The Salmon School is presented as a temporary sculpture of up to 600 mirrored glass forms suspended in air to compose a school of fish. First exhibited in the Pacific Northwest at Bellevue Arts Museum, The Salmon School aims to shed light on maritime and riverine environmental DNA projects and salmon conservation. This exhibition has traveled internationally and been exhibited in such places as Balmoral Castle and the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UN COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland in November, 2021. Through its travels, The Salmon School has created strong partnerships between arts, cultural, and environmental organizations.

Host Katie Buckingham (Curator, Museum of Glass) interviews artist Joseph Rossano (Founder, The Salmon School) and Ben Cobb (Hot Shop Director, Museum of Glass; Production Director, The Salmon School).

JOSEPH GREGORY ROSSANO

Joseph Rossano (American, 1962) is a multidisciplinary artist, environmentalist, and outdoorsman. His work explores themes of natural history, extinction, taxonomy, and conservation in the genres of assemblage and installation art. Rossano is known for manufacturing environments incorporating wood, photography, technology, and glass. Through the creation of collectives, including artists, scholars, scientists, and industry, Rossano presents contemporary histories, revealing human interaction with species throughout recorded time.

BEN COBB

Through 25 years of working in glass, Benjamin Cobb has honed his mastery of glass, traveled across the globe, and worked with hundreds of artists. Cobb has been a demonstrating artist at glass studios as far afield as Sweden, the Czech Republic, Italy, and France. He is a recognizable leader and voice in the glass community and has contributed to the success of countless works of art. Cobb is the long-time director of the Museum of Glass Hot Shop.

In his own work, Cobb draws inspiration from the natural world and scientific process. His work has been exhibited at Museum of Glass, the Museum of Northwest Art, and in galleries across the country.

KATIE BUCKINGHAM, HOST

Katie Buckingham is Curator at Museum of Glass and would argue that she has one of the best jobs at MOG: developing exhibitions, researching collections, and coordinating the Visiting Artist Residency Program. She supports our local museum community as the past President of the Washington Museum Association.

EPISODE SUMMARY

A Two-Way Mirror is an exhibition of contemporary Black artists who have used glass to create work that deconstructs social, cultural, gender, and racial identity concerns. The artists range in background from African American, to British, to Puerto Rican. Each artist uses glass to reflect thoughts and bodies that have historically been fraught with exploitation. Due to its reflectivity and translucence, glass is an apt medium to interrogate identity constructs such as the theory of double consciousness presented by W.E.B. Du Bois in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk.

Frit City Host Jabari Owens-Bailey interviews exhibiting artist Leo Tecosky.

LEO TECOSKY

Leo Tecosky is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work is a mashup of art, craft, and design. By combining traditional glassblowing techniques, graffiti iconography, stylized typography, and Islamic geometric motif, he creates new objects that do not conform to any single discipline.

JABARI OWENS-BAILEY, HOST

Jabari Owens-Bailey is an arts administrator, educator, artist, and Curatorial Education Program Manager for Museum of Glass. Jabari received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Corcoran College of Art + Design and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts. His varied career in arts administration has shaped his values on diversity and inclusion in the museum and arts fields and his beliefs in the personal healing powers of creating.

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Neon is a master-apprentice trade; those holding the knowledge control to whom it is passed. She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy features artists of historically underrepresented communities in neon alongside the women who taught them, telling the story of the evolution of the medium playing out in real time, as custodians of the craft become more intentional about how, and to whom, they pass their torches.

In celebration of this current exhibition, Frit City Host Jenna Canals interviews Tacoma-based neon collective Gas Filling Tube Suckers (Dani Kaes, Galen Turner, and Jacob Willcox) about their inspirations, artistic practices, and love for their local community.

GAS FILLING TUBE SUCKERS

Dani Kaes, Galen Turner, and Jacob Willcox founded the neon glass artist collective Gas Filling Tube Suckers (GFTS) in early 2022. They visited Museum of Glass for a Visiting Artist residency in the Hot Shop in May 2023. Their installation If one doesn’t work, we got two to spare: a GFTS mixtape (2023) is on view in the Museum’s front window through January 2024.

JENNA CANALS

Jenna Canals is an emerging professional in the museum field with a focus in museum development, DEAI work, and community programming. She receiver her BA in the History of Art from University of Florida in 2018 and currently works at Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. As the daughter of an educator, Canals’ sincere regard for the powers of learning, community, and creativity drive and inspire her work.

EPISODE SUMMARY

The Museum’s Visiting Artist Residency Program hosts artists in our world-class Hot Shop to create new works in glass with the Hot Shop Team. These artists create a sense of excitement and wonder as they experiment and explore new directions in their art that may not be possible in their own studios. Residencies range in length from single-day visits to multiple weeks, and one piece created during the residency is selected for inclusion in the Museum's Permanent Collection.

Frit City host Jabari Owens-Bailey interviews Visiting Artist Tim Tate.

