Multi-Level Glassblowing
with Ché Rhodes
$250 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Skill-building
This multi-level course offers an immersive exploration of glass as both a material and a language for sculptural and functional expression. Building on existing glassblowing skills, students will expand their fluency in the technical foundations of glass blowing and hot-sculpting processes. Through a balance of guided instruction and independent experimentation, participants will explore ways to manipulate form, texture, and transparency—pushing the material beyond traditional vessel-making into content-driven expressive, conceptual, and site-responsive works. Demonstrations, lectures, and critiques will complement extensive hands-on studio time, encouraging both refinement of technique and a personal voice in glass.
Throughout the course, we will consider artists who have expanded the field of contemporary glass through experimentation, narrative, and cross-disciplinary practices, such as Toshio Iezumi, Jessica Julius, Josiah McElheny, and Stephen Cartwright. These examples will frame discussions around how material, process, and concept intersect, and how glass as a medium continues to evolve within sculpture and design. Historical overviews of studio glass movements and contemporary installation practices will provide students with broader context for their own creative inquiries.
Assignments will encourage students to integrate skillful exploration with conceptual intent. Students will submit a series of responses to technical and intellectual prompts designed to make them consider what glass is as a substance, why they are using it, and how it can be used to support their creative or conceptual investigations. They will also complete a final project which will use glass as a tool to manifest the original content of their work.
SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code GLASS 641 001.
Ché Rhodes (he/him/they) is Professor and Head of Glass Art at the University of Louisville’s Allen R. Hite Art Institute. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor and Head of Glass Art at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A former member of the Glass Art Society Board of Directors, he is a current member of the Crafting the Future Board of Trustees and the Penland School of Craft Board of Trustees. Rhodes demonstrated at the Glass Art Society Conference in 2006, 2010, and 2015 and has been an instructor at the Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass, UrbanGlass, and the Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti, Venice, Italy. He is a recipient of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft Distinguished Educator Award, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY. He received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art and his BA from Centre College, where he began his career under the mentorship of Stephen Rolfe Powell.