Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Marvin Lipofsky
Conducted by Paul Karlstrom
At the Artist's home in Berkeley, California
July 30-31, and August 5, 2003

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Marvin Lipofsky on July 30-31, and August 5, 2003. The interview took place in Berkeley, California, and was conducted by Paul Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.

Marvin Lipofsky has reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

MR. KARLSTROM: This is beginning an interview with Marvin Lipofsky for the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. And this is Paul Karlstrom interviewing Marvin Lipofsky at the artist’s home, the studio adjoining downstairs, in Berkeley, California. The date for this first session is July 30, 2003. The interview is for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and this is disc number one; my first digital oral history recording.

So Marvin, we chatted a little bit before the interview, sort of establishing a kind of format, I guess, for what I hope is a somewhat in-depth interview, taking as much time as we need, but certainly, I think we want to shoot for – well, maybe even six hours. But at any rate, we’re going to get together tomorrow.

But first of all, by way of introduction, I want to congratulate you on the splendid retrospective exhibition and the fine book here that accompanies it currently at the Oakland Museum of California. Both the book and exhibition are impressive, and they raise for one – or certainly for me, certain compelling questions about your career and the place of studio glass within the broad field of fine art in this country – here and abroad, because you know about both of them; you have traveled a lot.

So a first question, one that I think will hover in the background or I hope it will, throughout our interview. In the forward to, Marvin Lipofsky: A Glass Odyssey [Oakland Museum, July 19, 2003 – October 12, 2003], Tina Oldknow – is that how you pronounce her name? Oldknow, curator of modern glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, concludes with this paragraph, if I may just quote it briefly. It’s not very long.

Quote: “Throughout his career, Lipofsky’s single-minded focus on the development of abstract sculptural forms in blown glass has served as a benchmark, reinforcing basic and cherished beliefs that are deeply rooted in the soul of the studio glass movement. Among these beliefs are the notions that glass is a material capable of sculptural expression, that vessels can become separate from function, and that the relationship between craft and fine art should not be based on mutual exclusion, but on an open and ever-expanding dialogue.” Close quote.

Somehow, for me, this has the ring of a definitive statement, one that seems – that perhaps sums up your career, or could, and its significance within the studio glass movement, or perhaps as an American artist who has chosen glass as his expressive material and medium. So, my first question in relation to this is: Is that the way you would describe the situation and your position as an artist? Does that, for you, characterize, briefly, you and your career?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, first of all, I think that abstraction found me, rather than I finding abstraction. It just seemed to be the way that I expressed myself in art school. I studied industrial design at the University of Illinois. At that time, in the late ‘50s, there wasn’t a sculpture major. I knew that my interests were in making things. I knew that I wasn’t going to be a brain surgeon or a lawyer or a doctor, so design had sort of been the only choice that I really kind of recognized. But while I was an undergraduate, I took every sculptural course that was offered, so I gravitated towards that three-dimensional – making things in three dimensions, and I gravitated towards the abstract.

In my hometown of Barrington, Illinois, there was a sculptor [Carl Tolpo] whose specialty was Abraham Lincoln. And he had – he was a realist; he did statues and portraits of Lincoln. And I knew him briefly, and he was quite upset with me that my choice for my creative expression was abstract. He thought that the only true expression really should be more of the realist. But that’s just – that’s just the way I found myself – I didn’t find myself. I did some small figures and things in school, went on a trip to Italy to a foundry in Florence, made a few small figures –

MR. KARLSTROM: This was during school?

MR. LIPOFSKY: This was just after school.

MR. KARLSTROM: Just after.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Just after school –

MR. KARLSTROM: After college?

MR. LIPOFSKY: – after college. I graduated; I and a friend of mine I had met in one of my sculpture classes, went to Europe, traveled around in a Volkswagen. And he had the idea that he would like to cast some pieces in bronze, and so we visited this factory in Florence where they gave us some wax, and we drove around – actually, drove down to Rome and there made some small wax pieces. He was figurative in his own work, and that’s the only way I could at the moment see to make things. But we had them cast. I think there were – I had three pieces cast in – three pieces cast in bronze, and then they were shipped back to us in the States.

When I started my graduate work, I toyed a little bit with some figurative – well, I have always kind of played a little bit with some figures and – but the main body of my work was abstract. Graduate school [University of Wisconsin-Madison] was really an opening for me. Well, actually, I should tell you how I got there because that’s fairly important.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay, I wonder if we should hold this for a minute and kind of, if we may, just dispatch the sort of more general questions because we’re going to have a chance really to sort of follow your career, and I can get back there real quickly.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Sure.

MR. KARLSTROM: But I suppose – I suppose what I was looking for in a sort of direct way was a sense of how you view, in terms of this statement, the significance of – the best description of your career. And the issue of abstraction does seem central to that. And, if I may suggest – we’re not going to get sort of mired down in this sort of bigger kind of generalization, but it’s like a self-descriptor. But your mention of abstraction, for me, goes right to the issue that you were drawn to imagery, to a form of a expression from the beginning, and an interest in making things, but not specifically yet – which – well, we will get into glass for which you’re so known and you have a prominent position in that.

So, it just seems to me – and you can sort of answer this or not, we can go on – that those two things are very much held in your work, in your career. You came to glass – and we’ll talk about how – but for reasons that seem to me that you settled on that as a way, a medium, a way to express or realize your interest in abstraction. Is that right? Is that why you said abstraction found you, rather than the other way?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, in school you’re given – we were given problems, and most of them were figurative in the sculpture classes. And I never felt that I was very successful at using a figure. And when I did things more abstractly, I felt more comfortable with it and felt that it was more successful in my – for me. Also, that was just coming off of the abstract expressionist painting. And when I looked at art, I didn’t relate so much to the figurative thing, although I did look at painters, and I still like painters and sculptors who work in a figurative way. But I related more to the abstract and what people were doing abstractly, and it just became natural for me to express myself that way.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah. Okay, well let me, before we really get into this, just, if I may, ask a couple of these sort of preliminary questions that I think – I hope will provide a framework for – in our discussions.

A second question, related: How would you – I’m not sure that this is fair at this point, but I’m going to try it anyway – how would you define Art with a big A, to include what were formerly understood as craft media? That’s this issue that we were even mentioning earlier. You know, what is your overview and perspective on that issue, of this kind of status, if you will, or the understanding of craft media within this broader idea of making things, of making objects, of making art, that you set out to do, then you came to what has been called glass, especially, a craft media?

I guess what I’m asking – and if you want to pass on this, we can come back to it later, but I’m really interested in what you think makes for serious artistic activity and signifies true creative ambition. In other words, what is being an artist as opposed to being an artisan or a craftsman, which is slightly different, I think.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, I think – I think, for me, it’s – it’s fairly simple.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay.

MR. LIPOFSKY: For me, I think it’s education. I think it’s where people went to school, or how they were educated into what they express themselves – or how they express themselves. Those people who had experiences in many materials, I would believe, don’t discriminate quite as much as those people who were educated solely in one material or one aspect of art. And I think it’s just purely a prejudice on our historians, for the most part, who have influenced artists and schools, and so forth.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And I think – and I think it’s their lack of education. And as we look deep into our history, they had very little education into the total picture, but they –

MR. KARLSTROM: You mean the understanding of –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Understanding of many materials and arts, and so forth. And those who write about painting don’t write about sculpture; those who write about sculpture don’t necessarily – but some do – write about painting. So I think it’s just purely a prejudice and the lack of education of those people in power. It’s just – it’s purely power.

However, I do see that there is craft, and craft to me is more functional and expresses itself as function, and it does not really have anything to do with material. And especially today, when anyone can use any material and it’s the success of using that material and their degree of expression and depth is how that material is used, whether it’s shown in a – and I hate the word fine arts because I think that’s a misnomer – it’s – in a gallery, a blue chip gallery, or in a shop. I think that’s the only distinction.

I think there are probably many more lousy painters in this world than – that I don’t think would qualify very much as being artists, they’re just – they express themselves, but they’re pretty bad. [Laughs.] So, I think it’s a matter of quality. So – and there are people who use clay or glass or who express themselves extremely well and are very successful at their material – successful at what they’re doing. So, I think it’s just a matter of education, and I think that it’s a rather moot point these days to deal with it.

Now, one of the problems I have seen is the museums and organizations changing their name to eliminate the word craft –

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And I think that’s –

MR. KARLSTROM: What about that?

MR. LIPOFSKY: – quite a shame. It just means that they weren’t very successful or really weren’t very comfortable with what they were doing, because there isn’t anything dirty about craft.

MR. KARLSTROM: No.