TIM TATE

Glass and video sculptor Tim Tate is an artist on the forefront of the evolution of glass as an art medium. He has been working with glass for the past 25 years. His work embodies the emotional range of our human existence, investigating everything from loss and memory to giving voice to the humanity behind social and political topics. Tate is one of the co-founders of Washington Glass School, as well as the group 21st Century Glass/Glass Secessionism. He received a Fulbright Award to research at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom in 2012. In 2018, he was invited to speak at Yale University’s Craft and Conflict, where his lecture represented the Queer community and its history of art activism. His work is included in the collection of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and has recently been featured in exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (2019), Boca Raton Museum (Glasstress 2021), and the Hermitage.

HOST JABARI OWENS-BAILEY

Jabari Owens-Bailey is an arts administrator, educator, artist, and Curatorial Education Program Manager for Museum of Glass. Jabari received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Corcoran College of Art + Design and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts. His varied career in arts administration has shaped his values on diversity and inclusion in the museum and arts fields and his beliefs in the personal healing powers of creating.

EPISODE SUMMARY

A Two-Way Mirror is an exhibition of contemporary Black artists who have used glass to create work that deconstructs social, cultural, gender, and racial identity concerns. The artists range in background from African American, to British, to Puerto Rican. Each artist uses glass to reflect thoughts and bodies that have historically been fraught with exploitation. Due to its reflectivity and translucence, glass is an apt medium to interrogate identity constructs such as the theory of double consciousness presented by W.E.B. Du Bois in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk.

Frit City Host Jabari Owens-Bailey interviews exhibiting artist Chris Day.

CHRIS DAY

In the time that one knows Christopher Day, one learns how beauty and horror in his practice exists, it borrows the seductive qualities of glass to make work that comments on issues of race with narratives that range from complex inquiries to unflinching social vignettes. Day makes objects that are more than racially defined, reflecting multiple dimensions of identity and experience.

Day is a mixed-race artist who uses his craft to navigate what it means to be Black in the UK. And also, white. While he might be both, he sometimes feels like he is not enough of either. His new work, deeply personal in exploration, are often self-portraits that explore what it means to be biracial in the UK by playing on stereotypes and aspects of generalizations.

JABARI OWENS-BAILEY, HOST

Jabari Owens-Bailey is an arts administrator, educator, artist, and Curatorial Education Program Manager for Museum of Glass. Jabari received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Corcoran College of Art + Design and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts. His varied career in arts administration has shaped his values on diversity and inclusion in the museum and arts fields and his beliefs in the personal healing powers of creating.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Neon is a master-apprentice trade; those holding the knowledge control to whom it is passed. She Bends: Redefining Neon Legacy features artists of historically underrepresented communities in neon alongside the women who taught them, telling the story of the evolution of the medium playing out in real time, as custodians of the craft become more intentional about how, and to whom, they pass their torches.

Frit City Host Jenna Canals interviews She Bends co-owner Kelsey Issel and exhibiting artist Jude Abu Zaineh.

JUDE ABU ZAINEH

Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Her practice employs art, food, and technology to investigate meanings of culture, displacement, diaspora, and belonging. She examines ideals of home and community while working to develop aesthetics rooted in her childhood and upbringing in the Middle East. 

Abu Zaineh is the recipient of the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists, and was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada). She has presented her work at a number of cultural institutions including Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, USA; Forest City Gallery, London, Canada; Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada; and Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, France; and Museum of Glass, Washington, USA. Forthcoming works showing at Museum London x Media City Film Festival, London, Canada; City of Windsor x DWBIA, Windsor, Canada; and a solo exhibition at Artcite, Windsor, Canada.

Abu Zaineh received an MFA from the University of Windsor (Canada) and is currently a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA) as a RPI HASS Fellow and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.

She maintains an active studio practice between upstate NY, USA and Windsor-Essex, Canada. judeaz.com

KELSEY ISSEL

Originally from New York, Kelsey is an art consultant and art program & events producer, concentrating on social impact and womxn makers. She has worked with different venues over the past 10 years, producing multidisciplinary exhibitions, with an eye for artists pushing the boundaries of their practice and unique community engagement. Throughout her program work, Issel maintained private clients, for whom she builds art collections, manages art installations and designs spaces & events. This work has always remained an important piece of the puzzle for Issel, who’s main passion is to build as many different on-ramps for art as possible.

Kelsey first started her work with She Bends at her gallery in San Francisco and has become increasingly involved with She Bends, enticed by this amazing community of womxn that even Juxtapoz Magazine deemed “Revolutionary.” She is now the co-owner of She Bends and has taken on the role Director of Programs, to work more closely with She Bends founder and co-owner Meryl Pataky to exhibit around the nation and expand the scope of the programs and business.

JENNA CANALS, HOST

Jenna Canals is an emerging professional in the museum field with a focus in museum development, DEAI work, and community programming. She received her BA in the History of Art from University of Florida in 2018 and currently works at Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. As the daughter of an educator, Canals' sincere regard for the powers of learning, community, and creativity drive and inspire her work.