JOEL PHILIP MYERS
Joel Philip Myers creates work characterized by exquisite craftsmanship and an extraordinarily strong sense of formal design. According to curator and contemporary glass specialist Dan Klein, “Myers is best described as an abstract colorist although his kind of abstraction nearly always relates to imagery connected either to landscape and nature or to human forms and human behavior.”
In explaining the development of much of his work and style, Myers has said, “A painter can take a brush and paint large volumes of space and color and linear aspects and textural aspects. I wanted to have that.” His process includes blowing glass spheres — often in more than one color, breaking them and flattening the pieces, then applying these shards as brushstrokes over his glass vessel canvases.
Joel Philip Myers graduated with honors from the Department of Advertising Design at Parsons School of Design in 1954. After studying ceramic design in Copenhagen, Denmark, Myers earned both a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, NY. In the 1960s, Myers was Director of Design at the renown Blenko Glass Company. From 1970 through the late 1990s, he served as Distinguished Professor of Art at Illinois State University, Normal, IL. Myers has taught and mentored a number of noteworthy artists, and his awards and honors range from Honorary Life Member of the Glass Art Society to Fellow of the American Crafts Council, and Fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts. Myers’ work is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Decorative Art, Prague, Australian Crafts Council, and Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan.
