Joyce J. Scott

MacArthur Fellow Dr. Joyce J. Scott works across a spectrum of media, confronting urgent issues such as racism, sexism, violence, inequality, oppression, and injustice, while also embracing beauty, spirituality, nature, and healing. Scott is best known for her mastery of the off-loom peyote stitch, a free-form glass bead weaving technique, which she uses to merge beads, blown glass, and repurposed objects with autobiographical, sociological, and political themes. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art (BFA) and the Instituto Allende in Mexico (MFA), Scott has received numerous honorary degrees from Johns Hopkins University, California College of the Arts, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her works are held in prominent public and private collections worldwide, such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among many others. She is the recipient of numerous commissions, grants, awards, residencies, and prestigious honors, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, American Craft Council, and the National Living Treasure Award. Scott is represented globally by Goya Contemporary Gallery in Baltimore, where she continues to live and work.

Therman Statom

Therman Statom – sculptor, glass artist and painter – is most notably known as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement for his life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, constructed box-like paintings and small-scale houses; all created through the technique of gluing plate glass together. Born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1953, Statom spent his adolescence growing up in Washington, DC. Statom went on to pursue studies at Pilchuck Glass School during its inaugural year, completing a BFA in 1974 from RISD and later studied at the Pratt Institute of Art & Design. Throughout his career, public artworks have been permanently installed at prominent locations across the country. His artwork has also appeared in numerous exhibitions annually, including solo and group shows around the nation and internationally. Most notably, his 2009 solo exhibition “Stories of the New World” at the Orlando Museum of Art which spanned over 5,000 square feet, his largest installation to date. Statom’s career has also focused on the importance of educational programming within the arts. He set up the “Arts For ME!” program in 2021 to work with special needs students in Omaha, Nebraska.

Tim Tate

Tim Tate is a Washington, DC native, and has been working with glass as a sculptural medium for the past 25 years. He has shown nationally and beyond since the 1990s. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship from the University of Sunderland, England in 2012. His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, the Mint Museum, and the Fuller Museum, among others. Tate has spent many years championing LGBTQ rights in all its forms. As a 40-year HIV+ Queer Man, he founded the Triangle Artist Group in the early 90s and helped curate the first HIV+ art show there. He is also the designer of the New Orleans AIDS Monument. He has spoken at Yale University on Glass and Conflict…. detailing his own LGBTQ activism in glass. He is also co-administrator and founder of the discussion group “21st Century Glass.” For the last year he has been working on a large project with Joyce Scott. Simultaneously, he is putting together a show about Utopian Queer Futurism curated by Dr. Daniel Fountain.

Alexander Rosenberg

Alexander Rosenberg is an artist, educator and writer. He received a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT and a BFA in glass from Rhode Island School of Design. His artistic practice is rooted in the study of glass as a material, in conjunction with broad interdisciplinary investigation crossing over into many other media and research areas. Alexander pursues his practice with artist residencies, teaching, performances and exhibitions locally and internationally. He is the recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (2025), and the 2012 International Glass Prize, an Awesome Foundation Grant (2019), among others. His writing has been published in Glass Quarterly Magazine, The Glass Art Society Journal, and the Art Blog. He is a Corning Fellow, a founding member of Hyperopia Projects (2010 – 2018), headed the glass program at University of the Arts (2010 – 2017), and was an artist member of Vox Populi gallery (2012 – 2015). He was cast on the Netflix Series, Blown Away in 2018 and taught at Salem Community College from 2017 – 2022. He is currently the Glass Studio Director at Wheaton Arts.

Ezra H. Friedlander and Linda Heinrichs Friedlander

Ezra H. Friedlander was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Governor Evan Bayh in January 1993 and retired from the Court on August 31, 2015. He now serves the Court as a senior judge. A native of New Jersey, he graduated from Weequahic High School and went on to attend Indiana University in 1962 and earned a BA in History and Government. He earned his law degree from Indiana University School of Law in 1965 and is a graduate of New York University’s Appellate Judges Institute of Judicial Administration. Judge Friedlander is former co-chairman of the Indiana Supreme Court’s Commission on Race and Gender Fairness. He is a member of the Indianapolis, Indiana State, and American Bar Associations; American Judicature Society; and the Indiana Judges Association. He stays actively involved at his alma mater by serving on the emeritus Dean’s Advisory Board of the College of Arts and Sciences. Judge Friedlander and his wife collect contemporary art glass. He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