MR. LIPOFSKY: There isn’t anything wrong about craft. But I think the people who are running those organizations have a lack of education. And if you look at the people who make the decisions, they’re the ones who are not educated, they’re the ones who are prejudiced, they’re the ones who are bowing to what they believe is what society thinks they should be doing, and I think it’s – it’s highly suspect. Most of it comes from pressure from the East Coast, from New York, and I think it’s a matter of who they think will respond to them, and having a negative feeling about the word craft because it’s really – it’s really a shame that they haven’t been successful at their jobs – director of whatever, president of – they haven’t done a good job. And I read one woman associated with – that said that when she goes to corporations, they sort of laugh at her when she mentions the word craft. But they would laugh at her if she brought up some minority people’s – I mean, it’s the same – it’s the same as bigotry. It’s the same as corporate heads making jokes about minorities. That doesn’t mean they’re right because they’re the president.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: We’ve had presidents of the United States who made jokes about minorities, and that didn’t make them any more right or any more correct or any more knowledgeable. So, I think the same thing applies to those people who can’t stand on their own and can’t believe in something. And those people who believe – some of the nicest people are people who work with their hands. Now, I don’t know if painters believe that they work with their hands, but they do.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And the people who make pots work with their hands. And you have to think just as deeply making a pot as you do when you’re putting down a brush stroke. So, I don’t see much difference in it. There are some differences in expression, there are some differences in feelings, but I think those are fairly minor.

MR. KARLSTROM: Do you – this is interesting because immediately we’re – this is good, moving into some – what I call the big questions, and we will revisit that. But it seems to me that you’re describing what is a kind of marginalization – that’s a popular term, you know –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yes.

MR. KARLSTROM: – marginalized groups, and in this case, a form of expression or material-based prejudice. I think that that’s what you talked about. In some ways we think that that’s gone because a lot has happened since the ‘60s; you have been a big part of that. And yet, in other ways, it seems to linger on, that crafts art – ceramic sculpture, glass sculpture, which is the way I would – I would – that’s, frankly, the way I’d describe your work: you’re a sculptor who works in glass – that to the extent it’s attached to traditional ideas of craft, it becomes marginalized. It still – and it seems to me people who write about it, even support it, and even understanding that it’s part of fine art, they still seem to think of it in terms of material and technique, like that has to be – not apologized for, but sets it apart. And again, we’ll be able to talk about this. But I wonder what you –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I think that’s really a moot point. I mean, there isn’t anyone, any group of people who are more limited in what they use than painters, who paint on four-by-six foot canvases using oil or acrylic paint. I mean, there’s nothing more limiting than that, so it can’t just be material.

And again, I think it’s primarily education and socialization – socially, where – how people feel, where they came from, what they did, what their experiences were, because if you say, well, craftspeople always use the same material, hmm, that’s quite interesting, when the majority of painters never deviate from the canvas and oil, I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why that’s better than someone who uses clay. So, I think, again, it’s the success of what they make, and I think that’s more important that someone is more – I would rather have a wonderful bowl to eat cereal out of that I really felt good about, enjoyed looking at, then have some horrible velvet Elvis Presley hanging on my wall.

MR. KARLSTROM: Some of those are now taken seriously. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, well sure, everything comes – everything has its day. You will find something that’s just – because everyone’s searching for the new – something new. It’s fad; it’s a fad like everything else, just as the pot may be a fad at some time, too.

MR. KARLSTROM: Just a couple more points, then we will get back to the sort of chronological development and our list of questions.

Reading the essays in the catalogue, and what I thought was a very informative chronology in the catalogue, one can’t help really but be impressed by the extent of your contribution – and I mean that having just looked through it myself and seen your exhibition – to the field of studio glass. So that certainly is one way to see you, and in some ways, maybe that is enough.

But in the interview, especially the coming session, I would like to take it a bit further, as I mentioned to you, into the context in which you have worked. Above all, I’m interested in how Marvin Lipofsky thinks about modern and contemporary art, and how you see yourself and glass fitting into this – what art historians have called a meta – the big picture – meta-narrative, whether or not we even agree that that holds up. But you know, today we’re going to, as I say, focus on some biographical and career specifics. But let me ask you one last question, and then I will get away from my extended introduction here. So, finally a question along these lines, at least for the moment.

A tour group from Stanford will be visiting your show in October. I have it right here, a little brochure. A group from the museum down there will be visiting the show, and I gather you’ll be guiding them through, isn’t that right?

MR. LIPOFSKY: I’m not sure if I’m going to be available.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay. But I’m going to show you this because that – that would be cool, if it should happen. But what struck me – I think it refers very much to this – I noticed that you’re described – there are three people being visited. You’re described here as “among the prominent artisans of the East Bay.” Now, maybe this is my prejudice, right, but I see that as not quite accurate. It doesn’t match how I would think of you and your work as we have been discussing it, but maybe I’m off base. How do you feel about that way of being described?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, I think, again, we go back to the – where we were talking about art and craft, craft and art, and I think it’s just a matter of education. And whoever wrote this, just doesn’t have an understanding what the word artisan is. I’m not an artisan.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And I don’t think I would be a very good one, if I could be an artisan. And I’ve never – never thought of myself, I mean, as an artisan. It’s an antiquated word and it doesn’t have as much relevance today, even in the field of metal working or what are called crafts, from wood workers, metal workers. I mean, this is in the – this is the craft unions, where people make things for buildings or whatever. It’s – it’s just not me.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right. Right. Exactly.

MR. LIPOFSKY: It’s just misused, and I think people are just trying to find a nice word to use, which I think that it sounds more exotic to call somebody an artisan than an artist or what –

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, you think so?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, in this – well, remember, these people come from Stanford. I had some Stanford people once before. The women were interested. They stood in my studio and we talked. The men all stood outside and talked to themselves, and they weren’t interested. So I never – and that’s the first group – I have had many groups of people visit my studio. That’s the first group that the total group wasn’t interested in being there.

MR. KARLSTROM: Because they were just dragged along by their wives.

MR. LIPOFSKY: They were dragged along, and I didn’t know – it may say a little bit about the South Bay more than it does about – [laughs] – I think the further south we get, the more problems we have with the arts, so – in some respects. And then also, it also may have something to do with the Stanford group, I don’t know. They seem to be nice people, but I don’t know their understanding of what – or how much they have educated themselves, or whoever is leading the – leading the tour has educated them in what they’re going to see, or so forth. So – but, I can’t be an artisan, and that just doesn’t fit me.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, no, and I would agree. That’s why I asked the question. But anyway – so, enough on that, and thanks, because that allowed me very quickly to state some of the things that come to my mind in connection with –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. It’s used quite frequently. I see that – I see that word used in the newspapers and reviews and things like that. And it just – I don’t think that people just have a good command of the language.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, and furthermore – my final remark for the moment on all this – there’s also diminishing, I think – it’s not pejorative, because there’s nothing wrong with being an artisan –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Absolutely not.

MR. KARLSTROM: – but it is a cut – I think in most people’s understanding, artist is an exalted notion. Artisan is perhaps less so, it’s more like fabricator, almost and –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, I think, from my understanding, artisan works for someone else or some other person’s idea.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right. Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And they produce something that someone else asks them to produce. Well, painters can do that, too.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yes, commissions.

MR. LIPOFSKY: They can do commissions.

MR. KARLSTROM: Including Rembrandt or Rubens.

MR. LIPOFSKY: But I mean, that’s where the trades come in, where they produce – produce something for someone else’s use or someone else’s manufacture or someone else’s ideas, or to be incorporated with something else. And I mean, that’s – so artisan, I don’t think – it denotes highly skilled.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yes.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I mean, if you want someone to make something that’s part of another product, you want those persons – those people to be very skilled because you want your product to function well. So, they’re very important.

MR. KARLSTROM: I remember, I was reading in the catalogue, either in the chronology or one of the essays, about your working abroad. And I can’t remember where it was; I think it was only on one occasion where you basically had, I guess, an artisan glass blower – I’m not sure, maybe a master glass blower – actually do some difficult, quotes, “fabrication” or “creation,” according to your drawings and to your ideas.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, I only worked really once that way. That was the first experience I had in a major European glass factory. That was in Leerdam, the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory. That was working with a master glass artist, master – his name was [Leendert] van der Linden. He was exceptional. And so, my first experience, I did some drawings and – because I didn’t know how else to relate to being invited to work there. And I wanted to experience that, the designer designing for industry or designing in the factory, and that was the first idea I had.

