On December 8, 2020, ACerS Northern California Section continued to offer relevant programming with an interactive online showcase featuring Therese Lahaie, David Head and Smith Levi who shared their stories of art, glass and ceramics. The webinar can be viewed at this link.
As an artist, Therese has used light and technology to reveal the nature of glass as a medium for expressing solace as well as danger. Her glass research spans from the micro view, making photogram studies of life inside the bubbles, to the macro view, projecting video through architectural glass. She uses glass as a reflective and refractive canvas with techniques of projecting, slumping, scouring, painting, polishing, printing, breaking, and motorizing it
Almost 10 years ago, she returned from a trip to Dia Beacon, NY energized by the unexpected impact of scale in the minimalist sculpture installed there, and was driven to infuse her work with similar qualities. Ever since, she has been expanding her use of LED technology to construct light environments.
Therese Lahaie has sculptural work in the permanent collections of the Crocker Art Museum, California, Corning Museum of Glass Contemporary Collection, New York, the DiRosa Collection, California, and the Glassmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark. She has been an artist in residence at the Kala Art Institute in California and had three honorary fellowships at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in California.
Lahaie has a degree in glass sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and a B.A. in Fine Art from Emmanuel College in Boston, MA. She is the 2015 award winner of the LuciteLux Just Imagine award for her public art project Crossing Signal Mosaic in Emeryville, CA.
She lives and works at the 45th Artist Cooperative in Emeryville, CA, where she is working on getting solar panels installed on the cooperatives live/work buildings.
David Head is a Certified Principal Engineer supporting optical hardware for flight and space applications at Lockheed Martin. He has over 30 years experience in a career which has spanned lasers, biomedical devices, injection molding, lenses and astronomical telescopes. Dave has over twenty patents and numerous publications.
Dave’s time spent working with lasers gave him an appreciation for dielectric mirrors which he now incorporates into his sculptures. Work and training exposed him to tools and techniques for machining which he has evolved by building a small home shop. The combination of coated optics, metal working skills and a love of mobiles has fueled his artistic endeavors to create robust and beautiful kinetic works that are truly unique.
The discussion will briefly cover the optics of multilayer dielectric mirrors and how they are incorporated into kinetic sculptures. Dave will also show a novel design for a jeweled bearing used in one of his sculptures. Dave will show a number of sculptures that have been on display or presented in galleries. One of his works was on display in the skylight at the Nashville International Airport concourse.
Smith Levi Is a designer and metal fabricator currently working as lead shop technician for Glassybaby in Seattle, WA. Levi was immersed in the glass community from a young age as the child of glass artist, David Levi.
In 2012, Levi started working with metal building bicycle frames under the brand name RatKing Frames. Their interest in mechanical systems and fabrication has expanded into work in the hot shop.
In the past year, Levi has reimagined what glassblowing can be in the age of the Coronavirus by engineering pneumatic systems that remove the need for glassblowers to put their lips on a pipe. These pneumatic systems have been implemented as standard operating procedure for the Glassybaby factories and have afforded safe operation since their return to work in May 2020.