Linda Heinrichs Friedlander moved to Carmel, IN in 1979 after graduating from Nursing School in Rochester, MN.  She practiced critical nursing before entering industry with an entrepreneurial spirit and an eagerness focusing on the treatment of heart disease, working in sales and management for Guidant Corp/Boston Scientific. She retired in 2007. Upon retirement Linda became active and served on numerous boards. She is a Founding Member of the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council and currently serves as an Honorary Member. She is a past Co-Chair of the IU Colloquium for Women and the Board of Visitors for the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.  She serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at Herron School of Art and Design.  She is a member of the IU Foundation Presidents Circle. Linda and her husband, Hon. Ezra H. Friedlander, spend their days golfing, traveling both for pleasure and family, reading, gardening, and have developed a decades long “sickness” for collecting contemporary art glass. They have 3 children and 5 grandchildren.

Douglas Heller and Katya Heller

Widely credited as a principal player in creating the market for contemporary studio glass in the United States and Europe, Douglas Heller co-founded Heller Gallery’s first incarnation, the Contemporary Art Glass Group, with original partner Joshua Rosenblatt in 1973. In the ensuing years he has organized hundreds of exhibitions, guest curated for museums, and juried for State Arts Councils. With his brother Michael, he hosted the original meetings out of which emerged the Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Group, eventually leading to the founding of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. He was a founding board member of the Creative Glass Center of America and was later recognized by the CGCA with their Millville Rose Award for service to the field of Studio Glass. Currently, Heller is a member of the Ennion Society and a Fellow of The Corning Museum of Glass, where he has acted as a juror for the New Glass Review. Douglas served on the UrbanGlass Board of Directors from 1989 to 2002. In 2017, he & his wife Katya were honored for their service to the organization.

Katya Heller was born and raised in Czechoslovakia by an American mother and Czech father. Her first profession was as an interpreter for personalities as diverse as Czech President Vaclav Havel, Walter Cronkite, Frank Zappa, and the Dalai Lama. Heller moved to the United States in 1987 and by 1990 had begun a career as an arts professional, working with Dale Chihuly as the primary organizer of several of his international projects. She worked at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery, the Elliott Brown Gallery, and in 1998, moved on to spend a year working in the planning and development of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. In 1999, she relocated to New York City and began work as an associate director of Heller Gallery. She served as a member of the Board of Directors of UrbanGlass for many years, and also serves on the Advisory Board of the Czech Center – New York.  Her latest endeavor is taking on the position of Executive Director at UrbanGlass in New York.

Bonnie Marx

Bonnie Marx launched the Marx Gallery of Chicago in 1990. She partnered with Ken Saunders from 1995 until she retired as a gallerist fifteen years later. Bonnie began adding glass sculpture to her private art collection in the mid-1980s. She currently continues to collect glass art and serves on the Board of Directors of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG).

Mary Mills

Mary Mills has 30 years of experience as a glass historian, graduate professor, and museum professional. She is currently the Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, NJ. In this role she has curated three significant exhibitions for the Museum of American Glass—Amber Cowan: Alchemy of Adornment; Centuries of Tomfoolery: Trick Glasses, Pipes, and Whimsical Delights; and Transformations: The Wasserstein Collection of Contemporary Glass. Mills also serves as a historic glass specialist for AECOM Cultural Resources, assisting archaeologists in identifying and interpreting glass artifacts recovered along I-95 in Philadelphia. Mills formerly held the position of Education Programs Manager at The Corning Museum of Glass, where she had previously received the Richards Award for Research in American Glass and is now a Fellow. She lectures extensively and has taught American and European glass for graduate programs at the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Sotheby’s Institute of Art; and Winterthur Museum. Mills earned her second master’s degree from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. She has served on the board of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass since 2005.

Demetra Theofanous (Moderator)

Demetra Theofanous is a contemporary glass artist working in flameworked glass and pate de verre. Theofanous is internationally recognized for her sculpture, and teaches and exhibits worldwide. Notable exhibits include an exhibit at the Ming Shangde Glass Museum in China, the National Gallery of Art in Sophia, Bulgaria, the Triennial of the Silicate Arts in Hungary, and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. Her work is held in numerous private collections, and the permanent collection of the Racine Art Museum, the Imagine Museum, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and the Jordon Schnitzer Family Foundation. She is also an educator, teaching at top institutions such as Pratt Fine Arts Center, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass. Demetra’s artistic practice extends to volunteering extensively in the arts community, and she is passionate about volunteer work. She served on the Glass Art Society Board, was Co-Chair of the 2015 GAS Conference, is President Emeritus of the Glass Alliance of Northern California, and is currently serving her second term as President of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.