- Open today, 10 am to 5 pm.
- Parking & Directions
- Free Admission
At the Perry Glass Studio
2016 Visiting Artist Series
This year’s artists included Hank Murta Adams and Rik Allen.
Hank Murta Adams
October 20–23
Hank Murta Adams is one of the most imaginative, experimental, and collectible glass artists working today. As a RISD student (’78) he was painting portraits and landscapes before he met Dale Chihuly. That led him to glass studies at Pilchuck, Penland, and the Appalachian Center for Craft.
He developed a style that mixed humor with undertones of madness or cynicism, subversion or sadness. His signature heads often appear as if the nerves are on the outside. As one reviewer put it, his works are “heroic in scale, but anti-heroic in character.”
Rik Allen
March 3–6
Our thanks to Rik Allen for bringing his retro-futuristic rocket visions to life while working live before our Studio audience.
Allen arrived at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington in 1995 and spent more than a decade working as a team member for one of the giants in glass art, William Morris. His reputation for exceptional glass finishing skills grew during this time, and in 2005 he and his wife, artist Shelley Muzlowski Allen, established their own glass and sculpture studio. The two have placed works in top collections around the world and have traveled extensively to teach glass techniques to students of the craft.
As befitting a space-inspired artist, during his time in Virginia, Allen visited with NASA scientists in our area. His work to create what NASA Langley Research Center engineers call a MMSEV is shown below. The real-life version of what he was building is scheduled to explore Mars in the late 2030s.