After that experience, I felt that I didn’t – that it wasn’t what I wanted to do, and so I became more part of the team, more of the maker of the objects. So I was just one of the – I worked along with the master to make my objects. I handled the molds so that I shaped the pieces that were to be made, and took advantage of the skills of those people who were on the glassblowing team, who could blow the glass into what shapes I wanted it to be blown into while I determined those shapes, also the color. Sometimes I would put my – the color in or be a part of it, or arrange the color. And so it wasn’t just a matter of drawing and asking them to do it, and they did it in the way that they felt they knew – they knew how to do it best.

So that happened one time, and I wouldn’t mind going back and trying to work a little more that way again, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that; I wanted to have more hands-on in my work. Of course, after objects are blown, when I work in a factory, I take them back to my studio and then I have total hands-on when I finish the work myself. So the actual amount of work is in two phases, the blowing and the finishing of the work.

MR. KARLSTROM: Mm-hmm. That’s interesting. And it, of course, brings up again the issue of skilled craft – skill involved in – I have seen glass blown up, at Pilchuck [Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington] and Dale Chihuly’s place one time. I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies. Well, actually, I even blew a little cup one time. I was allowed in. It was pretty crummy, but at least I had that experience. It was a friend from Santa Fe that I met at Pilchuck.

But there’s no question that working – especially in a very sophisticated, elaborate way, as are many of your forms – with glass is something that you can’t just do; you can’t just step in and do it. And actually, drawing and painting, anybody can do it; developing knowledge and skill in terms of the materials, and if you work in oil paint, what’s involved, the vehicle, and so forth, and glazes, but basically you can do it. And yet, perhaps that’s part of the difference, the level of skill that is necessary in the various crafts, as a matter of fact, in a fabrication way.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, if anything, it takes practice and time to develop certain things. Certainly, it’s much easier to put a mark on a piece of paper –

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: – or a brush stroke on a canvas than it is to dip a long blowpipe into a molten furnace, which is hot and sweaty and a little bit frightful, and come out and then wonder what to do with this little bit of glass on the end of this pipe. So the skill – [laughs] – needed to that, and the development to develop those skills is a long process. But it’s a long process to develop good skills to be a painter or to draw well, too. So that aspect is the same, it’s just – it’s practice, it’s all practice.

Certainly, I think sometimes good artists have a more natural talent for drawing – eye-hand coordination. But there’s good eye-hand coordination in glassblowing, too, and it helps to be a little more coordinated and to develop that. And it has nothing to do with strength, really; it has to do with that coordination of – and practice in how to make things. So you develop. I think it just takes time. You could work forever and not draw very well also. [Laughs.]

MR. KARLSTROM: True enough. The glassblowing just is a little bit more intimidating for most. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: It’s much more intimidating, that’s for sure.

MR. KARLSTROM: And –

MR. LIPOFSKY: – much more physical.

MR. KARLSTROM: Mm-hmm. That, of course, is something else we will probably touch on later, is it touches a little bit on this, that the tradition within studio glass, I think, of a kind of boys’ club, a macho thing. I heard about it up at Pilchuck. But let’s hold that.

Last question. And, obviously, I’m very interested in these things that we’re talking about, but we have to leave them in a moment. The last one related to this has to do with the making and the thinking. And I’ve actually read you described, at least by one of the authors in your catalogue, as a conceptual artist: concept, idea, and that precedes, of course, fabrication. And the most extreme example of conceptual art, really it is the idea that’s the work of art, rather than the realization. I don’t know if you want to get into that at all, but again, you, yourself, were described at least once in there as a conceptual artist. I would have to find it for you. I don’t know if you noticed that.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Do you remember where that –

MR. KARLSTROM: No. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: You don’t remember where that was?

Well, I never thought of myself that way. Maybe others could see something relating that. But there is a lot of concept to making things, and there is a lot of ideas floating around on how to produce those ideas. I would have to see exactly what was said to relate –

MR. KARLSTROM: I’ll find it. Yeah –

MR. LIPOFSKY: – to relate – if I could relate to it. I don’t necessarily relate to it, but others see you sometimes differently than you really are, so –

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, when we take a little break, I will try to find it because I think it – it is interesting in regards to what we’ve been discussing and –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Because my ideas, as far as when I have been working with glass, really came out of the factory and where I would produce or make that work; where that work was made. And the ideas came out of what was available to me, what I could do within a certain time limit and a certain situation to make something that I felt satisfactory.

MR. KARLSTROM: You’re quoted in the catalogue to that – in that regard and to that effect, that this context, the framework in which you’re working, specifically at the place – at the particular place, particular time, particular resources available, provided the limits in which – I mean, naturally enough because that’s what you had available. But you seemed – the way you talked about it, you seemed to describe it as a virtue of the situation; a positive aspect that you had to bring your ideas and your own expression to just what was at hand.

MR. LIPOFSKY: That’s true. That’s true. And I think I would have trouble if I had total, unlimited access; that there weren’t any barriers or any parameters to work with. I think I work better with those parameters; that – how big it can be. It’s like finding a problem and solving the problem. I think I have always been interested in problem solving, and I have sort of approached my work as problem solving. I think other artists do that; maybe they admit it, maybe they don’t admit it, but they do set up certain criteria and certain problems for themselves, and then they solve those problems, whether it be spatial problems or color problems or physical problems with – as far as sculpture or balance. That’s, I think, all in creating art. I like that, and that’s what I have always dealt with in my art.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, I think that that’s a pretty substantial introduction to our little list of questions that I think I would like to turn to now, which will actually then bring us back to where we almost were, almost started, in terms of your background.

I realize, Marvin, that much of this information appears – well, elsewhere, certainly, probably in other interviews I would suppose, and certainly in your catalogue in terms of the chronology. But – and so, I guess what I’m suggesting is that we can give kind of short shrift to some of these questions and just deal with a brief answer. But as we move along, if there are any that, what shall we say, resonate for you as opening up areas that you would like to talk about more, feel free; let’s do that.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Sure.

MR. KARLSTROM: And so, first of all, the usual first question: when and where were you born?

MR. LIPOFSKY: I was born in Elgin, Illinois. I grew up in Barrington, a small town about 14 miles away. Elgin had the hospital, so. Barrington was a – is a small town 35 miles northwest of Chicago, along the Northwestern Railroad, so a lot of people commuted into Chicago to work, commuters.

My grandparents – my father’s father settled in Barrington after coming over at the turn of the century from Europe. Both my father’s father and mother were from Latvia, and they were in part of the Jewish migration that came about that time. My grandfather came to Chicago, and he may have had a brother that was in Chicago or somebody, and then they eventually moved further west of the city, and – in the clothing trade. First he had a general store, and then went into the dry goods business and had a small, very small department store in Barrington.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah, there’s a picture of that, even, in your catalogue.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yes.

MR. KARLSTROM: That’s great.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And my mother’s family came from Ukraine and Poland, and she grew up in Xenia, Ohio – which is misspelled in the catalogue.

MR. KARLSTROM: Ohio? What’s the proper spelling?

MR. LIPOFSKY: It’s X-E-N-I-A.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh.

MR. LIPOFSKY: So – and my father was the oldest brother of the family and was in charge of the business, and my mother assisted him in sometimes buying women’s apparel, and so forth. So, I grew up in a retail – around the retail trade. I never was really interested in going into the retail side. I didn’t have that bent in me, although I worked during summers in helping in the store sometimes, selling things. And I loved going to Chicago to the Merchandise Mart and other wholesale establishments with my father to buy – to buy for the store.

MR. KARLSTROM: Are we – I forget, were you the eldest?

MR. LIPOFSKY: I was – I’m the oldest. I have a sister that’s younger than I am.

MR. KARLSTROM: You are the oldest. Uh-huh. And so do you think the family actually had hopes that you would carry on the business? Somehow you got diverted.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Maybe. [Laughs.] Maybe early on, but after a while, they realized that I wasn’t bent on business. I wasn’t a great student in high school, and so I didn’t have anything in school – the only thing in school that really – that I was – was the arts. When I was in junior high school and we had units, my units were always successful because I made interesting covers and illustrated things, copying things from the encyclopedia, and so forth. So, I didn’t draw that well, but I was able – I able to draw and able to do things. And so that was – that sort of saved me in a few classes. I didn’t have a – I didn’t have a strong academic bent.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, but that’s interesting. So you actually, then, quite naturally, and I guess on your own, engaged in what would be viewed as artistic activity.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I gravitated towards –

MR. KARLSTROM: Making images. Making images.

MR. LIPOFSKY: – making – yeah, making images. That and sports were my interests in school.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, yeah. I think I read that you were like everything. I mean, you were –

MR. LIPOFSKY: It was a small high school, so you do everything.

MR. KARLSTROM: Football, basketball, track.

MR. LIPOFSKY: – participated in everything, yeah.

