Seattle, Wash. – July 28, 2006 – Pilchuck Glass School announced today the selection of six outstanding young artists to participate in the school’s seventeenth annual Emerging-Artists-in-Residence Program following review of 36 applications submitted by artists hailing from eight countries. Those selected are Sean Albert, Stine Bidstrup, Josh Kerner, Jung Sun Oh, April Surgent, and Erika Tada. They will live and create new bodies of work at Pilchuck’s Stanwood campus from September 18 through November 10, 2006.

Thirteen of the school’s 34 International Council members served as jurors for this competitive residency application process. International Council members represent countries and artistic traditions as varied as Iceland, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. They reviewed images of the applicants’ work and their residency plans, scoring them for originality, visual intelligence, and well-developed demonstration of formal intent or aesthetic expression. Pilchuck invited the six top scoring applicants to participate in this residency.

This year’s emerging artists in residence (EAiRs) reflect a broad variety of techniques and conceptual approaches to creating in glass. While this residency supports six individuals in pursuit of their work, it also lends itself to unique and important collaborations and explorations of commonalities. Pilchuck’s Artistic Co-Director Ruth King explains, “This is a residency where artists live and work together on the Pilchuck campus. It is meant to be an immersion in art-making practice shared with other emerging artists.”

Seattle-area artist Sean Albert comes to the residency with a B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art and a recently completed M.F.A. from Alfred University. Usually a glassblower, Albert intends to use the residency to expand on a recently-developed process of kiln-forming thousands of glass canes into large, sold blocks, experimenting with assembling them in varying dimensions and patterns. Says Albert, “Having the ability to attempt, test, and tweak an idea or technique without the pressure to create a finished product is the most important tool an artist can enlist.”

Stine Bidstrup, a Danish artist who recently completed the Rhode Island School of Design’s post-baccalaureate program, received her B.A. from the Glass and Ceramic School on Bornholm. She has been a volunteer glassblower in Pilchuck’s 2003 auction centerpiece program, a student in 2004, and a teaching assistant for Jeffrey Sarmiento in 2006. “In my work,” explains Bidstrup, “I create possibilities of seeing and exploring how vision is intrinsically linked with the human body.” She will kiln cast, fuse, slump, and coldwork glass to explore the possibilities of glass’s optical qualities.

Glenn Mills, Pennsylvania, resident Josh Kerner supplemented his recently-completed Tyler School of Art B.F.A. with workshops at The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass and as a Pilchuck teaching assistant in 2005. He intends to use the eight-week residency to create a body of objects that will turn his usual performance work upside down. “I feel that I could re-energize my practice at Pilchuck because,” Kerner explains “the program supports thinking and working beyond the usual cannon of glassmaking while fostering a tight community of people who share this common goal.”

Jung Sun Oh is a Korean artist who presently lives in Stanford, California. She has a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, and completed an M.F.A. in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. Her sculptures and installations combine fragments (glass mirror pieces or glass tubes) to reveal a combination of multiple viewpoints and changing viewpoints. Oh will use the residency to explore the interdependence of self with the environment.

April Surgent, a native of Missoula, Montana who currently lives in the Puget Sound region, believes “a constant growth in my technical abilities and methods are as important for the final object as are the ideas behind the work.” Capping studies at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies with a bachelor’s degree (with honors) from Australia National University School of Art in Canberra, Surgent has continued informal studies at North Lands Creative Glass Center in Lybster, Scotland, Seattle’s Pratt Fine Arts Center, Bullseye Glass in Portland, Oregon, and Pilchuck Glass School. During her residency Surgent will employ large-scale castings, prints and coldworking to explore the link between person and place.

Tokyo native Erika Tada completed a B.A. from Japan’s Joshibi University of Art and Design in 1998 and an M.F.A. from New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology in 2005. She augmented her formal studies with workshops at Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Germany’s Bild-Werk Frauenau, Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, and Pilchuck. Using pâte de verre, kiln casting, and coldworking, Tada will attempt to capture personal memory in mixed-media sculptures. Tada places a premium on her upcoming Pilchuck experience, “For an international artist like me, working at Pilchuck Glass School will expose me to new artists and their ideas on producing art. The dialog which I will have with other artists . . . will give me the opportunity to expand my aesthetic and other technical knowledge while, at the same time, helping them do the same.”

Founded in 1990, this residency offers a group of six artists in the early stages of their careers financial support, a period of time, and a creative environment in which to develop bodies of work focusing on glass. Bridging the academic and professional worlds, the residency differs from the school’s summer educational program in that it does not include instruction or access to the hot shop. EAiRs have full access to Pilchuck’s kilns, flameworking torches, coldworking equipment, and printmaking studio along with studio space, living accommodations, technical assistance, a $1,000 stipend, and a significant period of time in which to take risks, pursue special projects, or finish a body of work.

Pilchuck Glass School’s Emerging Artist-in-Residence Program is supported in part by the Italo Scanga Endowment, a fund established in tribute to the late Italo Scanga.

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