Also by Stephen Rolfe Powell:

VAM galleries including this work:
Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea | How’d They Do That? || VAM Home

Sobbing Fire Cleavage is one of three works by Stephen Powell at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea. All three are exhibited in niches located high up in the north lobby of the center. They are backlit and luminous throughout the day, and in the evening they are lit by the interior lights of the lobby. The pieces incorporate the murrini design technique that Powell is known for and were created by a team of studio assistants who worked with him.

These large works require careful design steps and great glassblowing skill. The hot glass process begins with a design for the color patterns that will be on the surface of each vessel. Powell creates the patterns by melting colored glass, overlaying it with another color, and then stretching it while molten across the studio floor into a long rod. These rods are sliced into small discs called murrini and organized according to their colors. The murrini are then arranged in rows on a light table, which is where the pattern of each piece is determined. Powell uses roughly 2,500 or more murrini for a single work.

Once the layout of colored sliced glass is complete, it is transferred to a hot plate in the studio. Powell then “gathers” liquid glass from the glass furnace onto a blowpipe, or metal tube, used to gather a blob of molten glass. The molten glass is shaped into a compressed, symmetrical shape on a marver, an iron or steel table with a perfectly flat surface. This process is repeated until there is a large enough amount of glass on the pipe.

Then Powell goes back to the hot plate with the colored glass discs. He rolls the hot clear glass on his blowpipe over the hot plate to pick up the colored murrini disks, which adhere to the surface of the clear glass. He then compresses the glass on the marver and reheats it. Then Powell steps onto a tall platform, swings the blowpipe downward into a metal form, and blows the shape and pulls the neck upward while his assistants use a blowtorch to keep the entire glass piece hot enough to shape. The bottle form is then removed or cut from the blowpipe and placed in an annealing kiln, a chamber of brick or fibrofrax where special controlled cooling of the glass can take place.

About the Artist

Stephen Rolfe Powell was born in 1951 in Birmingham, Alabama. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in painting and ceramics at Kentucky’s Centre College, he went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics at Louisiana State University. It was at LSU, between 1980 and 1983, that Powell had his first experience in glassblowing. Glass has been a full-time obsession for him as a teacher and artist ever since.

Powell exhibits his work nationally and internationally. He has participated in workshops, demonstrations, and lectures all over the United States and in Russia, Ukraine, Australia, and New Zealand. One highlight of his travels was an exhibition of his work at Venezia Aperto Vetro in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Italy, where he was one of only eight American artists invited to participate.

In 1983, Powell returned to Kentucky to teach at his alma mater, Centre College in Danville. Hired to teach ceramics and sculpture, he set about establishing a program to teach his first love—glassblowing. By 1985, thanks in part to Corning Glass in Harrodsburg, Philips Lighting in Danville, and Corhart in Louisville, he had built a glass studio and founded Centre’s glass program, which has attracted students from around the country. In 1997, again thanks to his previous corporate sponsors as well as General Electric in Somerset, Powell designed and completed a state-of-the-art glass studio, which Centre opened as part of the new Jones Visual Arts Center in January 1998. The new art facility has been host to such visiting artists as Marvin Lipofsky, Lino Tagliapietra, Richard Jolley, and Jose Chardiet.

Powell was honored with Kentucky Teacher of the Year awards in 1999 and 2000. In 2004, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education presented him with the Acorn Award, and Powell and Centre College hosted master Italian glassblower Tagliapietra to grant him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Powell also co-produced the film Lino Tagliapietra: Glass Maestro.

As an artist, Powell has been of seminal influence on the hot glass movement in Kentucky. Nearly all of the glass artists working in the state today have either been students of or apprenticed with Powell.

To see Powell at work, watch the “Glass: Stephen Rolfe Powell” video segment in Part 4 (3D Media/Processes) of the Spectrum of Art DVD in the Visual Arts Toolkit.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Based on the description of Powell’s process, what do you think would be the most difficult part of the glassblowing procedure? Describe the color scheme that was chosen for this glass piece. Do you see any patterns? How do you think the title Sobbing Fire Cleavage relates to the actual work?

Activities: What is glass made of? How do you mold glass? Why does it break when it drops and shatter when it breaks? Write a hypothesis about how Powell is able to make such beautiful works without breaking the glass. Then learn about the properties of glass and watch Powell in action making one of his lobed pieces on the Toolkit video. Was your hypothesis correct? Finish your paper, telling about the properties of glass and what makes it possible for Powell to create such incredible pieces.

Explore color and pattern: Stretch opaque white balloons over a piece of stiff cardboard and tape the neck and bottom down. With permanent fine-tipped colored magic markers, draw tiny patterns of color across the width of the balloons in rows of color. Blow up the balloon and watch the patterns of color stretch and emerge.

Using two colors of polymer clay, roll out four Tootsie Roll-sized coils of the same length of each color. Flatten all four coils with the palm of your hand. Stack up these flattened coils in alternating colors. Press the layers together and tap them into a square length. Slice the roll into slices like cookies, then roll these out even more to watch the pattern change. You can stack and re-stack these rolls for more intricate patterns.

Links

More information about Stephen Rolfe Powell, including articles and reviews, a biography, a résumé, and photos of works, can be found on the artist’s web site.
[www.stephenrolfepowell.com]

See the art of master glassblower Lino Tagliapietra at his web site.
[www.linotagliapietra.com]

Learn more about glass at the Corning Museum of Glass and at Glass Online.
[www.cmog.org]
[www.glassonline.com/infoserv/history.html]