Visiting Artist Lineup
January
Crystal Worl
January 28-February 1
Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl is Athabascan, Filipino, and Tlingit from Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House. She is Deg Hit’an Athabascan from Fairbanks Alaska.
Crystal is a talented multidisciplinary artist based in Juneau, Alaska. She draws inspiration from her cultural roots and the natural world around her. Worl's artwork is diverse, ranging from Tlingit Northwest Coast design to contemporary multimedia pieces. Her work often explores themes of identity, connection to land, and the interplay between traditional and modern ways of life. In addition to creating art, Worl is also an advocate for Indigenous rights and works to promote cultural awareness and understanding through her art. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and she continues to be a prominent voice in the Indigenous art community.
Today Crystal lives in Juneau, Alaska, working as a co-owner and co-designer of Trickster Company with her brother Rico Worl.
February
Hana Hillerová
February 11-15
Hana Hillerová is a Czech visual artist and designer known primarily for her large-scale sculptures, and more recently for her works in glass. She studied art at Charles University in her native Prague and, at the age of 22, moved to the United States to attend California Polytechnic University. She went on to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where she later served as Director of the Creative Research Laboratory. She then lived in Houston, where she created a permanent public art installation of twenty large metal sculptures at the Houston Intercontinental Airport.
During her maternity leave, Hana returned to the Czech Republic, where she rediscovered her country’s remarkable glass history and became fascinated by the material and its sculptural potential. The idea that forms the leitmotif of Hana’s work with glass is its fluidity. She explores how to give this fluid material the space to co-create the form of her objects. Since 2020 she has been creating vases, glass sculptures, architectural elements, and lighting objects, presented at major international design events in Europe, including at Galeria Rossana Orlandi in Milan.
Saya Moriyasu
February 25-27
Saya Moriyasu has exhibited at venues including the Deitch Art Parade (New York), Aqua Art Miami (Florida), Montserrat College of Art (Massachusetts), Henry Art Gallery Gift Shop Project, Bellevue Arts Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and Wing Luke Museum for the Asian American Experience (Washington state unless noted). After graduating with a BFA from the University of Washington, Moriyasu was awarded residencies at Skowhegan and at Pilchuck Glass School. An alumnus of SOIL Artist-Run Gallery, she is now represented by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Her inspirations include Americana, consumerism, humor, the decorative arts, class, history, Buddhism, and a love of beauty. Moriyasu’s work often consisted of many small pieces that make up a larger piece, in clay, wood, prints, and other materials.
March
Åsa Sandlund
March 11-12
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Åsa Sandlund studied in France and England, spent two years at the Sorbonne, and earned her BFA at Beckmans School of Design. She began her career as an art director at Lowe-Brindfors, working on accounts like Ikea and Saab. Her role as a design assistant at Kosta Boda earned her a scholarship to the Pilchuck Glass School.
Sandlund immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 and joined Nordstrom as a Graphic Designer and Art Director. She rose through various creative leadership roles and recently retired as the Senior Creative Director, overseeing Nordstrom’s brand strategy and identity across all channels. Her work has earned numerous awards, including RAC Gold and AIGA, and she has authored a book on typography.
In addition to her corporate role, Sandlund collaborates with her husband, glass artist Preston Singletary, and is an accomplished glass artist herself. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and abroad and featured in publications like New Glass Review and The New York Times.
Sandlund have served on advisory boards for IslandWood, The Pilchuck Glass School, Artist Trust, and the University of Washington’s professional advisory council in design.
Raphael Ajl
March 25-27
Rafi Ajl is artist based in Berkeley, California who is obsessed with form and process. He is driven by the possibilities of materiality, an insatiable curiosity, and a reverence for the pressures of the creative process. He believes there is an infinite world in every object, and looks to push the edges and find breaking points. Ajl’s approach is rooted in post structuralist theory, which emphasizes that process is never terminal but boundless and full of play. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Ajl grew up in a deeply artistic home where making things was a way of life.
Ajl is terrified of the arbitrary. He is also terrified of decisions. His practice begins by asking questions and an obsession with raw materials and their object potential. He look for situations that lead to discoveries. This initial gesture is the machine that generates the work — the primal and primacy of this gesture is everything. The output is the artifacts of the work of discovery and setting the machine into motion. The work is brutally handmade — the labor, effort, error, and investigation.
