Talking Out Your Glass podcast

In 2026, Hannah Gibson created Recycling Narratives, No Matter the Weight, in collaboration with textile artist Naomi Beevers. This collaborative work was shared with the public at Laura Donefer's Glass Fashion Show held at the Glass Art Society conference at the Corning Museum of Glass in June. The work consists of thousands of individual pieces of recycled cast glass, each made from donated glass carrying its own story and hand assembled into a wearable dress. Created from glass contributed by people around the world, the installation explores the emotional and physical weight carried through illness, loss, hope and survival, transforming individual experiences into a collective portrait of resilience, compassion and connection.
Working predominantly with recycled glass, Gibson transforms glass that has played a meaningful role in people's lives, from medicine bottles and insulin vials to perfume bottles, windscreens and everyday domestic objects, into cast sculpture that preserves the histories embedded within the material. Every object is carefully selected for the story it carries, allowing experiences of healing, celebration, loss and survival to become inseparable from the finished work. Through this process, she invites audiences to reconsider the social, emotional and cultural significance of the objects that shape our lives.
Growing up at the foothills of Snowdonia, overlooking the Menai Strait, Gibson developed an early fascination with geology, leading her to study Geology at the University of Edinburgh. While there, an interest in glass grew into a lifelong passion. She later completed a Master's in Glass at The University College of Arts in Farnham, where she began developing the bodies of work Recycling Narratives and Whispering Sweet Nothings. Returning as Artist in Residence, her research explored materiality and the transformative potential of recycled glass, laying the foundations for a practice that continues to investigate the relationship between object, memory and cultural heritage.
Gibson's work has received international recognition, including the Award of Excellence at Habatat Detroit in 2024, First Prize in the Glass Art Society's Trace: An Exploration of Sustainable Glass Art in 2023, being shortlisted for the Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass in 2022, and being Highly Commended in The Glass Prize in both 2021 and 2022. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Imagine Museum, the National Liberty Museum and the Royal Scottish Academy, as well as at SOFA Chicago, COLLECT, PAN Amsterdam, the British Glass Biennale, Habatat Detroit Fine Art, Habatat North Carolina, The Etienne Gallery, Gallery TEN and London Glassblowing. Her work will be on view in The Other Glass: The Art of Recycled Glass, at the Stourbridge Glass Museum, Wordsley, August 28 through February 27, 2027; and also at The British Glass Biennale in St Helen's, UK, from August 28 through November 1, 2026.
https://www.stourbridgeglassmuseum.org.uk/featured-exhibitions/
Alongside her studio practice, Gibson creates public art, delivers lectures and workshops internationally, and continues to expand the possibilities of recycled glass. Gibson's work demonstrates how materials that have completed their original purpose can become enduring works of art, preserving personal narratives while contributing to wider conversations about sustainability, memory and our relationship with the material world.
States Gibson: "For almost three decades, my practice has explored the creative and technical potential of recycled glass. As both a glass artist and a geologist, I am fascinated by the stories held within materials and the traces of human experience they contain. Through recycling and recasting these objects, I seek to preserve their histories while creating new forms and meanings."

Using glass as a medium to capture and refract light, David Yeshia seeks to freeze moments of transition, combining myriad elements to manipulate their visual and symbolic effects. Also a metaphor for his life at the time, Yeshia was smashing glass and rebuilding the fragments into something beautiful. A new breed of "artrepreneur," he emerged from the Covid pandemic bringing art out of the gallery and into the public marketplace by developing accessible and affordable works. 
A self-taught Canadian glass artist known for his signature fused glass techniques, Yeshia has developed innovative methods including his "Glass Netting" technique, "Glascade" and signature "Free Mosaic" forms exploring glass as both structure and light. He was nominated for the Emerging Glass Artist of the Year Award by the Glass Art Society and has created sculptural works for government commissions and collectors across Canada. His work is sold at Walt Disney World, and his process-focused storytelling has attracted over 400,000 followers across social media, with his videos reaching tens of millions of views.
Yeshia attended Concordia University Fine Arts, graduating in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a double major in Theater and Religious Studies. In 2017, as an exotic mushroom cultivator in Montreal, Yeshia's business was hit hard by the Covid pandemic's impact on the restaurant and food industries. At 30 years old, he moved back in with his parents in the countryside just outside of Pembroke, Ontario—emotionally drained, uncertain about the future, and feeling like a failure. Dejected, without direction, he began to experiment with glass in the stained glass studio of his father, Jeffrey Melamed, an architect turned stained glass artist. 
Says Yeshia: "When I was struggling and trying to rebuild my life, my family rallied around me. Their enthusiasm for my work gave me the encouragement and confidence to keep going. My mother began attending markets, my father helped with displays, shows, and accounting, and my sister brought her creativity and many great product ideas."
Yeshia's business Artglas has expanded to Markham, Ontario, and now employs a staff of seven. Early on, a pivotal meeting with Disney's Keith Bryan inspired the artist's early series of fused glass art and eventually led to his ongoing contract to design and produce ornaments for Disney.
In September 2026, Artglas will return to exhibit in "The Transparent Breath," an International exhibition of glass jewelry held at Venice Glass Week. Specializing in experimental fusing techniques to create contemporary glass jewelry that represents the Canadian identity, Yeshia's Venice collection showcases his unique talents of incorporating 24-karat gold and silver into the glass.
"This will be our fifth time at Venice Glass Week. It was an honor to be amongst some of the greatest glass artists of our time, in one of the world's most historic hubs of the arts," said Yeshia. "And it was overwhelming connecting with artists from all over the world, sharing our work and creativity in such an inspiring environment."
In 2027, Yeshia's company will also expand its online education and subscriber platforms, open a gallery and second studio space, and create more room for one-of-a-kind and conceptual work. Artglas also has new commercial projects in development, including a Disney concept still awaiting approval.
Says Yeshia: "As Artglas grew, I had to learn how to wear many different hats, including artist, maker, employer, marketer, content creator, educator, salesperson, and business owner, while still preserving the meaning, symbolism, and quality of the work."

