Jon Kuhn
Jon Kuhn (born 1949) is an American studio glass artist, renowned as one of the world's leading coldworked glass artist[1] for his diamond-like, dazzling glass sculptures.[2] He is credited as the pioneer behind the now-popular technique of coldworked glass[3], which does not involve molten or blown glass as one would typically associate with glass art, but incorporate various types of optical, laminated, and/or colored glass sheets that are carefully layered and aligned, then fused and encased within highly-transparent glass with a prismatic outer shape to magnify the patterns formed by the inner material at the core.
As early as 1979, Jon Kuhn was recognized for his artistic accomplishments, by being included in “The Corning Museum Exhibition, A World-wide Survey." and the youngest artist working in glass to be acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He was commissioned by Bill Clinton to create a piece for the White House Collection in 1993,[4] and his works are now featured in over 40 international museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vatican Museums, Carnegie Museum of Art, and so on.[5]
Early life and education[edit]
Kuhn was born and raised in Chicago, the son of a political science professor. As a young adult he made his way to Shimer College, then on to Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, where he received his BFA in 1972. Although still uncertain about pursuing a career as an artist, he had learned a great deal about the vocabulary and processes of art and had focused most consistently on ceramics.
Career[edit]
Kuhn began his artistic career as a ceramist, working with clay. Fashioning vessels of silicate compounds, which changed state and chemical structure when they were subjected to very high heat. During his graduate studies he began working with molten glass. His earliest sculptures, from the late 1970s, show his roots in clay and the making of containers, but they also moved quickly into new, uncharted territories of expression in which he alternately polished and flattened surfaces or left them rough and etched. In these pieces, the fluidity of molten glass is still apparent in the irregular, flowing contours and rounded masses of the sculptures. Their irregular shapes suggest organic forms, while the colored glass visible behind the occasional fragmentary polished surfaces suggests fantastic landscapes and life forms in development. His continuing curiosity about art and the encouragement he had received from his faculty at Washburn made Kuhn decide to try graduate school, and he attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, receiving his MFA in 1978.[6]
In about 1985, after an injury to his right arm, Kuhn began facing difficulty performing the strenuous motions required in order to work with molten glass, and a new visual element began to appear in Kuhn's glass sculptures as he was forced to depart from the traditional approach to the medium; transparent layers of glass and various types of other materials, fused into unified sections and encased in a solid clear layer that refracts light and reflect the inner layers on the surface. These layered sections of glass eventually evolved into cubic cores, and Kuhn sculpted his first cube in 1987. Since then, this technique of encasing aligned layers of laminated glass in a solid layer of clear glass has paved the way for many artists and craftsmen around the world.
Light is an important element in Kuhn's work. Each sculpture captures ambient light, reflects and refracts it and throws it back into the space which surrounds them, appearing to dance in the space they occupy. The interiors of the pieces glint and sparkle, alive with color and reflected light, resembling geometric molecular models. Recent works, suspended by fine steel wires, chromed steel frames or hanging from the ceiling, seem to defy gravity completely. Pendulums, hung from breathtakingly thin steel cables, also defy gravity. These tensions between weight and movement; fragmented, lively interiors and simple, stable exteriors, known reality and imagined fantasy are the sources of powerful expressiveness in Kuhn's sculptures.
Notable public collections[edit]
- Asheville Art Museum — Asheville, NC[citation needed]
- Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery — Ontario, Canada[citation needed]
- Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts — Stanford, CA[citation needed]
- Carnegie Museum of Art — Pittsburgh, PA[citation needed]
- Cincinnati Art Museum — Cincinnati, OH[citation needed]
- Chrysler Museum of Art — Norfolk, VA[citation needed]
- Corning Museum of Glass — Corning, NY[7]
- Dennos Museum Center — Traverse City, MI[citation needed]
- de Young Museum — San Francisco, CA[citation needed]
- Ernsting Stiftung Glass Museum — Coesfeld, Germany
- Glasmuseet Ebeltoft — Ebeltoft, Denmark[citation needed]
- Henry Ford Museum — Dearborn, MI[2]
- High Museum of Art — Atlanta, GA[8]
- Glass Museum of Hsinchu City — Hsinchu, Taiwan[citation needed]
- Hunter Museum of American Art — Chattanooga, TN[citation needed]
- Huntington Museum of Art — Huntington, WV[citation needed]
- Knoxville Museum of Art — Knoxville, TN[citation needed]
- Lowe Art Museum — Coral Gables, FL[citation needed]
- Metropolitan Museum of Art — New York, NY[9]
- Milwaukee Art Museum — Milwaukee, WI[citation needed]
- Museo del Vidrio — Monterrey, Mexico
- Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts — Lausanne, Switzerland[citation needed]
- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe — Hamburg, Germany[citation needed]
- Museum of American Glass — Millville, NJ[citation needed]
- Museum of Texas Tech University — Lubbock, TX[citation needed]
- Smithsonian American Art Museum — Washington, DC[5]
- Owensboro Museum of Fine Art — Owensboro, KY[citation needed]
- Racine Art Museum — Racine, WI[citation needed]
- Royal Ontario Museum — Toronto, Canada[citation needed]
- Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art — Scottsdale, AZ[citation needed]
- Tampa Museum of Art — Tampa, FL[citation needed]
- Naples Museum of Art — Naples, FL[citation needed]
- Columbus Museum — Columbus, GA[citation needed]
- The Dayton Art Institute — Dayton, OH[citation needed]
- Detroit Institute of Arts — Detroit, MI[10]
- Mint Museums — Charlotte, NC[citation needed]
- Speed Art Museum — Louisville, KY[citation needed]
- Vatican Museums — Rome, Italy[citation needed]
- Vero Beach Museum of Art — Vero Beach, FL[citation needed]
- White House Office of the Curator — Washington, DC[citation needed]
References[edit]
- ↑ http://contessagallery.com/artist/Jon_Kuhn/biography/
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/409771/
- ↑ https://www.pbs.org/video/our-state-jon-kuhn-glass/
- ↑ https://www.habatatgalleries.com/artist/jon-kuhn/
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://americanart.si.edu/artist/jon-kuhn-7160
- ↑ http://www.scherergallery.com/studioartglass/kuhn.htm
- ↑ "Glass Collection: Kuhn". Corning Museum of Glass. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
- ↑ "Untitled: Jon Kuhn". High Museum of Art. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
- ↑ "Vase: John Kuhn". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
- ↑ "Search Collection: Jon Kuhn". Detroit Institute of Arts. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
Further reading[edit]
- Katherine Pearson (1983). American Craft: Source Book for the Home. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 978-0-941434-30-0. Search this book on
- David McFadden (2005). Dual Vision: The Simona and Jerome Chazen Collection. New York: Museum of Arts & Design. ISBN 978-1-890385-10-1. Search this book on
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