The Glass Artists of the Celo Area

William and
Katherine Bernstein
"... accepted Artist in Residence positions at the Penland School of Crafts... After two years they moved to nearby Celo, North Carolina with their newborn son, Josh. They moved into a log cabin, planted a garden, and set up a studio in Celo Community, a land trust located on.... In 1971, Billy, together with glass pioneers Mark Peiser and Fritz Dreisbach took part in planning and hosting the first meeting of the Glass Arts Society.... In the mid 1970's glass master and educator Harvey Littleton moved nearby and quickly took an interest in the young artist's work... By the 80's both artists had established themselves as major forces in the glass world, but to keep their studio running they needed a steady flow of sales which eventually brought them together on a line of goblets and tableware. Katie supplied the imagery with melted glass colored rods, and Billy formed the result into a vessel. This combination proved very popular and received wide recognition in design journals and magazines. They continue to produce these pieces today...." Members, Ariel Gallery, Asheville's contemporary craft collective. Some of their glass can be purchased through The Guild's Artful Home.

Rob Levin
Rob Levin is a glass artist who works in three distinctly different styles of blown glass and mixed media glass sculpture. "... Robert Levin is an internationally known glass artist.... He was formerly the Resident Glass Artist at Penland School of Crafts, and has lectured, taught, and led workshops throughout the US and in New Zealand. He has exhibited widely in the US, Europe, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Museum of American Glass, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Contemporary Glass Museum in Madrid, the Ebeltoft Glasmuseum in Denmark, and the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem. Rob Levin has received a Southern Arts Federation/NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, two North Carolina Arts Council Fellowships, and a NC Arts Council Project Grant. For nine years he created the NC Governor's Entrepreneurial Schools Awards. He has twice created the NC Governor's Business Awards in Arts and Humanities, and has also made works which have been presented to visiting dignitaries to our state. His work has been featured in magazines such as American Craft, New Zealand Crafts, Craft Arts International, New Glass Review, as well as in books such as An Introduction to Visual Literacy, Contemporary American Craft Art, Contemporary Glass, and Masterpieces of American Glass. He is included in Who's Who in American Art, The Dictionary of International Biography, and Who's Who in America...." He is represented locally by Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, as well as by Penland Gallery, He is usually a participant in the semi-annual TRAC studio tour.

Kenny Pieper
" .... raised in the mountains of North Carolina. He began his craft career in high school when he studied at the Penland School of Crafts. Initially, he studied pottery with Norm Schulman and Cynthia Bringle. Later, he found his passion for glass under the tutelage of Richard Ritter. After high school, Kenny moved to Detroit under scholarship at the Center for Creative Studies; he subsequently received his B.F.A. from California College of Art and Design, Oakland, CA. he then spent 16 years working as a glassblower in the San Francisco East Bay area. Kenny’s career came full circle when he left California and moved back to North Carolina. While constructing a studio there, He worked at Penland School and managed the glassblowing and lampworking studios. It was during this fruitful time that he developed his expertise in the tradition of Italian glass. Kenny now resides in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. Reflecting the harmony and beauty of his surroundings, Kenny produces an exquisite line of glass vessels and sculpture..."
"... Pieper uses the same techniques as master glassblowers used centuries ago. In his Primavera series, he plunges a hot bubble of colored glass into water that contains the raw chemicals of glass. This results in a web-like crackle pattern. He also experiments with a variety of chemicals, melting and mixing his own colors which are a rare palette of vibrant red and gold.... " Virtual Gallery is The Guild's Artful Home Also represented by Blue Spiral 1, Asheville:

