hot glass out of the furnace and how to manipulate it with a variety of tools and techniques in both the hot shop and the cold shop. Productive practices including working as a team, timing and choreography, and using natural elements to execute ideas will be demonstrated. This course may include a screening of Glassmakers of Herat. We will investigate glassblowing from a historical approach and look at objects from different periods in history, including works made by Pino Signoretto, Bill Gudenrath, and Karen Willinbrink-Johnsen. Assignments will range from functional cup making, executing complex abstractions, and methods for coloring and patterning. This course will culminate in the completion of a student designed sculpture or installation to be exhibited in the hot shop.

Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (b. 1988, she/her) combines poetry, images, blown glass and neon lights to create layered installations that draw inspiration from her Puerto Rican and Persian heritage. Both joyful cultural traditions and the challenges of immigration and diaspora are reflected through objects that memorialize interpersonal connections. Victoria has been awarded artist residencies at Pilchuck Glass School, the Corning Museum of Glass and Blue Mountain Center, among others. Dozens of galleries and museums in the United States and abroad have exhibited her work, including Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, S12 Gallery, BWA Wroclaw, Heller Gallery, Traver Gallery and the Tacoma Museum of Glass. Her sculptures are included in New Glass Review #33, #38 and #42, annual journals documenting innovative artworks in the material. Victoria lives in Philadelphia and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Tyler School of Art, from which she received her BFA in Glass. She holds an MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez, a quiet life, a couple of times over, 2021, blown glass, argon and mercury, built into table, Photo Credit: Matthew Hollerbush