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Click here for information about Richard's 
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Richard Parrish moved to Bozeman, Montana in 1991 to practice architecture and to teach at Montana State University. He set up his first kilnforming glass studio in 1997 and left his day job in 2001 to pursue his dream of being a full time artist. When Richard is not teaching and working at his studio, he is traveling to national shows such as Buyers Market of American Craft and American Craft Council. His work is sold at over 20 galleries. Richard won the American Craft Council Award of Achievement in 2003 at the Chicago show and was a Niche Award Finalist in the category of Lighting in 1999. Bullseye: When and how did you start doing kilnwork? Richard Parrish: I was living in Anchorage, Alaska in the 1980's, working as an architect. Friends suggested taking a fusing workshop in the fall of 1983. This was my first introduction to fusing and I was hooked. I didn't get a chance to do any more fusing until I went to study for a Master of Architecture degree at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1989. While there, I experimented with window glass and inclusions, using kilns in the ceramics department. After I moved to Montana to teach at MSU, I applied for and received a grant to purchase my first kiln and some Bullseye glass. I got out my Glass Fusing Book One that my friends (the ones who took the first workshop with me) had given me for Christmas in 1983, and essentially taught myself about fusing with a lot of experimentation. BE: Are you still teaching architecture? RP: No, I went back into private architectural practice full time about 7 years ago and set up a small glass studio. Friends started asking me about kilnworking so I did a mini-workshop in my studio. As I started showing my glasswork locally, word got around and other people started asking about workshops. I now have a large studio and satisfy my passion for teaching by offering workshops in the studio. I am also teaching in Wyoming and Oregon this year, as well as in other Montana cities. BE: What do you love most about teaching? RP: I love to help other people discover and develop their own ideas and creations. When I taught architectural design, I tried to figure out what the student's thought or idea was (even when they couldn't verbalize it) and help bring that idea to life and to provide the tools and knowledge to develop the idea. In teaching kilnforming, I encourage each person to develop their own voice or "look" in the things they make. BE: How has your architectural training influenced your glass work? RP: My architectural background influences my glasswork in many ways, from formal to conceptual. My undergraduate education was based on tenets of modern architecture and abstraction. I think this shows in my work in the way I organize elements of a piece, my interest in transparency and opacity and in the play of light, as well as texture and pattern. Purity of form, as seen in both the roundness of the bowls and the square plates, is an essential element in many of the functional pieces. The bowl forms are intended to evoke a sense of holding and balance. Conceptually, some of my pieces, especially the panels, investigate ideas about site/map/place in imagery and projection, or view, to another place. Others explore notions of insight and reflecting. Some of my pieces use images of archetypal building forms. Many of the glass panels and installation pieces are based loosely on the theme of the archetypal window as an essential architectural element. Physically and poetically, the window is a threshold, a separation, between interior and exterior, and as a connector or projector between inside and outside. And, of course, glass is an architectural building material and art glass has a long history of integration into architecture. On a practical level, my architectural experience helps me in figuring out how to make and install panels and other larger scale architectural glass elements that I have been doing recently through commissioned work. BE: Tell us more about your new explorations with site/map/place. RP: When I was working at Cranbrook, my major focus was the idea of making, of techne and poiesis and the nature of myth, ritual and memory relative to place making. I made numerous constructions and drawings that investigated maps, sites, and our place on the earth. The acts of making these involved intensive processing of materials that allowed me to explore these concepts. I took a roll-ups class with Steve Klein at Red Deer College in 2004 and I kept drawing pieces that were very much like the grad school ideas. While I didn't make the pieces that I drew, the roll-ups class re-focused my thinking about processing and transforming materials, in this case the glass. I took the One Piece, Two Components, Three Colors workshop with Steve at Bullseye in the fall of 2004 and pursued the ideas of map and place making through a more rigorous "processing" of the material: layering, fusing, cutting up, fusing again, coldworking, etc. So, for me, these pieces are about transforming ideas and materials in the process of making. BE: Who or what inspires you? RP: I grew up in the western landscape, awed by the horizon and the vastness of the land, and especially the colors and textures of Yellowstone National Park. The paintings of Richard Diebenkorn with their sense of the landscape and of flatness and perspective are like maps of imaginary places to me. I also appreciate the formal compositional qualities of Diebenkorn's paintings. The architecture of the Italian Architect Carlo Scarpa was a master of material and detail, of light and space, and of bridging old and new. My grandmother was a painter and started me painting at a very young age. She gave me my first lessons in formal composition - she told me never to put the horizon line in the center of the canvas! BE: What is the most valuable lesson that working with glass has taught you? RP: I'd say there are two main lessons for me. The first is that it is critical to my being and existence to make things with my hands, using real materials and then, in a sense, turning them over to another force that causes an almost alchemic transformation. The other lesson is about the fragility of life and of the paradox of life and death. Glass represents this paradox - it is delicate but at the same time sturdy. It can last 10,000 years or break at any moment. BE: What do you like to do for fun when you are not working on glass? RP: When I'm not working on glass? What else is there?! I have a small, wonderful garden that I love to work in - I think it's the farmer in me! I also enjoy cooking (I guess there is some fascination with transformation with heat!). I travel a lot for shows and try to explore the cities and places where I go. To learn more about Richard Parrish's work and his busy schedule, visit his website at http://www.fusiostudio.com All materials © Bullseye Glass Company. |
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All materials © 2008 Bullseye Glass Co. |