April
Robert Lewis
April 1-5
Robet Lewis spent most of his childhood growing up on the rocky coast of Maine. He received his BFA, with honors in Glass, from The School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He lived in Seattle for seven years, working summers at the Pilchuck Glass School, and assisting various glass artists throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 2004 he became a hot glass instructor at the Hilltop Artists in Residence program in Tacoma, Washington. In 2005, he was hired as an Associate Professor at the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan. He did not speak Japanese before moving to Japan but learned the language through total immersion after arriving. While living abroad, Lewis taught numerous glass workshops throughout Japan, and traveled extensively throughout Asia. He returned to the United States after four years abroad, and received his MFA with honors from the Department of Art, at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Lewis has exhibited his work internationally and his work is a part of many private collections. He was recently the Lecturer in Glass at Ohio State University. Since January of 2012 he has been the Visiting Instructor in Glass at the Alberta College of Art & Design.
Danielle Brensinger
April 8-12
Danielle Brensinger is a contemporary glass artist, instructor, and fabricator whose work investigates craft, form, and narrative through glass and mixed media. She earned her BFA in Glass from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2012 and completed her MFA at California State University, San Bernardino, in 2023.
Her work traces the rhythms and gestures of making, drawing on patterns of labor and care that echo across generations. Through glass, she explores repetition, variation, and the subtle language of process, revealing the connections between material, maker, and memory. Based in Los Angeles, she co-runs Second Best Studio, producing work for artists and designers while advancing her own practice. She has taught at Pilchuck Glass School (WA), Penland School of Crafts (NC), California State University San Bernardino (CA), Salem Community College (NJ), and UrbanGlass (NY). She has also recently completed residencies at WheatonArts (NJ) and as both a Neon Resident and Emerging Artist at Pilchuck Glass School.
Lauren Iida
April 22-24
Lauren Iida is a Seattle-born Japanese American artist whose practice centers on intricately hand cut paper. Her work explores themes of memory, displacement, and resilience through the lens of her family’s incarceration during World War II. By combining traditional Kirigami techniques with watercolor washes and contemporary installation, she transforms archival photographs, cultural artifacts, and personal stories into expansive paper installation and permanent public art. Her participatory Memory Net project invites audiences to contribute symbolic objects and stories, weaving individual memories into collective tapestries. Iida's work is currently on long-term exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum (Echoes of the Floating World curated by Kenji Stoll), Wing Luke Museum, Seattle (Lost & Found: Searching for Home). She now resides in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood.
May
Sam Drumgoole
May 13-17
Sam Drumgoole currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. Drumgoole has worked with Dale Chihuly in Seattle and studied at Pilchuck Glass School and Alfred University before opening his own studio. He is highly regarded for his role as a mentor and educator for glass arts.
Nick Mount
May 27-31
Nick Mount was among the first generation of artists to be introduced to glass in Australia in the early 1970s. Grounded in the historic and cultural traditions of the Venetian glass, Mount’s work tells a uniquely Australian story. It is a story of partnership and persistence, industry and innovation, experimentation and growth. He has a reputation for being a generous mentor. In a career spanning almost 50 years, Mount has made a significant contribution to the development of Studio Glass as an artistic medium in Australia and is celebrated as a master of his craft.
June
Summer Wheat
June 3-7
Summer Wheat is known for her vibrant paintings, multifaceted sculptures, and immersive installations that weave together the history of materiality, figuration, and abstraction in both fine art and craft milieus. Each series engages individual and collective human experiences drawn from historical and contemporary sources, mediated through a variety of references ranging from ancient art and medieval tapestries, to etchings from the Renaissance, to modernist abstractions. Wheat’s work examines various manifestations of labor, leisure, commerce, and class through the depiction of numerous figures and archetypes such as farmers, hunters, beekeepers, gardeners, weavers, bankers, and movie stars. The artist’s densely populated “scapes” envision worlds where time seems to have collapsed and every person, regardless of social status, occupies a shared/equal space, in which both labor and leisure are paths to healing humanity. Using a tongue-in-cheek type of humor inspired by comic strips, Wheat subverts conventional hierarchical structures and stereotypes to create more expansive depictions of daily life throughout history.
Martin Janecký and Preston Singletary
June 10-14
June 17-21
This residency is a dynamic collaboration between two world-renowned contemporary glass artists, Martin Janecký and Preston Singletary. Janecký is best known for his mastery of the inside bubble sculpting – technique of sculpting the glass from the interior of the bubble. Singletary’s work has become synonymous with the relationship between European glass blowing traditions and Northwest Native art. During this special, two-week residency, the artists will work together to develop a body of work that will draw on both of their artistic voices.
Kelly O’Dell and Raven Skyriver will join Janecký and Singletary for the second week!
