Richard Ritter
Richard Ritter was born in Detroit in 1940, but grew up in rural Michigan near the small town of Novi. While in his senior year at Northville High School, Richard had the good fortune to meet a very special art teacher named John Van Haren, who encouraged him to pursue a career in art. After attending the Society of Arts and Crafts (presently the College for Creative Studies) in Detroit from 1959 to 1962, Richard left school to take a job with an advertising firm.
After working as a professional advertising illustrator for five years (1962 through 1968), Richard was hired to teach advertising at the Society of Arts and Crafts. Taking advantage of the school's policy that allowed instructors to enroll in classes, Richard pursued an interest in metalworking. His first exposure to hot glass took place in 1968 when Gil Johnson built a small glass blowing facility at CCS. Richard was interested in incorporating glass into the pewter castings he was working on at the time, and signed up for the glass blowing class. After working at the furnace only 11 times during the semester, Richard was convinced that glassblowing was the media that he had been searching for to begin his life's work.
In 1969, Richard graduated from CCS. He was then invited to build a glass blowing and teaching facility at the Bloomfield Art Association (BAA) in Birmingham, Michigan. At first, the students collected glass bottles to be melted down in the furnace to produce clear glass, green glass (from wine bottles) and brown glass (from Stroh's beer bottles.) Eventually, Richard contacted Joel Phillip Myers, who was at that time a designer at Blenko Glass, in Milton, West Virginia. Joel shipped barrels of colored cullet to the BAA, and they set about to melt Blenko cullet. Richard began to experiment using layers of color and making very simple canes and murrini to decorate the surface of small vessels.
In 1971, Richard enrolled in a summer session taught by Mark Peiser at Penland School of Crafts in the mountains of North Carolina. At that time, the director of Penland School was Bill Brown. Bill was to become a tremendous source of inspiration and motivation for the contemporary studio glass movement. Bill gave Richard the opportunity to stay on and take a class with Richard Marquis, who had recently spent a year studying glassblowing in Murano, Italy. In exchange, Richard would build some equipment for the glass studio. Marquis's incredible facility with the glass and his knowledge of murrini gave Richard technical skills and encouragement to pursue more complex imagery on his vessels using the murrini processes. Richard then returned Michigan where he continued to teach glassblowing at the BAA.
In 1977, Richard married Jan Williams, and they moved to a farm in Cass City, Michigan where Richard built a studio and they had their first child, Richie. In 1980, Richard and Jan returned to North Carolina where they bought a small farm just outside of the town of Bakersville, located in the mountains of Mitchell County. There, they built a new studio, and restored an old farmhouse. In 1984 Richard received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant. Throughout the 1980's he continued to work in the studio, exhibit internationally, travel, lecture, and teach workshops. He also became very active in his community as a volunteer firefighter and rescue worker. In the studio, Richard continued to mix batch and melt opal and crystal colors in order to develop his own unique color pallet.
In 1990, Richard was honored with a Twenty-year Retrospective at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. He continued his long association with Penland School through teaching and as a member of the Board of Directors. 1993 was declared "The Year of the American Craft: A Celebration of the Creative Works of the Hand" as mandated by a Presidential Proclamation and Joint Resolution of Congress. Richard was one of 70 of America's leading crafts artists invited to contribute an example of their work to the first permanent White House Crafts Collection.
His glass appeared on the August/September 1996 cover of American Craft Magazine and was featured in its article by Joan Falconer Byrd: 'Richard Ritter, Thinking in the Language of Glass.'
In 1997, the Bakersville area experienced a devastating flood. (50 bridges were destroyed in the Bakersville Fire District) As chief of Bakersville Volunteer Fire and Rescue, Richard devoted many months to the recovery effort. In 1998, Richard received a North Carolina Governor's Award for Volunteer Service for his efforts during the flood.
In 1999, Richard was honored with a thirty-year retrospective of his glass at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. He received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit Michigan in 2000. He also received the North Carolina Artist Fellowship Grant 2000-2001, and was honored with a thirty-year retrospective exhibition at the University of Michigan, Dearborn: "Suspended Expressions, Visions in Glass."
In 2009, Richard celebrated 40 years of working in glass with a retrospective exhibition at the Toe River Arts Council in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. This exhibition featured over 75 works in glass from 1969 to 2009. This show continues to travel, and has been exhibited at locations such as Western Carolina University, the Green Hill Center for NC Art, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
In 2011, Richard was declared a North Carolina Living Treasure. He recieved a medallion in a ceremony at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and was honored with the exhibition, 'Murrinis Within a Crystal Matrix: The Poetic Glassworks of Richard Ritter'. This exhibition was shown at the Cameron Art Museum.