Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Spurchise
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I received a BA in studio art and a BA in art history from Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY in 2014, where I focused in glassblowing, sculpture, and Renaissance art history. Following my graduation, I moved down to Norfolk, VA to work at the Chrysler Museum’s Glass Studio for three years. While in the area, I also worked as a studio technician for the glass program at Tidewater Community College. In 2017, I moved to Carbondale, Illinois to pursue my MFA in glass at Southern Illinois University, where I graduated from in 2020. In graduate school is also where I met my now-fiancé Chuchen Song. After graduating in the peak of the COVID pandemic, I moved to St. Louis to work at Third Degree Glass Factory helping to build a second glass studio. After this project was completed, Chuchen and I moved to Toledo, OH as I was offered the position to work as the studio technician and adjunct instructor at Bowling Green State University. After working there for three years, I am honored to now be working full time at the Toledo Museum of Art.
Throughout my professional glass career, I have primarily focused in hot glass sculpture within my personal artwork. I am proud that my work has been shown both nationally across the United States, and abroad in Germany, Bulgaria, Sweden, and China. I received first place for the exhibit in Sweden, and received an excellence work award for the exhibit in China. In 2025, I will have a solo exhibition at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee which will feature a new series of sculptural glass monsters. Currently, some of my glass sea monsters are represented through the Collector’s Corner at the Toledo Museum of Art. Additionally, I have a glass sea monster on display in the Permanent Collection of Contemporary Glass from the International Biennale of Glass in Bulgaria. While working in Toledo, I was also hired by Mikael Owunna Studios for several months to hot-sculpt a series of several Egyptian deity-themed sculptures for a major exhibition at Pittsburgh Glass Center in May of 2024
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The art of glassblowing has a magical quality that allows people to follow the medium all over the country, and often times, around the world. But by no means has any of it been a smooth road. Jobs and opportunities are limited because glass is such a unique medium, and there are few institutions or studios with openings at any given time. Additionally, for every application acceptance I have received, there are dozens of rejections in the mix. It takes a lot of passion and drive to strive in this field, as with any medium.
I have been professionally working in the glass field for about fourteen years, and am proud to have established a positive reputation for myself as a maker, technician, and teacher. But it didn’t come without thousands of working hours, late nights, and sacrifices along the way. Despite all the difficult times, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I always say that glass saved my life; during a time when I didn’t have much direction or passion, I found glass in my undergraduate program, and I knew this is what I wanted to dedicate my life to. My goal has always been to enrich the lives of others through glass in the same way my many mentors have taught me along the way.
Working with glass as a material is a constant struggle and is very different than any other medium. Many of the qualities of glass that make it so enticing are also its biggest challenges. The material it hot, constantly moving, and must be finished without stopping. Additionally, most objects made in glass require the assistance of at least one other person. Especially in hot glass sculpting, to create a finished sculpture requires the assistance of a skilled team of people. Even after putting dozens of hours into a sculpture, it can still break at the last moment. This fragility and constant challenge is what keeps me coming back though. Glassblowing is also generally not something that can be done at home, it has to be done in a communal studio because of the scale of the equipment and energy costs associated with melting glass. This is why so many glass artists have to travel to follow the jobs. But because of pursuing glass, I met my closest friends, many of whom I consider family now, and because of glass I met my fiancé while in graduate school.
Without a doubt the biggest struggle has been my previous employment experience last year. But thanks to the support of my fiancé and so many amazing people within the glass community, I persevered and now I am honored to be working full time at the Toledo Museum of Art. Words cannot express how grateful and proud I am to be working at such an amazing institution full of rich history in the glass field. The museum is the location responsible for the glass art movement, allowing myself and every other glass artist today the ability to utilize glass as an artistic form of expression. The ability to create my personal artwork in such an incredible studio with the help of the amazing team at the Toledo Museum, is like a dream come true.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My main series of work is a visual cacophony of whimsical and eccentric glass monsters as a response to my research of the monsters found on medieval and Renaissance maps and paintings. To their original beholders, the imagery of monsters represented real, unknown, dangers. To modern eyes, however, they are whimsical adorning elements which leave us reminiscent of a time when these terrors were a frightful force to be reckoned with.
Glass has a longstanding tradition of using complicated techniques of the time to create extravagant, nonsensical sculptures of monsters. Ancient glassblowers created small sculptural animals and monsters; and glassblowers of the Renaissance commonly adorned goblets with sea serpents, or utilized pulled cane to create small vessel-like monsters or trick-glasses. This is a small facet in the history of glassblowing that my research has focused on accentuating within my artwork.
This is a common theme regarding monsters that just believing in them can open the gate for their entry into our world. Throughout history, monsters have been shown as things that appear outside the course of nature and are usually signs of some forthcoming misfortune. When viewing my series of work, the viewer becomes enveloped in a wide array of twenty-first century glass monsters, and experience the same feelings as looking on a large map, or a Renaissance painting filled with monsters of all sorts.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I graduated with an MFA in glass from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2020, which of course was right at the peak of the pandemic. COVID changed everything in glass, and has made glass artists much more aware of things that were otherwise considered the norm during the process. For the last two-thousand years, glassblowing has been performed and taught in the same way. But once the pandemic hit, many glass artists were out of work and many studios were on the brink of closing. Thanks to the innovation of glass artists during the face of adversity, we found ways to blow glass without actually putting our mouths on the blowpipes. Ranging from using blowhoses, foot powered compressed air, hand pumps, and other methods, artists were able to continue pursuing this media that we love. Despite all the fears and uncertainties that arose during the pandemic, we still found ways to blow glass.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/Tspurchise
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tspurchise/
