Glassblowing

with Ché Rhodes
GLASS 681 002 | 3 credits | $350 Lab Fee
July 21–August 2

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 readings from Ed Schmidt’s Beginning Glassblowing and 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.

Ché Rhodes, Untitled, 2007, blown glass, variable approx 30 x 20 x 14 in.

Ché Rhodes (he/him/they) received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned his BA from Centre College where he began his career under mentorship of Stephen Rolfe Powell.  Formerly, he was an assistant professor and Head of Glass Art at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Currently he is professor and Head of Glass Art at the University of Louisville, Allen R. Hite Art Institute. He is a former member of the Glass Art Society Board of Directors, and a current member of the Crafting the Future Board of Trustees and the Penland School of Crafts Board of Trustees. Rhodes has demonstrated at the 2006, 2010, and 2015 Glass Art Society Conferences and has taught at the Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington; The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Urban Glass, Brooklyn, New York; and at Scuola del Vetro: Abate Zanetti, in Venice, Italy. He is a recipient of the James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educator Award and is included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Speed Museum of Art.