Artist Lectures and Hot Glass with Steve Hagan, Mark Leputa, and Jiyong Lee

Visiting artists Jiyong Lee, Steve Hagan and Mark Leputa share their strategies for creating one-of-a-kind glass sculptures for this fun day of artist lectures and hot glass demonstrations!

Jiyong Lee Jiyong Lee is a studio artist and educator who lives and works in Carbondale, Illinois. A professor of art at Southern Illinois University, Lee has headed the glass program there since 2005. Lee was born and raised in South Korea. He earned his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and taught there for several years. As an instructor, he also has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, Penland School of Crafts, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the Domaine de Boisbuchet in France, Canberra Glassworks in Australia, Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin, Ireland, and various other art institutions and universities nationally and internationally. Lee has served as a member of the board of directors for the Glass Art Society from 2009 till 2015. He has won a number of honors, including Bavarian State Prize from International Trade Fair, Munich Germany, the Emerging Artist Award from the Glass Art Society. His work was featured in American Craft Magazine, New Glass Review of Corning Museum of Glass, and American Art Collector. His work has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally and recent highlights include KOREA NOW exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, an acquisition by the Barry Art Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, and Chanel France.

Steve Hagan is a glass artist, foodie, and proponent of pure beauty. His works combine a love of function with modern form and design, while often creating a mix of citrus-inspired jewelry, tableware, and sculpture. A Philadelphia native, Steve attended Tyler School of Art, where he was first able to witness the fluid and spontaneous nature of glass. After graduating in 2002 from Temple University, he spent the next few years invested in the public access glass scene of Philadelphia, teaching at multiple area studios. In 2008, he re-entered academia and began his graduate studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His thesis exhibition titled “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” in 2011 opened up a more sculptural approach to his studio practice, combining both extensive murrini pattern applications and non-vessel glass blowing. Since that time, he has lived all around the US while traveling to make his work through residencies and as a visiting artist. Currently residing in Tucson, he runs a private glass studio with Mark Leputa, where they have a warm, flame, and cold shop while utilizing Sonoran Glass School’s public access hot shop for their glassblowing applications.

For Mark Leputa, the greatest sense of self-satisfaction and pride is found in the creative process. Graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003 with a BA in Communications, Mark always felt his imagination was being suppressed. Not until a short holiday to New Zealand in 2004 did Mark submit to his longing to be a full-time artist. There, he finally discovered the medium he had long been seeking – glass. The heat, the fire, the seemingly liquid state that this material is worked in entranced him. The short holiday turned into a three-year apprenticeship. During this time, he was able to define a body of work where simplicity, purity of form, and negative space are merged to meet harmony.

We invite you to join us on February 15th to hear from these inspiring artists and to witness them work in our hotshop. Lectures begin promptly at noon, followed by hot glass demos until 4 pm. This event is free and open to the public of all ages!

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Host or Publisher Duncan McClellan Gallery