July
Peter Hermansson
July 1-5
Peter Hermansson is a Swedish glass master, who is highly regarded for his contemporary use of traditional graal and Ariel techniques. Following his formal studies at the Orrefors National Glass School, Hermansson has spent two decades developing a graphically expressive graffiti style. Notably, Hermansson’s unique graphic illustrations are transferred into the surface of his glass vessels through an etching technique creating a powerful visual narrative.
Kartini Thomas
July 8-12
Kartini Thomas is an American sculptor who lives and works on Oléron Island in France. Inspired by monsters, microbiology, and modular toys, Thomas sculpts playful landscapes populated by creatures that are at once charming and unsettling. Changes in scale, mischief, monstrosity, exploration, and unpredictability are important parts of this creative adventure.
Einar and Jamex de la Torre
July 15-19
In their mixed-media sculptures, brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre blend glass-blowing techniques with found objects, such as antique printed material, barbeque grills, metal racks, leather, and small objects taken from dollar stores during their travels. Their work draws from traditional Mexican folk art, pop-cultural and religious imagery, and mythology to create works that offer commentary on contemporary Mexican life and the art world itself.
Collaborating brothers, Einar and Jamex De La Torre, were born in Guadalajara, México, 1963, & 1960. In a sudden family move, the brothers moved to The United States in 1972, going from a traditional catholic school to a small California beach Town. They both attended California State University at Long Beach, Jamex got a BFA in Sculpture in 1983, while Einar decided against the utility of an art degree. Currently the brothers live and work on both sides of the border, The Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. The complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities, as well as their current life and practice on both sides of border, inform their narrative and aesthetics.
They have won The USA Artists Fellowship award, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and The San Diego Art Prize. They have had 18 solo museum exhibitions, completed 8 major public art projects and have participated in 4 biennales.
August
Dan Friday
August 5-9
Dan Friday is a member of the Lummi Nation and a Skagit Valley based artist. Drawing from cultural themes and using modern processes, Friday's work is contemporary in format while maintaining basic Native American qualities. He has spent the past two decades working with artists such as Dale Chihuly, Paul Marioni, and Preston Singletary. In 2017 Dan started the Native Youth outreach Program at the Pilchuck Glass School.
He has had residencies at the Museum of Glass, the Burke Museum in Seattle Wa, the Corning Museum NY, Pendland Craft School NC, Chrysler Museum Norfolk Va, Torunga Wai Wai Gisborne New Zealand, Te Atinga Wai Kato New Zealand, and the Dream Community in Tai Pei, Taiwan.
Friday has been awarded the BIMA Award From Bainbridge Museum of Art, Bill Holm Grant, the People’s choice award from the Bellevue Art Museum, The James Earl Fraser Award from the Prix De West at the National Western Museum, an Artist Trust Fellowship, and the Discovery Fellowship through (SWAIA) the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
Dan was a contestant on the Netfilx show Blown Away.
Hilltop Artists
August 12-16
Hilltop Artists is a youth development arts nonprofit in Tacoma, Washington operating deeply impactful programs since 1994 with broad community support, and a track record of success. The organization serves over 650 students a year ages 12 – 26 through its programming, providing tuition-free glass instruction, mentorship, and collaborative leadership opportunities.
This is anti-racist work guided by justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, with an understanding of trauma-informed care and social and emotional learning. Hilltop Artists is dedicated to its mission: Using glass art to connect young people from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds to better futures.
In 1994, the inaugural group of twenty youth from the Hilltop neighborhood met in the former wood shop at Jason Lee Middle School – now Hilltop Heritage Middle School. They were introduced to a range of sculptural mediums, including woodworking. Back then, glass art involved converting Snapple and soda bottles into blown glass drinkware and vases.
In addition to the now world class hot shop at Hilltop Heritage Middle School, Hilltop Artists has grown to include a hot shop at Silas (formerly Wilson) High School. Tacoma Public Schools has partnered with Hilltop Artists since the beginning, highlighting the organization as a positive force in increasing students’ academic and interpersonal success.
Lonnie Holley
August 26-30
Lonnie Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama. From the age of five, Holley worked various jobs: picking up trash at a drive-in movie theatre, washing dishes, and cooking. He lived in a whiskey house, on the state fairgrounds, and in several foster homes. His early life was chaotic and Holley was never afforded the pleasure of a real childhood.
Since 1979, Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, has manifested itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and artistic metaphor, are combined into narrative sculptures that commemorate places, people, and events. His work is now in collections of major museums throughout the country, on permanent display in the United Nations, and been displayed in the White House Rose Garden. In January of 2014, Holley completed a one-month artist-in-residence with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva Island, Florida, site of the acclaimed artist’s studio.