MR. KARLSTROM: God, that’s great. When did you first – when were you first exposed to art in the sense of, like, old master works? Presumably in Chicago, is that right? Did you go and visit the Art Institute there?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Very little. I never really was interested in, quote, “The old masters.” I didn’t relate to it very well. And I – when I read artists talk about how paintings or sculptures related to them, that never happened to me. And I was a little bit bored in the art history classes, and so forth; I really didn’t – couldn’t relate. And also, some of the great paintings – and once in a while – I mean, I’ve been to a lot of the better museums around the world, but I didn’t always relate that strongly to the paintings, although I looked; I looked and I observed. If there was an opportunity, I would go to the museum or I would see a painting or an artist. But there wasn’t anything that was really strong that I said – and I’ve heard people say that they walked into a museum and they saw this painting and their life changed. That never happened to me. [Laughs.]

There was – the only one thing that was close to that, and now I don’t remember it that well, but I remember it. When I was an undergraduate and I spent five years as an undergraduate, I went to –

[END TAPE 1 SIDE A.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: – visit the Art Institute in Chicago, and I was in a ceramics class taught by David Shaner, and it was a small class, and he wanted us to throw pots, and he was to teach people how to make – work on the wheel. And I wanted to use my – hand-build things of clay, make sculptural things. And I went up there with – I don’t even remember who I was with, and when I walked into the foyer of the museum, there were two huge ceramic pieces on display. And I looked at them, and I said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to do;” that’s what I related immediately.

MR. KARLSTROM: What were they? Do you remember what they were?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Sure.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. And I came back to the school, and I mentioned I’d done this, and the people at the school who I talked to knew who the people were. It was by Peter Voulkos and John Mason, the two – and then I found out that Pete Voulkos had been to the school for a workshop, but because I was in industrial design, I didn’t – I was spending more time sort of in design than I was in – in some of the other studios. So I – I missed that because I only – I only took one ceramics class. I took a lot of different things because I was interested in doing a lot of different things, and that related to me.

And so, when I went to graduate school, that’s what I wanted to make. It justified what I had been trying to do on a smaller scale in this ceramics class. I said, that’s it. I have been trying to do that, and I didn’t realize you could make things so large, and I didn’t realize – but that’s what I – and from then on, I looked in some of the magazines, and I saw pictures of what they were doing, and then I knew their names, and so forth, and that’s –

MR. KARLSTROM: And then eventually you met them.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And then eventually – and actually, when I started teaching – I had met Pete Voulkos in New York at the first World Congress of Craftsmen [1964], when I was hired to teach at Berkeley, he was on sabbatical. And so he –

MR. KARLSTROM: So he was already on faculty there?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, he was on faculty in the design department, and his replacement was John Mason. So the first semester at Berkeley I spent with John Mason, and John was quite a nice guy, and Pete was down in the studio, so I didn’t see too much of him. You had to go down there to see him; rarely did he come in. And I think he got – because we moved into a brand new building, so John had the task of installing all the kilns and equipment and getting things ready, and Pete was down making art in his studio.

MR. KARLSTROM: So you would – you were in the right place, then. You found yourself right in contact with these –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I know, by –

MR. KARLSTROM: – influential –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Totally by accident.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah. Back to where you saw – as an undergraduate, you encountered these marvelous, sort of large-scale ceramics, sculptures. And did I understand you correctly? Was that at the museum, then? Was that a museum show?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, that was at the Art Institute in Chicago that I saw – that I first saw them.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay. And that’s quite interesting because that must have been fairly early.

MR. LIPOFSKY: That had to be in the early –

MR. KARLSTROM: ‘59, or –

MR. LIPOFKSY: – ‘60s. No, I think it was in the early ‘60s.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay, because –

MR. KIPOFSKY: Maybe ‘60, ‘61.

MR. KARLSTROM: It seems kind of –

MR. LIPOFSKY: It could have been ‘59. Well, I don’t think it was ‘59.

MR. KARLSTROM: That seems kind of advanced, in terms of –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I should ask, yeah. I should try to find out what was being shown there. I don’t remember anything else, but I remember that there were two sculptures at the Art Institute.

MR. KARLSTROM: So maybe it was like a contemporary show?

MR. LIPOFSKY: If it was a show, or it could have been part of their collection at that time, too. I don’t remember what it – what it was.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, how fortuitous for you. Last little part of that question – I’m kind of getting a feeling of where your interests were, and if I understood you correctly, there wasn’t much that you saw in museums that sort of motivated you, that you identified –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I did look at things. I did look, and I looked at sculpture and so forth, and I think those early years, I think Marino Marini was interesting to me. Giacometti, he was interesting. Miró’s sculptures were interesting to me. So I did see things, but as far as being related – now, I must say also that when I was an undergraduate, I took every sculpture class, and so I taught myself how to weld, more or less. And I also was involved with the first group of students to cast – use the casting facilities at the university, and I did some casting in aluminum. I remember making a 300-pound plaster woman, abstract, sort of Marini-like.

MR. KARLSTROM: [Laughs.] How much? Three hundred?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. It was I just kept using plaster, and it got pretty big.

MR. KARLSTROM: That’s a heavy date, isn’t it? [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: It got a little bit away from me. So those are those. And then I welded – I did a lot of welding, welding steel, rebar and little pieces of steel that I used to pick up that other people cut off of their sculptures. And I would go around and just pick up the junk that they threw away and use it in my sculptures. And then, I was welding and – but I wasn’t in the course, and I would just use the shop. And one of the instructors, Roger Majorowitz, the sculptor – a new sculptor who came there asking if I – what class I was in. And I said that I wasn’t in a class, and he threw me out of the welding shop. [Laughs.] But – and I was using – so I just – this hands-on making things was something that I liked to do.

MR. KARLSTROM: I wonder – and we’re moving right along, as we should be, because we’re talking about your education, focused on developing a sense of your self and some direction as an artist – but I’m wondering if the fact – it sounds as if you, at that point, didn’t think of yourself necessarily as participating, at that point, in this big sweep, this range of art history. A lot of artists, especially painters, I think –

MR. LIPOFSKY: That could be true, yeah.

MR. KARLSTROM: – think of themselves – and sometimes, it’s a little bit intimidating for them, so they say that they’re – they are carrying on this tradition, mainly of Western European art.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, maybe because I came out of industrial design, and I was making this transition – I was switching over without my knowing it, I was just doing it – that I didn’t have this burden on me; and – although I took the art history classes – what was required of me – I didn’t have – I didn’t have a burden. And I took a few painting classes, which were required. I didn’t paint that well; I mean, I would judge myself according to other people in the class, and they were always much better than I was. So –

MR. KARLSTROM: That’s motivation to switch, isn’t it? [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. So – and that’s in – in design, that’s why I sort of moved out of design, too, because I saw that the other people that were very – the successful ones, and I didn’t approach what they were doing, although I had ideas. I had ideas, and it was a good experience. The design was good – was a good experience for me. It was problem solving, something that I liked to do, and I enjoyed most of it; I think I liked that challenge. So the – it sort of just – I sort of just developed, I think, learning about how to weld, learning about how to cast aluminum and so forth. Then I did other things with those materials. So I learned about a lot of different materials, learned how to do – how to approach things.

MR. KARLSTROM: So do you think – and this leads us to I guess a pretty big question, and of course, we know some of the answer by, again, reading in your catalogue, and it’s not exactly a dark secret how you became involved in glass. But I’m just wondering if this sense of not – well, to phrase this a little bit differently, there’s this lack of sort of a personal connection between you and what you were doing, and this historical sweep. Would this have perhaps made you more open – more open to the possibility of other media – that you could really chart your own expression and basically choose whatever was there, what seemed to –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. I think when I look back in – yes, I think that was very true. I think you hit at that, was that I didn’t have – I didn’t have any prejudices at that time about what I was doing. And I was – I was more or less motivated – self-motivated to learn new things and to try new things, and that was good. I didn’t get caught into, I’m a painter, and that’s all I do is paint, and I go to the studio and paint, and I don’t look at anything else outside of that. I was – I had many interests, and that – that’s been true throughout.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah, well, it seems to me, from what I know about you, you’re most willing to – if you were to pick up those things that interest you and incorporate them into your work – which also reminds me of somebody else, a friend of yours – rest in peace – old Italo Scanga, who was very much – I would describe his way of working as this almost scavenging, finding things and incorporating them.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, that’s how I met Italo. When I came to the University of Wisconsin, I think it was in the evening I walked into the sculpture studio, and there was a welding shop, and I was going to start make things because I had been interested in welding. And I walked over toward a pile of metal in the corner. And actually, I wasn’t going towards that metal, but there was some other little pieces cut off and as I started going over towards that metal, I heard this voice behind me says, “Don’t touch that; that’s mine!”

