ROCKFORD ART MUSEUM | COLLECTION | CONTEMPORARY GLASS

Joel Philip Myers

Joel Philip Myers' introduction into glass art was both a common and unusual for his time. Common in that like many other glass artists of the 60's he had come through ceramics to discover glass. Unusual because he is the only American glass artist of that time not to have been taught by Harvey Littleton, regarded as the founder of the Studio Glass Movement.

After studying ceramics in Denmark and then at New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Myers worked as an industrial designer, mostly of packages. In 1963, he joined Blenko Glass as the director of design. Inspired by the Toledo Glass seminars of 1961 and1962, which effectively launched the American Studio Glass Art Movement, Myers began experiments with blowing glass in the two one hour periods when the equipment and materials were available at Blenko.

As a glass artist his beginning was isolated and he is entirely self-taught. So when the rest of the movement was blowing mishapen bubbles to Harvey Littleton's mantra of “technique is cheap,” Myers refined his technique and honed his use of color. In 1970, he left Blenko to establish an influential glass art program at Illinois State University, Normal.

Through the decades Myers' glass has ebbed and flowed in form, color and content. In the early 70's he was focused on brightly colored cylidrical vessels. Later a series of handforms was his first foray into sculpture. In these glove-like sculptures he experimented with representation and abstraction, breaking away from the traditional vessel forms that many glass artists were feeling the need to at the time. In the 80's, he returned to vessels introducing a new complexity in shape and use of color.

If there is a radical break in his work previous work, it came in the 90's. This work is austere and shows much more conceptual than technical interest. In an installation of a roughly textured black, silver and translucent cylanders titled, the dogs go on with their doggy life. And the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree, 1996-98, several look as if they were caught on motion capture film after a bullet had gone through them leaving a rippling opening. Others have shards of black glass or pins poking out at all angles.