September
Morten Klitgaard
September 2-6
Dividing his time between a shared glass studio in the rugged and ever-changing landscape surrounding Lønstrup in Northern Jutland – equipped with much of his own glassmaking tools – and his main workspace in Copenhagen, Danish glass artist Morten Klitgaard focuses most of his practice in the cold-shop; refining and grinding finished works, and in the fusing kiln; testing materials and color combinations. The sensory experiences of his childhood – the textures, sounds and light, reappear within a body of work that plays on our preconceived ideas of glass. Transparency has been removed, with his objects focused instead on a fusion of delicate forms juxtaposed by highly textured and rugged surface treatments. His work appears as a fragment of his own experiences within nature, whilst encouraging others to be aware of their own relationship to the environment – whether absorbed in wild nature or through poetic slices within their urban lives. His work often incorporates found objects and materials embedded into his molten glass forms, accentuating a body of work that is representative of the place and time in which Klitgaard conceptualizes and creates.
October
Gabe Feenan
October 21-25
Gabe Feenan began his glass career in 1996 working in production studios in the San Francisco Bay area. He has been a visiting and demonstrating artist at glass studios across the world including Verrerie Pierini in Biot, France, The Glass Factory in Emmaboda, Sweden, and Pilchuck Glass School, to name a few. Elegant and refined, Feenan’s personal work evokes strength and balance with their stacked geometric shapes. Relying on pure ability and technique, Feenan seeks to emphasize the importance of a skilled artist’s hand in a machine-made world.
Gabe Feenan has been a gaffer on the Museum of Glass Hot Shop Team since the Museum opened in 2002.
November
Josefina Muñoz Torres
November 4-8
Josefina Muñoz Torres is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Chile whose work explores territory, place, and space through glass, sculpture, and installation. Her international career spans exhibitions, residencies, teaching, research, and public art projects across South America, North America, Europe, and East Africa. She has participated in numerous residencies, including at Wheaton, Urban Glass, Pilchuck, Derix, Northlands, Kuona, and Nafasi, and has been commissioned for public artworks such as a permanent installation for the United Nations. Currently focusing on isolated territories and the islands of Southern Patagonia, her practice intersects with ethnography, sociology, craft, community, and science. Muñoz Torres holds an MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design (2013) and a BFA from the Catholic University of Chile (2006).
Megan Stelljes
November 11-15
Megan Stelljes uses her art to explore her own values and emotions that are continuously influenced by changing social scenes. By reinterpreting commonplace objects and imagery, Stelljes mines the deeper subconscious meanings lying therein. The pervasive sexual undertones throughout her creativity are tempered by the cultural contrast of hery conservative Midwest upbringing, and her looser adopted home and community in the Pacific Northwest. By speaking in visual metaphors, she allows the audience to define their own narrative while busy interpreting her intent.
Stelljes attended Emporia State University in Kansas, where she earned her BFA in glass sculpting. Upon graduation, she apprenticed under Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen. Living in Arlington, Washington, she now works out of Gray Barn Studios while operating her own neon shop to create sculptures that often combine neon and hot-sculpted glass.
December
Greg Dietrich and Aya Oki
December 9-13
In 2024, artists Greg Dietrich and Aya Oki began a collaboration at Pilchuck Glass School, combining Dietrich’s engraved graal blanks with Oki’s hot-sculpted bubble forms. The result was a dynamic transformation: engraved motifs were expanded into three dimensions through Oki’s process of attaching and inflating hot glass bits, creating sculptural surfaces that gave imagery new depth and vitality. Dietrich and Oki will continue this artistic dialog, seeking to create works that speak to transformation, material dialogue, and the unexpected beauty that emerges when processes intertwine.
aya-oki.com | @ayaokidoki
Davĩd Rios
December 16-18
Davĩd Rios is a Chicano mixed-media artist who resonates with the essence of Mexican American identity and acculturation. Rios discovered his passion for glassmaking and the arts during a creative work program with Hilltop Artists in Residence at the age of twelve. Experiencing a childhood filled with field trips to Chihuly's boathouse captivated a young Rios with the opulence of glassmaking and its community. Non-profit programming gave Rios a family and a deep appreciation for the arts and their impact on youth. Rios found his life calling in supporting at-risk youth access to the furnace and arts that swept him off his feet as a child. Understanding and embracing creative outlets can save lives.
Currently, Rios is focused on completing his academic journey in view to becoming a grant writer for non-profit arts programming while simultaneously becoming a Race and Ethnic Studies historian.