David Wilson
A studio artist specializing in neon/hot glass hybrid.
An interesting article by Jacob Fishman from the '90's showing David at work: "... Recently I had the pleasure of working with David Wilson, a glass blower working in furnace blown glass. At David's studio we made tubing for neon. Tubing that was truly spectacular just by itself. His tubing had stripes, spots, and different textures. I had tried hand pulled tubing in the past, but nothing like this. The best part was David's glass was easily workable in my neon shop fires and it was compatible to commercial tubing and electrodes..." See also Lightwriter's Glass Studio homepage.
Article in Carolina Arts says "... David Wilson had a dozen years experience in glassblowing before he entered the world of neon art and combined the two mediums. That shift in his work came in 1993, Patterson observes, when Wilson assisted Jacob Fishman in leading the first neon-working session at Penland. "Since then," Patterson declares, "he has developed an array of dazzling special effects that he used in his work and shares with other glass and neon artists. Working with neon and other gases - including argon, krypton, and xenon - has enabled him to fill his blown glass forms with glowing, colored, animated light... His neon plasma sculptures are electrical arcs... constantly in motion, wriggling like countless miniature lightning bolts....." David is a frequent Penland Instructor (During the Fall 2007 Concentration, David Smith & David Wilson taught Pushing the Neon Envelope "... This class will go all out with neon. With the entire Penland glass shop at our disposal we will explore conventional and unconventional neon techniques, with an emphasis on sculpture. In the hot shop we will cover blowing vessels, pulling tubing, and more. In the neon studio, we will fill these tubes and vessels with electrified gases to create both still and animated lights. An array of techniques and a small parade of guest artists will help take us to the neon frontier. The eight-week format will allow us to pursue ideas from concept to completion. All levels...") David Willson was a past president of the Toe River Arts Council (2003-2004). Galleries: Twisted Laurel Gallery in Spruce Pine; Penland Gallery, Penland His neon exhibitions: Museum of Neon Art (Los Angeles), four GAS conferences, University of California/San Diego. See also Spruce Pine Batch Company and Glo-Glass

Robert Johnson

"...Artist Robert Johnson is a visual storyteller whose interests in sacred places and man's connection to the natural world are reflected in his rich works. Johnson spent the first fourteen years of his life in Caracas, Venezuela, where he was deeply affected by the abundant plant and animal life. As an adult he became intrigued with sacred places, such as Mt. Fuji in Japan, where people often visit not only to enjoy nature's beauty, but for spiritual renewal as well.... While Johnson's paintings depict the beauty and peace of "sacred places" such as Mt. Pisgah, he also documents the impact that human beings have had on the land. "I observed that the need for preservation is under constant pressure created by the drive for development," he says. "It saddens me that so many financial and human resources are required simply to maintain these tiny remnants of once great ecosystems."

An article by Arnold Wengrow in the December 7th 2007 edition of the Asheville Citizen Times on the occasion of his New Zealand exhibit says"...But Johnson’s landscapes are also wildly imaginative inventions of scenes never observed in nature. In his pictures, plant stalks loom as big as trees. Mountains, sea and forests that are miles apart appear side by side. An owl towers over the tree it sits in. This, Johnson might be saying, is how far-off places look in dreams when we come back home. His world is a place of magical realism recalling Henri Rousseau and Marc Chagall. It’s clear he’s a naturalist.The son of an oil geologist who took him on expeditions to Venezuela, Johnson has an environmentalist’s reverence for unspoiled wilderness. He has painted the coast, sandhills and mountains of North Carolina in a distinctive style that mixes techniques from medieval art, Indian miniatures and sacred Tibetan Thangka paintings. Johnson’s artistic journeys have taken him to India, Nepal, Bali, Ecuador and Panama. Now the artist, who lives in the Celo community in Yancey County, has returned from a three-month expedition to New Zealand. It’s a country, he says, that 'evolved quite separately from all other parts of the world.'..." Robert Johnson's extraordinary and highly collectible paintings are frequently in solo exhibitions at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, where they can always be purchased.

An article in Mountain Xpress describes how Robert Johnson uses sketches in a sketchbook as an prelude to his paintings (page from his sketchbook to right). Robert will be teaching a course at the Penland School of Crafts June 22 to July 4, 2008: -Nature Journaling: Art for Nature Freaks "Nature journaling is a powerful tool for connecting with the world around us, and it can inspire work in any medium. This class will travel to some of the most beautiful spots in the North Carolina mountains where we will observe and record what we find using Robert Johnson’s unique pencil and watercolor journaling method. No previous experience necessary; all that is needed is curiosity, a love of nature, and a good pair of hiking boots. All levels."