An interview of Mary Van Cline conducted 2009 December 6 and 2010 March 30, by Patricia Grieve Watkinson, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, at Van Cline's home, in Seattle, Washington.
Van Cline discusses growing up in with a musician father, in an independent-minded family in Texas; undergraduate and graduates studies in design, architecture, fine art and ceramics at North Texas State University in Denton; her first job out of college as an artist-in-residence with the city of Dallas; her introduction to glass at Penland School of Crafts, Penland, NC; graduate studies in glass at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; beginning to combine photography and glass, including working with Kodak; her gravitation toward representational art, narrative, and the passage of time as a significant theme in her work; working at the Wheaton glass/factory art center in Millville, New Jersey, at the inception of the program; working in New York City at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop; arriving at Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington; her visual/thematic use of individual in a landscape; her international travels, including her trip to Japan on a National Endowment for the Arts grant; the influence of Butoh dance on her work; installation work; pedestal pieces from the 1990s; Listening Point, 1993; work focusing on life-size human figure; working with glass when the studio glass movement was in its infancy, and her invention of techniques and method, including photo-sensitive glass; working with DuPont Co.; the sense of visual simplicity and serenity in her work; her choice to concentrate on a career as a studio artist rather than on teaching; relationships with galleries, collectors, and the art world; the importance of family support. Van Cline also recalls William Morris, Dan Dailey, Karen Chambers, Stanislav Labinský and Jaroslava Brychtová, Dale Chihuly, and Dan Klein.
Biographical / Historical:
Mary Van Cline (1954- ) is a glass artist in Seattle, Washington.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Occupation:
Glass artists -- Washington (State) -- Seattle Search this