MR. KARLSTROM: [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: And I turned around, and there was this little, short guy yelling, and it turned out to be Italo Scanga. He used the welding studio to make his work at that time. He was welding, and that was all his metal over there, and he was keeping his territory. [Laughs.] And so, Italo yelled at me, and I – yeah, but I wasn’t really going after his – [laughs] – his metal, but just, I was looking at it and seeing what was going on. I was brand new and investigating this studio. So he taught for two years while I was in graduate school.

MR. KARLSTROM: And it’s interesting that he also has had a very close connection with Dale Chihuly, another prominent colleague.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. Well, I don’t think – Italo didn’t have any interest in the glass when he was at Wisconsin.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, really?

MR. LIPOFSKY: But that all happened later. And then he did teach at Rhode Island. You know, I think, primarily, it was that he was invited into the studios where he – and invited to the Pilchuck school, where he could work and do his things and had people make things. I think the first things that I saw of his in the glass were he had people make various open vases where he put strong scents of food. And I can’t remember the name of the series that he did, but there were foods and incense and things in these vases, and he used the glass as containers. Actually, they were containers, but I think they made them for him at the Rhode Island School of Design, if I’m not mistaken.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, would you describe him as one of the artists who had some kind of influence on you?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, yes. Yeah, I think it was his personality as the – he was sort of a rebel at the school, and being from Calabria and being sort of a rebellious sculptor, he was quite a character. Yeah, watching him work, seeing his personality and his intensity with his work, that was important, too. So it was just being around him a little bit, although I wasn’t directly a student of his, but – because I was sort of under the auspices of the head of the sculpture department, Leo Steppat, and – actually there are three sculptors that taught there.

MR. KARLSTROM: Now, this is Wisconsin.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin at Madison. There was Marjorie Kreilick, and who – I was her assistant when I first got there, and then Italo and then Leo Steppat taught sculpture classes. But yeah, I think – I think he was – it was an important person to know. And then as I left, and I followed his work, and I think his work was always changing and very interesting. I have always liked his work, what he has done, and how he has approached things, and he was a man of many ideas.

MR. KARLSTROM: There are three – Leo Steppat, right?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yes.

MR. KARLSTROM: And Marjorie, what was –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Kreilick was her name. Leo Steppat was Viennese, and he had quite a negative approach to teaching. I mean, he taught – he never said anything nice about anything. He always said it was – there was something wrong, and he pushed people in that aspect.

Marge Kreilick – I didn’t know her work very well. She taught beginning sculpture and so forth. She was on the faculty, but I didn’t relate – or I didn’t know what she did, actually; I never saw much. I think she had worked with some mosaics and some stone, but I didn’t see very much of her work.

And then Leo Steppat I saw because he had a small studio off the sculpture studio, and he always – we were – if there’s any sculpture show, you’re always in competition with your instructors. That was quite interesting. There were some things that if you entered on the Wisconsin painting and sculpture show, they were there right there with their big sculptures and so forth.

MR. KARLSTROM: Now had you – and I have already forgotten from your – from the chronology – had you been introduced to glass by this time?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, my –

MR. KARLSTROM: Did that happen in undergraduate or –

MR. LIPOFSKY: No, actually, I – no, no, no. This was at the University of Wisconsin. The story there is that I went to the University of Wisconsin. I was introduced to Wisconsin by a professor at the University of Illinois. I was in my fifth year and not wanting to be drafted. I sort of thought that maybe if I took some education classes – I heard that if you were a teacher, that you wouldn’t have to serve in the Army, although I had taken two years of ROTC, marched around, did everything properly.

I wasn’t interested in serving, so my – I took a class in education – in art education – and it was in a seminar. And the professor there, Dr. [Harold A.] Schultz, mentioned something. He saw my frustration and he saw that I wasn’t really geared to being a school teacher in art or anything, so he said he’d just been at a seminar or something in Madison for education, and he thought that I should look into the school. He thought the school was interesting and had a lot of different things to do there, that I should consider graduate school, so I applied to graduate school. It’s the only school I applied to.

MR. KARLSTROM: Good thing you got in.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Then I got in. Yeah, good thing I got in. It was on his recommendation. Harold Schultz was his name, so he helped. So my first class – I had been to Europe that summer, and I had been to Murano. I had walked by the glass studios but never paid any attention to them blowing glass. My first class that I – was a ceramics class, and – because I wanted – I went there with the intention of making ceramic sculpture. And I walked into the class. There were a few students, half a dozen students standing around. There was a little short guy who seemed to be the professor, and as soon as I walked in, he said, “Who are you?” And I didn’t answer, and he said, “Are you married?” And I didn’t answer. And then he said to the girls in the class, “I know you’re all here to get your Mrs. degree, and if you learn how to make good soup, you can find a husband; that’s how my wife got me: she made good soup.” And that was my introduction to Harvey Littleton.

Then he said, “Do you want to blow glass?” And I said, “I have never heard of it.” And he was just at that moment gathering – and these were all students who had been with him before, I was the only new student in that group – gathering together to blow glass for the very first time in the United States. He had done his two workshops in Toledo that summer, and – prior to that, reintroduced – they had built a little furnace, they introduced glass. And then he had come back home, and in his garage built a furnace and started blowing glass that summer. So, I eventually became part of that group. Everybody in the class were part of the group. Even though we were in the ceramics class, he wanted us all to come out to his farm, and we each got a day out at his farm to blow glass. I actually did not officially sign up for the class because I said, “Well, I want to make sculpture;” I’m not, you know – [laughs] – I didn’t feel I could do that. But I went out several times with one of the other students, Tom Malone, and we would go out there and blow glass, and I would assist him and do things with him. And then Tom worked for Harvey. He would – Harvey made clay in his barn, and he – pug mill – and so Tom pugged the clay and bagged it up, and I would help him do that once in a while and hang out a little bit as it got dark. And then Harvey’s wife, Bess, would say “Oh, you – have – you boys haven’t eaten dinner yet, why don’t you come in and join the family?” So we would go in, and so it was a way of getting dinner –

MR. KARLSTROM: You liked that. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: – and helping. Yeah, and that was a good – that was – [laughs] – that was a way of doing – so we did that a few times, too. So that’s when I started working in glass with Harvey. The second semester, they procured a warehouse near the campus, and that’s where they built a studio.

MR. KARLSTROM: It’s interesting – boy, this is amazing; we’re very close to using up this whole disc. This is good. But there’s time for one related question here. You said that you wanted to stay in the sculpture area and you were interested in ceramic sculpture –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Right.

MR. KARLSTROM: – I believe, at that time. And so, you didn’t enroll in the glass, which suggests that that –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Officially, I didn’t enroll.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah. But that suggests that you didn’t, at that point, yet see glass as a viable medium for creating sculpture.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, I don’t think anybody did. I don’t think anybody had an idea because we – they were just barely – Harvey gave one demonstration, and then everybody just worked. And he didn’t pay much attention to them, just came in to check out things, and everybody worked on their own. So we didn’t have much skill at the first, so if you don’t have much skill, you can’t realize anything –

MR. KARLSTROM: You can’t imagine the potential.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, you can’t realize anything. And that’s – as it – it took a while to build some ability up just to make something, so everybody just made a little vase or a paperweight. I mean, I don’t know if they were intentionally making paperweights, but it came out to be like a paperweight or a little blown something in the very beginning. I was there when they had the first annealing, when they annealed the glass the first time, they took it out of the oven, and you couldn’t tell the difference between who made what. Everybody was arguing about that they made that, but they all looked alike. But that was the – that was the very, very first; it was without any skills whatsoever, and not very much knowledge because Harvey didn’t know a great deal about glass techniques. He was just barely teaching himself, and so the students were just kind of a step behind him because he – what he gave to us really wasn’t very much, but it was just enough to get started.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, let’s take a little break now, if we may.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Okay.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay, and this is ending disc one.

[Audio break.]

MR. KARLSTROM: Continuing this interview session one with Marvin Lipofsky on July 30, 2003. And this is Paul Karlstrom conducting the interview, and this is disc number two, track one; and the previous disc was one uninterrupted track. I don’t think we necessarily need to do that again.

But anyway, Marvin, we were again working from this useful list as kind of a guide through your career. We had been talking about your education, the beginning of you finding your medium, getting involved in glass, and I would like to ask you at this point if – in terms of education, are you – well, you’re an educator. I mean, you have been a teacher and you have set up programs at least in two places that I know of, at [University of California] Berkeley and CCAC [California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California]. But you are an educator and you have had university experience, and also – we will talk about it in a moment – a connection with various special arts schools, even special crafts schools. And how do you feel about that, in terms of training – for an artist, for a craftsperson, or whatever we want to say – university training in contrast to strictly focused art school or crafts?

