Richard Jolley

Artist Statement

It seems as though you wake from a dream one day to realize that you have been involved in a journey with a material and process for over half your life and still there is so much more to discover, uncover, and be covered-up by. One of the joys I have with the expressive material, glass, is that you are making something from nothing.

As with many artists of the 60's and 70's, I sought out non-traditional materials and encountered glass which became my primary medium. The many dualities of nature and materials interest me and I express this concern in my work by employing a figurative/narrative mode to document our times and environment. There is a classical/modern link in my work just as a glass is a modern material with an ancient history.

Bio

Richard Jolley was born in 1952, and then moved in his youth to Tennessee. In 1970, the artist began his studies at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee, studying glass under Michael Taylor. Taylor was then invited to create his next program at George Peabody College in Nashville, now apart of Vanderbilt University, were Jolley later completed his B.F.A. In the fall of that year, Jolley participated in graduate studies at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina under the instruction of Richard Ritter. Jolley continues this tradition by teaching at Penland for the past 10 years. Supplementary to his professional student workshops, the artist along with his wife Tommie Rush, have opened their studio to an inventive at-risk youth program in Knoxville, Tennessee, providing inner-city children with hands-on experience with the professional arts.

Building and maintaining a glass studio in Knoxville since 1975, Richard Jolley has participated in over 36 solo gallery and museum exhibitions through out the country as well as Europe and Japan. His long standing relationships with such galleries as Arthur Roger in New Orleans, Fay Gold in Atlanta, and Maurine Littleton in Washington, D.C.

Included in his exhibition history are glass and sculpture survey exhibitions at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporro, Japan, and the International Exhibition of Glass in Kanazawa, Japan as well as shows at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey and Laumier Sculpture Park, Missouri. In 1997, Mark R. Leach of the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, curates a reflective solo exhibition of Jolley's mature glass sculptures and his work was also exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum in Masters of Contemporary Glass: Selections from the Glick Collection and the exhibition entitled Glass Today curated by the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Richard Jolley has additionally found support for his art through a variety of honors, lectures and workshops at the institutions that sponsor his exhibitions and from the State of Tennessee. Notably from the larger grouping are public lectures at the universities of Tulane and Kansas, Tokyo Art Institute, and California College of Arts and Crafts. Currently, the artist has been selected by the Tennessee Arts Commission to participate in a Tennessee/Israeli artist exchange program to spend two weeks in Israel.

Included in over a dozen published catalogue essays and articles, Richard Jolley was the featured artist in the June/July 1997 issue of American Craft Magazine.

Since 1973, the artist work has been extensively collected both in the private and in the public sector. Distinguished collections include the American Craft Museum, New York, Corning Museum, New York, Hokkaido Museum, Sapporo, Japan, Los Angeles County Museum, the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation, and most recently the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. Richard Jolley has received several private and public commissions including the Absolut Statehood 1993 national ad campaign for Absolut Vodka as representative for Tennessee. Followed by another national ad campaign for Bombay Sapphire Gin in which the artist created a unique martini glass.

Collections

Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, North Carolina

Atlantic Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida

Baton Rouge Art and Humanities Council, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, Wisconsin

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

Carillon Importers Ltd., Teaneck, New Jersey

Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia

Coburg Museum, Coburg, Germany

Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York

Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio

Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado

Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan

Foundation for the Carolinas, Charlotte, North Carolina

Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne Indiana

Glasmuseum Hentrich at Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany

Gregg Museum of Art + Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina

Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn Michigan

Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan

Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia

Imagine Museum, St. Petersburg Florida

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana

International Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft, Denmark

Iowa State University Museum of Art, Ames Iowa

Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California

Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida

Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, North Carolina

Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama

Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, Alabama

Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington

Museum of Spirits with The Absolut Art Collection, Stockholm, Sweden

Museum of West Texas University, Lubbock, Texas

Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, Michigan

Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Collegeville, Pennsylvania

Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois

Seattle Art Museum Seattle Washington

Tacoma Museum of Glass, Tacoma Washington

Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee

The Fine Art Museum, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans, Louisiana

The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

University Hospital of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio

Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California