You may think you know all there is to know about glass art, but if you haven't seen Therman Statom's work there's more to discover.

	Rebecca Droke, Post-Gazette photos Glass artist Therman Statom, left, helps Ian Brown, 17, from The Neighborhood Academy in working hot glass during a workshop last week. Click photo for larger image. Related article Many events celebrate year of glass

Statom, one of the big names in the international glass art community, is in town as a part of the yearlong Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass!

During a three-week residency, which began last week at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Statom will create a room-sized work of his own and four collaborative installations with local art students during workshops he's conducting.

Tomorrow at 6 p.m. he'll give a free slide-illustrated lecture about his art and process at the Glass Center (412-365-2145 or pittsburghglasscenter.org).

What makes Statom's work unique is the way he uses glass, an approach as fluid as the material itself.

Plate glass sheets become structural material and/or canvas, enlivened by broad, energetic brushstrokes to create micro or macro realms of color. Cast and blown pieces are integrated into sculptural or installation works alongside found objects to achieve aesthetic balance and perhaps to suggest an underlying narrative. Translucency, color, clarity, reflectivity -- the various qualities of media employed by painters, sculptors and glass artists all come into play in his distinctive expression.

Statom was born in 1953 in Winter Haven, Fla. He took classes at the Pilchuck Glass School, near Seattle, in 1971, the year it was co-founded by Dale Chihuly, whose work is currently installed throughout Phipps Conservatory. Having experienced the emerging and plucky studio art/craft world, he subsequently immersed himself in fine arts, earning a sculpture B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A. at the Pratt Institute.

Michael Washington, 17, left, works alongside Nick Auen, a San Diego-based glass artist, during a workshop with Therman Statom at the Pittsburgh Glass Center last Thursday. Auen is Statom's assistant. Click photo for larger image.

The artist has exhibited, lectured and taught internationally. He is regularly featured by prestigious Habatat Galleries of Florida and Michigan, and was included in the influential 2001 traveling exhibition "Stop Asking/We Exist: 25 African American Craft Artists." His work is in the collections of major glass museums, such as the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery; and Corning Glass, New York.

One of Statom's sculptures was exhibited in "Contemporary Directions: Glass from the Maxine and William Block Collection" at Carnegie Museum of Art in 2002, and, as much of the work in that show, became part of the museum collection. The museum purchased a second Statom sculpture through its Decorative Arts Fund. Some readers may have seen his installation at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 1988.

Exhibitions of glass art opening this weekend at Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery and at James Gallery will include works by Statom.

Cool kids and hot glass

At the Glass Center last Thursday, a group of high school sophomores were concentrating intensely as they worked with Statom and members of his team in the Hot Shop, oblivious to the heat the 80-degree day was adding to that thrown off by the roaring glass furnaces.

Glowing gathers of glass took shape as the students paddled and clipped to create a goblet, a vase, fruit, even a high-heeled shoe. The excitement was palpable, a mix of awe and the joy of watching their creations breathe life.

This disciplined group -- which balanced enthusiasm and a healthy respect for the safety concerns of a working glass studio -- was from The Neighborhood Academy, a couple of blocks from the Glass Center. It was headed by Frank McNutt, TNA art studio instructor.

Earlier they'd done a bit of a warm-up by painting small three-dimensional glass houses -- one of several forms including ladders, birds and vases that Statom frequently visits in his own work -- that were made in Statom's Omaha studio from 18,000 pounds of plate glass donated and shipped West by PPG.

The students were Ian Brown, Abby Buettner, Bianca Hooper, Josh Hull, Tahara Kearney, Ashlee Philyaw, Shannon Prentiss, Marcell Sellers and Michael Washington.

Glass artists on Statom's team were Jon Capps, Brent Craig and Jason Forck of Pittsburgh, Nick Auen of San Diego and Tom Farbanish of State College.

"Close to 400 kids, by the end of his residency, will be exposed to him," says Glass Center board member Laurie Moser, who is also director of "READ! 365." They'll come from approximately 18 schools and community groups, and range in age from elementary to high school.

Moser was checking up on the delivery of 20 gallons of paint to Fifth Avenue Place, Stanwix and Penn, Downtown, where Statom began working with students on Monday. Through Friday, the public may enter the work area from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and otherwise watch through windows on Penn Avenue.

Three of those windows will sport collaborative installations by the end of the workshops.

Next week, Statom will be at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, and objects created during that residency will be incorporated into an installation in the Guild's Downtown storefront gallery at 800 Penn Ave.

Changing the world

Between sessions Thursday, Statom took a break to talk. He was cradling in his arms 3-month-old Marylee who, with his wife Jette Vogt-Statom, is in Pittsburgh with the artist, who hesitated to commit to a month away from his first-born.

Statom's affection toward, and respect for, children is evident in the way he relates to his baby and also in the way he interacts with the students he guides. He considers teaching to be a vital component of his profession.

"This is part of what I do," Statom says. "I like teaching. I like working with youth." He adds, with a smile, that while he hopes his art would change the world, he's more confident his teaching will.

He's interested in building bridges, he says, playing on "that sense of community that glass offers. There is a certain degree of life lessons [experienced in the studio] that carry over to other parts of life."

'There are no failures here'

The Pittsburgh projects will vary depending upon the students, Statom says. He pre-designs a "problem," which he presents to them. "How do you choose what you choose to do?" becomes one of the central questions. As the projects develop, one challenge is to make things work with so many contributors -- whether to add or to subtract. "The whole editing process," Statom says.

But he's emphatic that things keep moving. "If you're truly learning you don't have a product. You're taking the work to the edge."

The point is to experiment and to grow. "There are no failures here," Statom adds.

His own work has begun to take more of a political turn, something he avoided in the past.

"I've refrained from that," he says. "I've been sort of apathetic -- intentionally, for the sake of beauty."

But now he's comfortable with the notion of incorporating political issues. A recent installation at the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney, for example, called attention to the way the American Indian has been perceived, particularly in stereotype-reinforcing early Westerns.

It was "my inquiry into the status of the American Indian in that Western culture," he says. But Statom doesn't want to become dogmatic. "I'm more interested in addressing points of view than in saying this is my point of view," he explains.

The piece he's creating for Pittsburgh receives inspiration and title from "The Three Rivers," but at the moment is very much a work in process. He didn't factor too many regional references into the part of it that he created in his Nebraska studio, he says, but feels those may come into play in the wall-sized painting he does here.

"I like the emotive quality of the three rivers," Statom says. An artwork "can have a linear story," he muses as he considers the direction of his installation. "It can function visually and emotionally as well."