MR. LIPOFSKY: I feel fairly strong that the college/university education is important, and I think even more important than just training in your media, I think, because of all the other things it brings into it. First, while – my education were both at two large universities – Big 10, Midwest universities; University of Illinois [Urbana] and University of Wisconsin [Madison] – and one thing I appreciated was that, along with all the academics and what I was doing, there was also a cultural program. As an undergraduate, they had a great film program, that they would on the weekends show films in a big auditorium, old films. There were – I remember it was an era of a lot of folk music; and it was independent from the school, but there were – I think the YMCA or the YWCA had a program for a lot of folk singers to come to the campus, et cetera, all the way – it was just – that was important. At Wisconsin also that was very important. We’re seeing films and we would do that quite frequently. So I think that’s a – it was an important education.

Teaching at Berkeley and for myself, eating at the faculty club and listening to the conversations standing in line at the cafeteria and realizing that – not understanding what people were talking about, and with all the Nobel Prize winners and the physicists and the chemists and what have you, it was quite interesting. And also the students: I had students from other disciplines. I always like to take students from other disciplines. One was a doctoral candidate in chemistry, and so I have always learned things from them. The student from chemistry taught me how to mirror things; use silver mirroring, which I used in my work. And then I had a fellow who was a professor who taught me about electroplating in the glass – copper plating on the glass. He came in and wanted to do some things and he was an electrical engineer. So this exchange and this – the people who were around there – it was quite exciting, and I think the education was fantastic. Also, teaching in the College of Environmental Design with architects, city planners, landscape architects, was very good, too, and some of those students came into the glass studio and worked with us. So that was always – you had a lot of other people with many divergent interests and many things to bring, and I thought that that diversity was just incredible.

It lacked a little bit of that when I taught at CCAC, at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Well, the students were all geared just toward art, and they didn’t – although they did bring some skills with them, they didn’t have what the university offered. There wasn’t any difference in the ability of the students, as far as art goes, but they didn’t have some of the academic skills that were – I thought were fairly important. It was quite interesting; the university just offered more. Of course, it would offer more than a private art school. But I liked that university atmosphere. The CCAC was a good experience also, but the university atmosphere just offered much more than what a private art school could.

MR. KARLSTROM: What about ideas being brought to – to the craft, to the making of art? Obviously, in CCAC or in the San Francisco Art Institute or any of these schools, it’s – you’re there for a very specific reason. You’re not – it’s not a general education, although there are some general requirements and all that, I know. But I’m just wondering if what you’re saying is – or acknowledging or recognizing is that at Berkeley and places like that, you’re put into the middle of this mix of ideas, and to the extent you want to draw from them – if you don’t take courses, you’re rubbing elbows with, like you said, with the Nobel laureates in the line at lunch in the Faculty Club or whatever. Did you – do you feel that that really makes a difference? Not necessarily what you – like your student or a professor helping you develop the techniques that are useful for your work, but just the richness – the atmosphere, the environment – intellectual –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. I think the richness was very important. And there the total development of an individual, the university offered quite a bit more, but I found students with ideas in both places. That – the creativity didn’t – wasn’t at one place or another. There was a different – a little different attitude because the students had to take so many more academics at the university. Also, some couldn’t devote as much time to their artwork as they did at the private art school. But still, the ideas flowed in both places, and they both added up to be good schools, and I think the art school atmosphere was important. A number of students who attended the art school had been to universities or other college before, too, so they brought something with them; they weren’t totally just art students, so there was a little exchange of both – in both. But I liked the academic atmosphere quite a bit. It had its backside. In some respects, it was much more conservative, and the creativity in general wasn’t at the university because the other faculty in the other departments – there was a lot of infighting, and I had some of the least creative people as administrators and department chairmen that I have ever run across. I was criticized –

MR. KARLSTROM: I’m sure you don’t want to name them. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: You know, well, I was criticized for teaching – I taught some design classes, beginning design, at Berkeley, and I did things with my students that there were people criticizing me for doing, and yet, within a couple years, the things that my students were doing were happening in art or happening in design or happening in advertising, and it was – I found that they were quite limited in their ability to see a larger picture. But that was primarily on an administrative level; it wasn’t so much on the other – sometimes the other faculty, too, but the art school was more no holds barred.

MR. KARLSTROM: Did you see a difference at CCAC, the art school – a difference between the students who were basically just going directly, like, from high school into art school and those who had done undergraduate elsewhere and came in more on a graduate program – I guess?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, that’s a little hard. I think some of the students that just came directly from high school were fairly talented, but they didn’t have a lot of the experiences that you would get, and I think the experience – it’s maturity and experience to bring with you to solve problems, to do your work, to be able to concentrate on what you were doing.

And so it took some time for some of the younger students to become accustomed to going to school and to – I always felt and I always told my students that they weren’t in high school anymore and nobody was going to tell them what to do. Now it was up to them to make their own program, to develop – that I wasn’t there to teach them, but I was there to guide them and to help them, and that this thing that someone taught you and you listened to your instructor and you just followed what your instructor told you to do, it wasn’t the same anymore, that they had to motivate themselves. And maybe that was one of their problems, is how did they motivate themselves to continue doing things, and how did they achieve some maturity within – in the arts, and that takes some time.

It takes some development on their own, although I always tried to guide them and I put up all the information that I had available, that I ever found; I had written information on the walls of the studio, and I created files – a file cabinet with files for techniques and technical information, and those who were motivated could sit, open up that file, and read everything that I had available to me. And anybody who walked in the studio could read what we – on the – I would tell people, just read the walls, and we had papers and technical guidelines and so forth stapled up, and they could read it, and a lot of people did. And it saved a lot of time as far as trying to explain everything step by step, and once they had – they read something and then had a question, they were then into it, rather than just have the teacher tell them what to do. And so, that was a little bit – part of how I approach teaching.

MR. KARLSTROM: You know, beyond the technical aspects, or perhaps you would say focus on form and formal issues, I’m wondering if the undergraduate students, those who came fresh from high school, maybe – perhaps appreciate it less than their elders, graduate students – perhaps some of the implications of the work. And I’m thinking, again, beyond aesthetic or formal concerns, but the implications of trying something new and what it could mean, again, within a stream of ideas. You know, is thinking about art – you know what I mean?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, that’s a little – but I can’t think back and I never paid close attention to that. But my graduate students – I had graduate students, and they were quite integrated within the glass program at CCAC, and they had responsibilities, and they did things there that were related to the other students.

We also had sort of a team effort. When people had their working times, they – they didn’t just work by themselves, but we always assigned a younger person to work with them, to help them, so that the younger person would learn from the older person, and then the younger person could assist; a little bit of it like an apprenticeship. So I tried to integrate the new people with the older people, and those who took advantage of it learned faster and learned quite a bit. So we also had – I also planned a seminar where all the students met. And I would show slides, we would talk and have discussions, and so forth. And when I traveled, I would bring back slides and show the students, things that I had seen and people I had met and objects I had observed, and so forth. So this was sort of like – the glass program wasn’t just a class or two; it was an integrated – it was a family affair, so we all tried to work together.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, you mentioned apprentice, the idea of apprenticeship, which of course, in the crafts and in the trade, has been very important for a long, long time, and certainly in our history; back in the Renaissance, this was the way it was done, you had an apprenticeship situation. But you, yourself, in terms of studio glass, it seems to me had to kind of make your own way.

MR. LIPOFSKY: True.

MR. KARLSTROM: And my question is, do you feel you in any way served an apprenticeship? Was there anybody that you would describe as playing that mentor role, specifically in terms, I guess, of glass to you?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, not really because we were all quite independent. You know, one of the problems with glass – in a painting class, everybody has their own painting and their own easel. In the glass class, everybody has to take turns; only so many people could work at a time, using the furnace. We had two people working at a time with a second person, so there would be four people, but the others could assist. But that was that limitation; everybody had their own schedule. We divided from 8:00 to midnight, and everybody had two hours to work throughout the day, or more – I forgot the schedule now. But anyway, they had their period of time, and it had to be divided up if they wanted to work with the furnace, the glassblowing. If they wanted to work other ways with glass, they had more time and they were freer to do it, but we had to schedule that thing so that everybody accomplished something. Not that everybody blew glass – they did some other things, too – but the majority of the students wanted to use the glass furnace. So it was limited in that respect, that the classes couldn’t be just too large because we had a limit of how many people could use the facilities.

