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Roger Thomas Glass

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Op 585 Beaver’s Run Op 589 Frozen Solstice Op 591 Stepping Away Op 590 Towards the Light Opus 578 Glacial Run Op.544 Copper Valley Wb

Portfolio


Where We Were When

I’m taken with landscape. It is a heady word and a vast concept, yet it is our common ground. Statistically it is the most desired of images; it is the art of everyone. We are not confused or frightened in its presence and we find comfort in knowing what it is. We see our lives framed by where we were when. Our world is visualized as landscapes, and we are given context and richness from them. We speak through landscape – it is our wordless storyteller. We are endlessly modifying it to mark our passage through it, our time in it, and our lives spent there.

I want to suggest there is a haven within the change we feel around us on our earth, our landscape. My unpopulated woods are not virginal, but rather, disused. There may be structures and roads in them, but they are not the point—they do not lead anywhere. Rather they infer one may live within growth, within change if one describes it correctly, appreciates the view from where they are now.



Art in Embassies Program

The ART in Embassies Program is a unique blend of art, diplomacy, and culture. Regardless of the medium, style, or subject matter, art transcends barriers of language and provides the means for ART to promote dialogue through the international language of art that leads to mutual respect and understanding between diverse cultures.

The ART in Embassies Program is proud to lead this effort to present the artistic accomplishments of the people of the United States. We invite you to visit the website, art.state.gov, which features on-line versions of all exhibitions worldwide.





New Landscapes

The fall was exceptionally rich this year here in Portland. In response to it and peripheral nudges (internal and external) to step away from the birch and aspen style of work for a bit, I created this "not aspens" body of six new works. 

Originally meant as a complement to the four seasons of the earlier Glacial Stream series, they eventually took on life of their own and became lyrically abstract expressions of the natural beauty here in Oregon. Each of these mosaic collages of gestural splashes of leaf and color helps me move my work towards that blend of landscape and abstraction that I feel gives the viewer just compensation for wanting to share their life with a work of art.


Sidewalk Stories

It is time to tell ourselves stories.

Stories about how we feel about the world, and our place in it. To tell these stories, we will use the images of our daily lives that get through to us, and the thoughts they provoke in that moment we are open to something new, something different from the normal, from the routine in our lives.
Stories of the passage of time, of life, as we gaze at the aging of something intended to be as permanent as the stone path we walk on. Stories based on simply looking down at our feet, as we seek reassurance we are still walking in the world we know. Stories about our life as it passes through this world.

Simple,

small

stories,

of us.






Little Rooms

These are pieces related by their intimacy and abstraction, and their ability to create a space where you, as the viewer, feels comfortable--little rooms from which it is safe to make up your own story about what you feel, or perhaps know, is there.

When people tell me stories about my work, I know they are fully connected to it.

Classes

Class Descriptions

Roger combines a method of teaching that uses a lecture portion featuring slideshow examples from his own work as well as a hands-on approach. The workshops below are listed in order of difficulty. Please contact the venue if you have questions about your qualifications.

Images in Glass

This course focuses on design and process for landscape in fused glass, as Roger shares his techniques and philosophy of his Glass Paintings. Roger is known to students of glass for his varied and unusual glass fusing techniques with which he creates his art. During this class the student will complete four landscape samples, as Roger discusses and demonstrates how he creates color, depth and translucency in his work.

Typically a four day class, this can also be taught in three days using three samples.

Design for Fused Glass Imagery

For over 30 years Roger Thomas has been developing design and functional techniques for creating his glass art works. In this new lecture and lab class you will build a piece with Roger as he shares with you how he uses these procedures to design and execute his art. Topics will include: selection of design and scaling, graphics and line, collage and mosaic, enriched materials, glass brushstrokes, pointillism and abstraction--all as applied to fused glass imagery. Prerequisites: courage to try new concepts, willingness to fail and a good sense of humor.

Typically a three or four day class.

Thinking Painting, Using Fusing

This course explores how glass fusing technology relates to traditional painting by examining each for common elements. Students will learn through designing a composition of their choice (with input from Roger), testing glass technique and palette for individual elements so that they will be able to execute a large, complicated landscape.
This is an ideal class for the accomplished fuser looking to expand into a more pictorial medium as well as the accomplished painter or draughtsman wishing to expand into fused glass. Roger’s class "Images in Glass" is an excellent precursor; however, other prerequisites are either good fusing skills or good painting skills combined with basic fusing experience.

Typically a four or five day class.

The Projects Class

Roger Thomas is a world renowned glass artist whose techniques and style are instantly recognizable. Now he is going to share his experience and unique vision to help you cultivate your own personal artwork.
In this class, students will benefit from group discussions and critiques as they each work to create original art pieces. From conceptualization and design to business practices and marketing, this is an exciting opportunity to develop your style and receive peer feedback under the guidance of an extremely talented professional artist. Previous advanced fusing experience is a prerequisite, and the "Images in Glass" class is recommended.

Typically a four or five day class, and taught at Pacific ArtGlass.

