Talking Out Your Glass

In 2023, flameworking pioneer Paul Stankard will celebrate his 80th birthday. To commemorate more than four decades at the torch, the artist joined Shawn Waggoner, host of the Talking Out Your Glass podcast, to discuss his contributions to glass and art, including his new book, Inspiration from the Art of Paul J. Stankard: A Window into My Studio and Soul.

Considered a living master in the art of the paperweight, Stankard’s work is represented in more than 75 museums around the world, including a major collection at WMODA. Arthur Wiener is a huge fan of Paul’s work and visited his New Jersey studio in 2019 with Louise Irvine, Executive Director & Curator of WMODA.

To date, Arthur Wiener has acquired more than 70 pieces of Paul’s glass art including paperweights, orbs, botanicals, and assemblages Arthur particularly enjoys the mysterious root people and Paul is so proud to be in the WMODA collection that he offered the museum his “tour de force” of figures from Walt Whitman’s Medicinal Herb Garden series. In 2022, Paul made an orb specially for Arthur and his wife, Paulette, entitled The Wedding Bouquet.

The Wiener collection inspired the Art of the Flame exhibition at WMODA which ran from 2019 until the closure of the Dania Beach location in 2022. Paul’s work will be a feature of the new Hot Glass Gallery when WMODA re-opens later in 2023.

Over his 40-year artistic journey, Paul has received two honorary doctorate degrees, an honorary associate’s degree, and many awards within the glass community, most recently the Masters of the Medium Award from Smithsonian’s The James Renwick Alliance and the Glass Art Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Craft Council and a recipient of the UrbanGlass Award—Innovation in a Glassworking Technique.

Tune in to the Paul Stankard podcast now.
Season 8, Episode 1