Demonstrating at the 2026 Glass Art Society conference at the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 24-year-old Jack Spitzer impressed the standing-room-only crowd as he created a vessel form from his Stochastic Series. The young glassblowing phenom was met with enthusiastic applause as he carried out a technical move known as "The Laydown."
Born in July of 2025, Spitzer's Stochastic Series started as opaque vessels and transformed into the current transparent cane vessels. The newer work debuted at Sandra Ainsley Gallery last week. These new vessels explore color, form, pattern, and gesture. Each piece pulses with energy, balancing technical precision with spontaneity.
Says Spitzer: "The Stochastic vessels are all about the pattern. The pattern is unique in the way that I do it. I've never seen this pattern made in glass before. The canes are created in the hotshop and then manipulated into the squiggle shapes. They are then picked back up in the hotshop in a very compressed format. Very traditional venetian cane techniques— with an innovative twist…… or you could say squiggle." 
With work formed around a strong grasp of the fundamentals of glassblowing, Spitzer enjoys exploring and creating contemporary themes using traditional techniques. He likes to use basic shapes and skills to express the craftsmanship of the bubble in work that is constantly changing and growing. 
Born in Tacoma, Washington, Spitzer is a product of the Pacific Northwest glass scene. His early exposure to the medium, influenced by his grandmother's involvement with the Museum of Glass, led him to begin blowing glass at age 12. He spent his middle school and high school years at the Hilltop Artists program, a youth development arts nonprofit in Tacoma operating deeply impactful programs since 1994 with broad community support and a track record of success.Hilltop Artists uses glass art to connect young people from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds to better futures.
Spitzer, who sets the standard for the younger generation of glass makers, has been apprenticing for Dante Marioni and working on Dale Chihuly's glassblowing team for the last three years. His early connection to the material and its history has shaped his own practice rooted in tradition, yet driven by innovation. Spitzer is represented by Sandra Ainsley Gallery in Toronto and Tom Hawk Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. In September 2026, he will demonstrate at the 11th International Glass Festival held in Odunpazarı, Eskişehir, Turkey. In 2027, he'll return as a gaffer to Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington.