MR. KARLSTROM: So you really didn’t have the opportunity to apprentice in any usual understanding of the term?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Not at all, not at all. And as I said before, that Harvey’s teaching was to give one demonstration and then you were off on your own, and if we saw him working, maybe we would learn something from him. But we more or less approached it on our own and what we could – what we could see from other people, which led me, when I started teaching myself, to seek more information and more education, and I turned towards Europe and started to go to Europe to learn about glass because that’s really where it all came from. And started to make my contacts there, indirectly learn about glass, and then bring it back to the students. I was educating myself, but I was also bringing it back for my teaching because that was a large part of my life at that time.

MR. KARLSTROM: So that really – I guess what marked the beginning, with a very specific goal in mind of a long career of traveling abroad to do work and to participate in –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Right.

MR. KARLSTROM: – conferences and to be a visiting artist.

MR. LIPOFSKY: So, part of my philosophy was that I didn’t restrict myself just to the classroom. If I had an opportunity to go someplace, for a short period of time of course, to Europe or to somewhere, I went, even if it was during the school year because I knew that what I would bring back would be more than if I sat there in the classroom for two hours or three hours – the students would learn much more from my experience of going some other – to give a lecture or a workshop or – so, I didn’t go to Europe so much because that was mostly in the summertime. But if I had to go someplace, I would bring back lots of information and I would share things with the students that I had experienced, and therefore they got much more educationally than if we were just sitting there, waiting for them in the classroom.

MR. KARLSTROM: Let me pose two of the questions from our list as one because it follows exactly from what we’re talking about, and that’s where you went elsewhere to learn more, perhaps in interacting with colleagues or master glass – I mean, and in this country, I don’t think there were to the same extent as in Europe and abroad, these individuals who operated within a long tradition of glassblowing and glass – working with glass.

But it seems to me there must have been two main venues for you. One would perhaps be some of the crafts schools; you know, on here it mentions Penland [Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina], Haystack [Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine] – I think you have taught there or participated there – Pilchuck, of course.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, we were before all of the other schools. Because I had this wider aspect, this wider interest, I started what’s called the Great California Glass Symposium [1968–1972 at UC Berkeley and 1968–1987 at CCAC]. I was a one-person glass program, a one-teacher, and I wanted to get more information and more education out to the students. So we started inviting people to come into the school to demonstrate and lecture and relate to the students. The very first symposium was with Harvey Littleton and Sybren Valkema. Sybren Valkema was from Amsterdam, taught at the Rietveld Academy. And I invited not just my students, but anyone else interested, other schools and so forth, to come in and participate, and so they demonstrated and did various things, and gave a lecture.

[END TAPE 1 SIDE B.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: I was teaching at both schools at that time, and I thought that if I asked both schools for a little bit of money, I would get enough money to invite them to come out there. Sybren Valkema was visiting Harvey Littleton in Madison, so he was available. And both schools gave me a little bit of money so I was able to give them some money to come out to the school. And that started this program. And we’ve had as many – it’s, well, close to 200 people come to watch on occasion.

MR. KARLSTROM: You mean nationally, from –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, no, not – mostly the West Coast. People came from Seattle sometimes, people came from Southern California, and certainly all the Bay Area. The students who went out to start their own studios, people from other schools came down there and we participated. And I think we had over 100 artists over the years participate in the Great California Glass Symposium, it was highly successful.

Of course, we had a big dinner where we cooked it in the studio, and the people gave their lectures. And the demonstrations went on for a couple days sometimes. And people learned a lot of techniques, and a lot on how people worked, and philosophy and what have you. And most of the major people had been guests at one time or another.

MR. KARLSTROM: So you had fun?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. As well as a number of European people.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, from what you describe, it sounds like you were basically creating, then, a sense of community around glass.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Right. It became a community. And people told me later that they came and saw someone work and that opened their eyes or that influenced them for something that they did later on. And to me that was very exciting and something that I had always tried to do, to kind of make this community. I sort of lived within it myself because I traveled and went to other places and felt that these people in Europe and Asia were part of the glass community.

MR. KARLSTROM: Now, you had – it seems to me this is from fairly early on – an unusual sort of international – global we call it now – global perspective, but –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, it just so happened. Right.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah, and it also sounds as if, though, it came quite naturally, because you were, as you describe it, seeking learning; seeking information and learning more and more.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Right. Right, that’s true.

MR. KARLSTROM: And so this, then, brings me back again to these other schools which – I mean, Pilchuck started [1971] after you were established, well afterward.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, yes.

MR. KARLSTROM: And you went there. But it sounds to me – and then, I think you taught at Haystack. Isn’t that right, or –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I’ve taught at Haystack. I didn’t teach at Penland.

MR. KARLSTROM: Uh-huh.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I actually was supposed to lecture at Penland one year, and they had a big electrical storm and knocked all the electricity out at the school. And right when I was to talk, so I never got to show my slides. I left the next morning with Harvey Littleton to attend a conference. And so I’ve never lectured at Pilchuck – I mean at Penland. But I’ve been there a number of times.

MR. KARLSTROM: But so, for you – it’s kind of beside the point in terms of what you would get from – you were ahead of the curve, it would seem to me, when you had occasion to visit these places. They, I gather, didn’t play, really, any great role in your own development as a glass sculptor, as a studio glass sculptor.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, I always learned something. There was always something to glean out of wherever I was.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay, anything specific in connection with those schools?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Everybody was experimenting and trying and so forth. No, I guess we were sort of open – well, California was a lot freer than other parts of the country. I mean, this California spirit, the weather, so forth. The East Coast was always a little bit more conservative in some respects. We were just very free out here. And we brought that experience – that – to throw that experience out around the country.

And a lot of people knew what we were doing, and they would pay attention to what we did. We also made little papers – the students put together the information that the visiting artist had and we documented the symposiums and sent that around to people, whatever technical things they brought forth. And that was shared with everyone else.

I think we influenced quite a number of schools and other glass programs. I don’t know if they all admit it, but we were doing things and then other people picked up the ball and started doing things. We invited the first Italian master to the United States, Gianni Toso. He was the first Italian master who came and shared some of his experiences with us.

MR. KARLSTROM: This was at CCAC?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Came to CCAC, and then he went to two or three other schools, because he was visiting the States. I had met him and became friendly with him. And he showed the Italian techniques.

The Pilchuck School thought that they had cornered the Italian market, but actually, the first person was Gianni Toso that came to the States. They just have better publicity than I do.

MR. KARLSTROM: As an aside, I noticed again in the catalog, which is such a wonderful resource to have at this moment – it’s helpful for me to do this interview, of course – but I was at the Pilchuck for the 25th anniversary, and I think you were there. Did you go to the –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, I went to the anniversary. Yes, I did.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah. And I was sort of an outsider that was invited in, which was very nice. And I actually think I briefly met you, just sort of personal, very, very briefly and –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Could have been.

MR. KARLSTROM: But I remember a lot of noise was being made around demonstrations by Dante Marioni.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Right.

MR. KARLSTROM: And again, just as an aside, I’m curious to know – this gets into colleagues – I think – I don’t know how old he is; I think he’s younger than you.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Considerably, yeah. I remember when he was just a kid.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. I was teaching already. I think in the beginning he had some interest of coming over. He grew up in Mill Valley.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, did he?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. And his father, Paul – I actually met his father, Paul first, I walked into a gallery in San Francisco – I heard they had a glass show – and it was panels of stained glass. And the artist happened to be there, and it was Paul Marioni. And his work was very interesting at that time and very creative. And we met. And I said, “Well, why don’t you come over to CCAC, and if you want to blow glass or do anything in hot glass,” and he came right over. And he started working there, here and there. And I said, “Sure, the students” – I said, “The students would be happy to show you anything, and if you want to work” – and that was when he first started to blow glass.

And before he moved to Seattle with his family, Dante had been – yeah, he was a kid – had been over here once or twice. And I remember him. Then when he got to Seattle, Dante became quite immersed in the whole glass world up there, and that became his life – that’s where he developed.

MR. KARLSTROM: Mm-hmm. And so, he was then, presumably, interacting with Chihuly –

MR. LIPOFSKY: There’s a lot of glass people up in Seattle – yeah, there were quite a number of people that worked at glass studios.

