RIT Glass Visiting Artist Lecture Series

The program is reimagining its lecture series during the COVID-19 pandemic, welcoming visiting artists virtually for equally substantive discussions and critiques. In the fall of 2020, RIT hosted four artists to engage with students and faculty via Zoom.

Kim Harty

Harty, not pictured, was a visiting critic for the MFA program's end-of-semester critique. is an artist and scholar whose work investigates the connection between craft and performance through sculpture, installation, video and performance — all while being heavily informed by her training as a glassblower. She is also the chair of craft and material studies and associate professor of glass at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Mich.

Fall 2019 visiting artists were prompted by the semester theme of "color," and how it relates, visually and conceptually, to glass.

Nickolaus Fruin and Courtney Dodd are based out of Bakersville, N.C., and wear many professional hats creatively through independent practices as artists, educators, designers and glassblowers. They also work together through "Shaker and Salt," a collaborative line of functional tableware with objectives to build community through food, drink and good company. Aside from rigorous exhibition and teaching records, they both play important staff roles at the internationally renowned Penland School of Craft; Dodd as the educational programs manager and Fruin as the glass studio coordinator. The pair held an artist talk and studio demos during its time at RIT.

Judith Schaechter and Glenn Carter delivered artist talks and engaged in group discussions with students and faculty during their visit in February 2020. Schaechter is an artist recognized for her long career in translating the traditions of the stained glass window as a medium of contemporary art. Carter, meanwhile, has been working with architectural glass in both restorative and artistic capacities for the last 30 years, in addition to maintaining an independent casting and fusing studio practice. The visit coincided with an exhibition of Schaechter's stained-glass art at Memorial Art Gallery. Photos by A. Sue Weisler.

During the 2018-19 academic year, the lecture series supported the program's respective semester themes of "Language" (fall) and "X" (spring). Language focused on the idea of using words as things while X was a continuous conversation between students and faculty to identify new possibilities in various relationships with glass. Artists, designers, thinkers and writers were invited to RIT to help diversify the discussions, allow students to explore cross-disciplinary research methods and promote discovery. 

Peter Houk, Daniel Lizardo and Michael Stern

From left: visiting artists Michael Stern, Daniel Lizardo and Peter Houk, along with Brendan Miller, instructional support specialist - hot processes, work in RIT's glass hot shop during a demo in April. Stern, Lizardo and Houk were part of the team that created the world's first molten glass 3D printer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During their visit to RIT, they recreated the initial days of the project through an exciting, hands-on demo using a vitrigraph kiln similar to the one used in those early days. They collaborated with students, faculty and staff to fuse glass-blown objects with 3D-printed coils from the kiln to create innovative objects. Photos by RIT Photo Services.