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Renown Glass Artist Crafts New Technique From Spruce Pine StudioA few miles beyond this mountain town of 2,030, in the woods at the end of a rural road, a rustic shed-like building has become the destination for nationally known artists seeking a new medium.
The rambling structure is Littleton Studios, the operations center for Harvey Littleton, founder of the American studio glass movement.
While teaching at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s, Littleton experimented with glass as a new material for sculptural art. In 1962, he introduced his techniques at a workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art and inspired a generation of glass artists.
Twelve years later, Littleton hit upon another innovation: using glass in the two-dimensional art of printmaking. He called the process vitreography, and since moving to Spruce Pine in 1981, has hosted over 90 artists who have created vitreographic prints in their own distinctive styles.
Glass "turned out to be a wonderful material for printing," Littleton said, "because it didn't break under the pressure of the press." Now 82, the artist and his master printmaker, Judith O'Rourke, talked recently about vitreography's advantages.
"You can pile a column of water a mile high on top of glass and it won't break," Littleton said. "That's why they use glass spheres in the ocean to support undersea cable off the bottom."
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18/9/2004 | Viewed 8,957 time(s)
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