Jeff Wallin: fine-art meets glass

Focus - Kiln formaed glass, 24 x 18 x 3/8"

“What is seen on first glance? What catches the eye before interruption of thought and reason? What single detail expresses the whole? We can be affected by where we are, as well as where we are not.” – Jeff Wallin

Fragmented Investigation - Kiln formed glass, 28.5" x 19.5" x 0.375"

Jeff Wallin has spent his life in the Pacific Northwest. He studied under Professor Keiko Hara at Whitman College, graduating in 1995 with a B.A. in Studio Art. He continued to pursue drawing and painting after moving to Portland at The Drawing Studio with Philip Sylvester and more recently at Hipbone Studio with Jeff Burke.

His introduction to glass came in 1999 at Ray Ahlgren’s FireArt Glass studio, where Jeff continues to work, gaining new understandings in how to apply the challenging medium of glass to his ongoing exploration of the human form.

He says that drawing teaches him to see. Taking inspiration from emotionally and psychologically complex figure painters such as Francis Bacon and Lucien Frued, Wallin’s portraits have the marks of a painter’s perspective and a painter’s intuition, the relaying of an idea by brush– all that expressed in the language of glass.

His studies have been represented in galleries in Portland and Chicago, SOFA-NY, SOFA-Chicago, WheatonArts, and at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark, where he was awarded the Sybren Valkema Prize in the 2007 Young Glass competition. The museum acquired his entry, “The Great Romantic” for its permanent collection and awarded him a four-week creative residential stay at Vrij Glas Studio in Holland in 2008.

During that residency, Jeff began working directly on glass using live models, eliminating the intermediary step of charcoal/conte drawings which he’d previously used.

He now begins each piece as a quick sketch from a model, working directly with glass powders on a glass sheet surface. No preliminary drawings are used, no tests or experiments. Each new work is itself the test, the experiment, the first impression developed and pushed to a final form.

He explains, “My methods of kiln forming purposefully ignore most of the strict adherence to process normally associated with the medium. The work is driven by a dialogue between material and subject, where instinctive response to what happens in the moment is often more crucial than following a predetermined notion of how the composition should appear. A solid understanding of the ‘rules’ of kiln forming glass is essential. It is against this backdrop of knowledge that I attempt with each new investigation to push the boundaries of my experience, applying that understanding and not simply repeating techniques. My intent is to maintain an attitude of spontaneity and preserve the raw moment when the piece first began. By avoiding strict narrative structures, I provide a framework on which viewers can apply their own memories and experiences.”

Jeff’s art exemplifies the future direction of studio glass – that continued blurring of any line between disciplines labeled as craft, glass, or art.

Passage - kilnformed glass, 28 x 20 x 3/8"