Spots with (?)'s are spots where the hissing made it either unclear, or the spelling's questionable.
Beginning
Brian:
The Glass Art Movement really began here in Toledo in 1962 when two workshops were held and Otto Wittman who was the director of the Toledo Museum of Art then invited Harvey Littleton who was the intellectual driving force for the Glass Movement to come here and subsequently in the next few years from 1966 through 1971 served the exhibitions were organized inviting individual glass artists to come to Toledo, and then a major exhibition was held in '71 which declared that this individual glass making had now become a team effort, not just in America, but around the world.
Jack:
Well first of all, the conference is commemerating what is consittered the the launch of the
contemporary glass movement. The workshop was held here in the uh early part of 1962, uh, we're really the beginning what we were all involved in.
Well, Toledo goes way back, um, the New England Glass Company moved here in the late 1800s, and, uh, fell by the name of Edward Jahman(?) Libbey who build the Libbey Company here in Toledo, and started producing hand-blown glass table wear. We have Mike Owens, uh, working for Libbey, and coming up with the idea of making a machine that actually automatically blows vessel forms and table wear... We have part of the Ford Family coming into Toledo and figuring out uh other processes of, uh, for flat glass or related products, um, Pilkington Glass, which is a formally owned American Company, makes miles and miles of sheet glass, just across the river. We have John's Manville(?) which produces uh fiberglass. Uh, John's Manville(?), interestingly enough, um, produced a product that helped get the first glass workshop going! They made what is known as uh um 475 marble. That marble is what Labino brought to the first workshop for the students to melt, and then blow glass from.
Because the, the, the Cruicible's in the system Harvey brought wasn't working quite as well as it should, and Nick, who knew about and was, was interested in the workshop solved that problem by going out to John's Manville(?), and bringing these marbles to the workshop.
Middle
Brian:
I was attracted to come to Toledo because it has a marvelous museum which has multiple buildings, each of which has won archetectural awards. The collection is singular with great works by great artists whose names we know and don't know throughout time. It's free and open to the public, that'sbeen important to me, and it has been hugely supported by it's community over the years.
Jack:
I'm Jack Schmidt, uh, Artist, Glass Artist, "Maker of Things", and I reside here in the City of
Glass, Toledo. Uh, I actually came back East from California, and coincidentally ended up back in Toledo, which happens to be my home town. Um, I actually own property over in the state of New York and was going to open a studio there but I had rented a warehouse here, and um... it was very inexpensive, so when I came back to think about what I was doing I needed to make some work, so I unpacked some things to make some work... and I never left. It's pretty nicely located for me in terms of New York, Chicago, Point South, I still had family in the area when I came back, I still have a brother that lives in the area, and frankly I had connections to some of the corporations in town which helped me kind of launch from a teaching career into an independant artist career. Well I think just kind of going back to what I just said, there's a lot of available space in the area that's relatively inexpensive... um, and we have of course a terrific museum which draws in artists from all over the world, uh, in all media, not to mention glass. Our new Glass Pavillion has been a big draw for, uh, a lot of very well known glass artists. Uh... and the community is pretty supportive of the arts, uh, we have a really active Jazz community in town, and a really fine orchestra that plays at the museum, and then at the zoo at their amphatheatre. I think that, uh, when people come here they're going to be suprised how much is going on. I think they're going to enjoy visiting the studios we have and seeing the kind of work that's being done... uh, and if you're coming into the area, there are, excuse me, there are studios in Collumbus, there are studios in Cleveland, uh, Ohio has an awful lot of activity in the glass arts. So, um, you might want to stay a while, you know, and check it out.
Brian:
The Toledo Museum of Art is one of the great glass collections of the world, we're honored to have an extraordinary pavillion here in which we have examples from all around the world actually from the start of glass making so it's one of the best places to come. The Toledo Museum of Art has one of the world's great glass collections from the beginning of glass making right through to today and can show it in a marvelous building: the Glass Pavillion, opened in 2006. Every work of glass that we aquire for the Museum is subject to the same criteria that we apply to every single work that comes into the museum, it has to be of significant quality, I mean really the best of it's time. It has to be of technical virtuosity and it has to have real imagination and creativity so that it really engages the public emotionally.