Over the past 55 plus years, John Gilbert Luebtow has become one of the most respected names in contemporary glass sculpture. Inspired by Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, the artist developed innovative technical processes in glass-making, introducing and incorporating gesture and expressive qualities into impeccably finished sculptural components. A student of Harvey Littleton, Mark Peiser and others, Luebtow explored blown, cast, and fused glass, as well as other techniques.
Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, California, presented Retrospective – From 1972 to 2023, a recent exhibition of work by 82-year-old Luebtow. Lambert wrote: "Luebtow has been creating art for over 55 years, specializing in kiln formed glass, and has become one of the most important names in contemporary glass sculpture. He is most known for his innovation in the technical processes of working with glass, developing his own methods and even building his own tools for creating large-scale glass sculptures and installations up to 25 feet tall.
At the heart of Luebtow's artistic philosophy is a curiosity about the processes of creation and a commitment to forging something entirely new. Luebtow's work integrates glass with architecture, becoming equal parts artistic expression and engineering endeavors. Despite his skilled background in drawing, painting, and ceramics, Luebtow ultimately has chosen glass as his primary medium, as 'no other material deals with light, line, movement, change, intensity…all things visual…as glass does, while also paralleling life, having an inner and outer self, and an internal and external presence or being.' 
Inspiration for Luebtow's work can be found in everything that is experienced in life, pairing beauty along with the reality of life's struggles. 'The events of our times, then and now, affect everything we do and are allowed to do. We are what we have experienced and what we remember.' Luebtow's sculptures, though not limited to, can be categorized by two different themes: political/social commentary and the abstraction of beauty. Many of Luebtow's sculptures use images of the American flag to reflect on and process political and social happenings. Other works utilize linear and geometric forms with added surface embellishment, to create technically perfect investigations of beauty and abstraction."
Exploring rhythm and movement of line in sculptural form, Luebtow developed his Linear Form Series of cast and slumped glass sculpture. Working on a large scale required engineering skills to design and build kilns as large as 14' long x 10' wide x 4' tall to produce the elements for large scale architectural installations. Working with float glass, Luebtow left his mark on architectural spaces in and around Los Angeles, where his studio is located, and the country. His art required the design and building of equipment and development of processes that were almost as much art as the art itself. Projects such as Invenire, Ventus Vitae, and Sapere Aude were groundbreaking aesthetic and technical highlights of his career as a sculptor.
Luebtow, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin native, holds a BA from California Lutheran College, and two distinct MFAs from UCLA (one in ceramics and one in glass). Since 1966, Luebtow has exhibited in over 175 exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Zimmer Museum, CA; Corning Museum, NY; Carnegie Museum, PA; Oakland Museum of Art, CA; Santa Monica Museum of Art, CA; Louisville Art Museum, KY; Manhattan Beach Art Museum, CA; and Orange County Museum of Art, CA. His work has been commissioned by major public and private corporations including Hewlett-Packard (HP), ARCO (Atlantic Richfield), American Airlines, NESTLÉ (Carnation), and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. Over 160 articles have been published about Luebtow's work.
Wrote Shana Nys Dambrot for Patricia Correa Gallery: "John Luebtow has consistently addressed a quadrum of fundamental sculptural issues throughout his career: line, form, space, and light. These are broad considerations, to be sure; to a certain extent, they are inherent to all visual art media. What is significant in Luebtow's fidelity to this set of issues is not only his tenacity in the unraveling of their mysterious laws, but also the extraordinarily wide range of approaches he has drawn to them. The mystery he pursues is the technical spiritual identity of his medium. He searches within the sovereign form of his subjects for the abstract evidence of the energetic rhythm of movement." 
For a full review of his career, Luebtow has written and published Glass, A Life Time of Creating,available now.

Cedric Mitchell is a multidisciplinary designer, glass artist, and cultural tastemaker successfully combining elements including craft, utility, and visual culture. His work is rooted in handmaking but reaches beyond any single medium. He designs objects that carry energy, emotion, and intention – pieces meant to live with people.
Says Mitchell: "My design language is what I call modern funk. It is defined by bold color, playful geometry, and confident forms balanced by structure and refinement. I draw inspiration from music, movement, architecture, and everyday rituals. Whether I am working on lighting, furniture, or collectible objects, my goal remains the same. To create work that feels alive, expressive, and deeply human."
Cedric Mitchell Design is not just a studio; it is a platform for craft-driven innovation across categories where functional objects, sculptural works, and cultural storytelling coexist. This year is shaping up to be a big one for Mitchell, who recently launched a new body of work through JOOPITER, further pushing his practice into collectible design. Alongside that, he continues to develop new lighting and furniture pieces, leaning more into sculptural, functional objects and expanding his modern funk language across materials.
In October, Mitchell will be showing work at ComplexCon, a large-scale cultural festival that showcases design, fashion, music, and streetwear. He chose to present work in that context because, as he states, "my practice has always been about bridging craft with contemporary culture. It's an opportunity to place hand-blown glass and collectible design in front of a broader audience that doesn't typically encounter it in traditional gallery settings."
Originally from Oklahoma, where he first encountered studio glass while recording at a Tulsa music studio, Mitchell learned glassblowing at Tulsa Glassblowing School, where he eventually became an apprentice and an instructor. Now based in Los Angeles, he has developed glassware collections, collaborated with high-profile clients such as Nike, and served as the events and resource manager at Crafting the Future, an organization that supports BIPOC craft artists. Mitchell's Kinetic Glasses, which swivel on a glass ball, were featured on the cover of the Summer 2024 issue of American Craft. 
During his 2023 residency at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Mitchell successfully explored many different hotshop techniques for creating patterns paired with color theory research. He delved into chromatherapy theory and his extensive experimentation yielded unique color combinations in both transparent and opaque glass. The artist has also completed residencies at Penland School of Craft and Pilchuck Glass School. He developed Cedric Mitchell Design in 2018 where he creates blown glass for retailers nationwide and is currently developing an eclectic line of lighting. 
Mitchell will be teaching at Tulsa Glassblowing School in June and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in July of 2026. On the studio side, Mitchell continues to grow his direct-to-consumer work with glassware collections like Kinetic Glass and Chroma Stack, while building toward larger-scale projects and brand collaborations. Mitchell says, "This year is really about refining the vision and positioning the work at the intersection of craft, design, and culture."