Project Class: Roll Ups

Pacific ArtGlass has the combined facilities necessary to create exciting vessels of blown fused glass, called roll ups, and Roger offers a 5-day Projects class with a focus on making these works. Students explore design considerations for roll ups as and learn to make fused blanks in the kiln forming studio and then observe and participate in the process of rolling the panels into blown glass forms with a glass blowing artist. Each student will make several blown glass forms out of their own work during the class.

Previous advanced fusing experience is a prerequisite.

Upcoming Classes


Bullseye Glass Resource Center - Bay Area, CA
May 9 - 13, 2020
Images in Glass


About

A Little About Roger

Roger V Thomas making the perfect cut on a piece of glass
Making the perfect cut…

Roger Thomas was born in Los Angeles, California in 1951. He began working with stained glass in the 1970s, and by the 1980s was developing his own innovative techniques with fused glass. After moving to Portland, OR to take a job at his favorite glass factory in 1988, he established his second studio and began to “make things” in earnest.

[pullquote]It’s an accident that I’m an artist. As a self-professed “maker of things,” I join a large portion of the human race in believing that it is good to build. With age, after enough history and experience sinks in, the temporal nature of building becomes apparent and I am left with the realization that it is the effort, not the object, that gives merit to the doing. Art is the detritus of the creative act, and creating is a worthwhile goal for my life.” – Roger V Thomas[/pullquote]Roger is something of a charming curmudgeon. He finds the familiar errands of life stressful and irritating, but thinks nothing of spending an afternoon wandering the neighborhood with camera in hand. And while on these walks, he’ll find beauty in the typical trees and flowers and gorgeous sunlight of Portland, but also in the oddities—the plastic horses chained to the old carriage rings in the curb, the kitschy yard lights, sidewalk chalk drawings and the weeds growing in the parkways.

He brought this same dichotomy to his artwork. Easily distracted by color, design and structure wherever he went, he attempted to extract the essence of form with a graphic shorthand in order to communicate his view of the world to others.

And he chose to do this with glass, a medium so belligerent and unyielding that it creates a narrow set of confines for him to work his will on. It demands whoever wishes to master it learn to work their own magic.

These techniques were second nature to him, enabling him to create pictorial and abstracted images while allowing the glass to voice its own true nature. He stated that he wished to know his medium as well as the Asian calligraphy master, who, after a lifetime of study, bends the ink to his desires and expresses the world in a single brush stroke. Or single kiln-firing.

Roger approached glass as a sculptural medium and ended up creating masterful paintings.    Rog-Resume-button

The Roger Thomas Glass Studio was located in Portland, OR

For a while, when he first moved in, he decorated the windows of his garage doors with the ID numbers of train engines, trying (in vain) to recognize a pattern and predict the pitch and tone of the next whistle. Luckily, he gave up that endeavor and went back to glass.

Ingrid the Studio Dog kept watch over her master’s domain. She made certain no mailman, cat, coyote, or vicious bunny comes anywhere near the studio unmolested. She also spent a great deal of time grumbling over the lack of walks and ball-throwing in her life, but was perfectly willing to offer up a word of advice or succinct criticism when called on. Her words of wisdom and updates were found under “News from Ingrid.”

The gallery at Roger Thomas Glass
The gallery at Roger Thomas Glass

The studio was a life-long dream of Roger’s. The space wasn’t exactly perfect of course. He didn’t have his tile-lined, drain-in-the-floor room for cold working, or achieve his goal of putting every piece of equipment on wheels (though he was very, very close). However, Roger was able to keep three out of four kilns running in one area and he no longer needed to use a miner’s head light in the dimmest corners to seek out the proper colored sheet of glass as in his previous basement studio.

The gallery upstairs was a unique blend of those pieces that he was unwilling to give up just yet, one or two that other galleries have returned, and the newest, most exciting works that have just come out of the kiln were hung and admired before being sent off.

OPB art beat logo
Roger’s featured on OPB’s Art Beat!

AIEPUnited States Embassy, Ankara
Art in Embassies Exhibition Catalogue (PDF)
Ankara, Turkey (PDF – pp 10-13)

OR-HomePortfolio, Oregon Home Magazine
“Landscapes through the Looking Glass” (PDF) by Beth Olsen

am_weblogo_sm3-OBoston’s Culture Magazine
“Crossing Boundaries, Making Art” (PDF) by Rebecca Tuch

SWA-head

“Artists to Watch,” Roger V Thomas (PDF)
SWA Selects, Southwest Art Magazine

GlashausWb
Glasshouse/Glashaus
Roger Thomas at the Easel (PDF)
by Geoff Wichert

Contact

Roger’s Estate Contact Information

You can find Roger’s work at any of his galleries. Please visit them to see if they have something you like already and is available from New Work! Browse a sampling of his commissioned work and read the write-ups. Previous shows are listed on the Portfolio page.

If you want to know the latest news from the studio, check out Ingrid’s blog. She has information about classes, upcoming shows, and other exciting news. Sign up for Ingrid’s mailing list and get updates at News From Ingrid.

Contact Roger’s Estate









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