MR. KARLSTROM: I mean, it’s interesting. This isn’t – I guess this is very much to the point in terms of community. I don’t pretend to understand this fully, but I do know, and I’ve heard from various ones that there, again, was this – it was like a club, like a boy’s club, or it’s often referred to that way, kind of macho –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, no, people refer to it as a boy’s club, but – I’ve tried to tell this to a number of people – but some of the first people who had studios were women, in Europe especially. The first private studio in Holland was a woman. The first private studio in Sweden was a woman. Also in England, one of the – earlier studios in England, was another woman and her husband. Women have been prominent, it was kind of macho; there were a lot of men in it. That’s just mainly because the women weren’t quite so interested in the beginning, and it was a little bit kind of restricted. Like anything, men were – did the heavy work and so forth. But there were women involved from the very beginning. There weren’t as many and the men dominated, that’s rather true, but they weren’t kept out.

Now, I’ve heard stories – students have said, “I was a student and my teacher told me that women can’t do this,” and I think, well, those were isolated. They did happen, but those were isolated. And there were a number of pretty stupid people teaching who voiced a very unpopular and an untrue situation.

But people have brought this up, it didn’t happen at CCAC, it didn’t happen at the University of California – both my assistants for a number of years were women at both schools, and it wasn’t that way. My first class when I started teaching at Berkeley in 1964 were six girls. And I say “girls” because they just were – one happened to be a graduate student, but the rest of them had no experiences; they were from the – at that time, the department was the Decorative Arts Department until that first semester and then it changed into the Department of Design. And I built our studio with these six girls. I was supposed to get an assistant but the person didn’t show up. And that was my first class, and we made do with who was there. They had no skills. They didn’t weld, they didn’t know anything about electricity, didn’t know how to build furnaces or whatever, but we put it all together. The second semester I got a little more help, but we put everything together with that six.

So – but a lot of people – this is from other places – didn’t know about this. And I think that that was mostly an East Coast/Midwest concept that –

MR. KARLSTROM: It was a guy thing.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And there were women when I was a graduate student, too. But only one of them continued in glass. Actually, I’m the only one from the very first year that continued – and even the second year – that continued in glass. A couple of students dabbled in it for a short period of time, but they never continued. But one woman, Pat Esch built a glass studio in Colorado and worked for a few years.

So you know, it’s the idea that people have in their head. And for some respects, there was a little bit of truth in that. But it wasn’t as staunch and strict as most people think it was. And those were isolated incidents that – and unfortunate incidents.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, and this, of course, has to do with maybe a bigger issue of gender and race and ethnicity within a movement, and it’s actually difficult – it’s difficult to talk about, because there’s no reason to separate any one expression –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, in the beginning –

MR. KARLSTROM: – of glass from the broader picture of how things were.

MR. LIPOFSKY: The men once were –

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: In the beginning, the men were stronger and bigger and probably louder – [laughs] – and more boastful, and so that was sort of a natural occurrence. But there were women there and women continue to be glass artists.

MR. KARLSTROM: So it wasn’t exclusive by –

MR. LIPOFSKY: It wasn’t exclusive, but the women didn’t take the forefront in the early years. They didn’t step out, and maybe rightfully so. Maybe some of them – I think some of them were doing other things, and doing them better. [Laughs.]

MR. KARLSTROM: Mm-hmm. Who’s the famous glass artist who’s disabled up at Pilchuck? I can’t remember her name. She’s quite a – you know, prominent. She was actually there in a wheelchair –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, you mean Ginny Ruffner.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, that happened after she had worked in glass.

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah. Yeah, but – right. I mean, I didn’t know when that happened, but she seemed to be much – people had, presumably, not just from the fact she’s disabled but her involvement with –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, she had been in a car accident. And I visited Ginny when she was living in Atlanta, and she was a professional lamp worker. She worked for the Fräbel Glass Studios, even though she had had an MFA from University of Georgia in painting. She was a painter. But she worked making lamp work, making torch work, and that’s where her expertise was. I gave her her first workshop.

MR. KARLSTROM: Really?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Somewhat introduced her to the other glass world. She then went off to – she wasn’t at that point doing much of her individual work. She was – she had a job. Then she went off to Penland to do a workshop there. And then that started really her career in making things in glass.

MR. KARLSTROM: But she goes back – I don’t know how old she is or anything like that, but she goes back a bit, anyway, with –

MR. LIPOFSKY: No, not that far. Not that far. She’s not one of the earlier people. But I also gave Dante Marioni his first workshop at the Pilchuck School. I happened to be teaching there, and invited Dante and his friend Preston Singletary to come up and demonstrate for my class. And that was the first workshop that Dante did. Yeah, he was quite good. At that time he was very good. He had very good skill.

MR. KARLSTROM: Is he the cousin or nephew or what of Tom Marioni?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. No, no, Tom’s his uncle. There are four brothers – three brothers? – three brothers: Tom, Paul and Joe. Three brothers. And that’s his uncle. I’ve met all three brothers. Joe’s the painter, Tom is a conceptual artist, and Paul is Dante’s father and a glass artist in his own right.

MR. KARLSTROM: Interesting family, huh?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. It was quite interesting.

MR. KARLSTROM: One of the things that – I hesitate to even bring it up because it’s so important in your career – we mentioned it in the very beginning – your travels, really, kind of around the world, and your involvement with – your international involvement. And I’m not sure if we want to – you might want to save this, like a separate topic, unless you’re in the mood. But let me – either way, let me ask you a question that kind of comes out of that. And in some ways, I realize – again, since you were so much at the beginning of the studio glass movement, I don’t know that you can really talk so much about a tradition, or at least specifically in terms of studio glass. But the question is this: Do you think of yourself as an internationalist, as part of an international tradition or movement, or do you think of studio glass as specifically an American phenomenon?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Let’s take a break and I’ll answer.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay.

[Audio break.]

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Okay. The question was do I feel part of an international movement? Yeah. It’s – there has been a development with glass artists. That is an international movement. And because of my traveling and because of the various festivals, symposiums, seminars around the world, which I have participated in, it has an international movement.

There are things that happen all over the world. The most prominent one is the International Glass Symposium in Novy Bor, Czech Republic, which started out around 1982. But there are also things that have happened in Russia, the Ukraine, in Hungary – [pause] – in Poland, and there’s a festival in the Ukraine. There are schools in Japan. Sweden has had a few things. So – of course, Australia and the United States, Canada. So, it’s quite international. And there are events that – and organizations that people participate, international organizations. So there’s quite a family, quite a glass family.

MR. KARLSTROM: But I guess implicit in this question is this whole notion of something being particularly American in its original development, and certainly, in your experience, meaning the studio glass movement, as – at least, as I understand it in my limited way. Do you feel that this is something, then, that actually on your visits – these factories and these various places in Europe and Japan and you know, elsewhere, that you kind of – you’re called an “ambassador of glass,” the roving ambassador of glass. I don’t know if you agree with that. But was it something that – did you bring something from our experience, or the American experience, to these other venues that perhaps then moved them along in this studio glass direction?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, sure. I think Cheryl White coined that in an article she wrote for the American Craft magazine [“Marvin Lipofsky, Roving Ambassador of Glass.” American Craft 51 no. 5 October/November 1991. 46-51]. It just happened to me. I mean, it was just something that I did.

I went first to Europe, looking for information and visiting – the first place that I went was – I was invited to a seminar in Sweden – in Växjö, Sweden. They just invited two Americans [Andy Billeci and myself] to give a talk – that was very early – about what was happening in the United States. It was a seminar on glass. Primarily, it was an offshoot of the historians and the technicians, which had conferences, glass conferences, dealing mostly technical and historically with glass.

In my travels, I just – I met people. I showed people what we were doing in the United States. I showed the – primarily, I think what – when I look back at it now, I showed the freedom that we had in working with glass. I showed that it was possible for people to make glass by themselves. They didn’t have to have the big factory to work in.

And when I first went to Sweden – I went to Sweden on my own, traveled around and went to visit the various factories and designers and so on – I met Ann Wolff [Ann Warff] – now she changed her name to Ann Wolff. And she told me about, oh, maybe eight or ten years later, after I’d first met her, that when I first came there and showed people slides and talked about what the students were doing at the University of California, people didn’t talk too much about it. But they saw this gleam – she saw something. She said she saw that it was possible that she could leave the factory, she could leave her design job and go out and be an artist herself. It took quite a number of years before she accomplished that, but that was the first idea that – the first spark that came into their heads, from what I had talked about on my visit.

And that they had talked about it afterwards, this idea of doing things – being an artist and doing things on their own, because they had all been designers at that time and had a responsibility to the factory and to their job and to the employees that they had to be there; they had to come up with designs, they had to come up with ideas so that the factory would maintain itself and the workers would have jobs. So this was quite interesting to me that this had happened because of myself and what I had done. And I hadn’t thought about it anything except that that was just expressing things that we had done here and sharing with everybody my experiences.

And the glass – glass had been prominent in other countries, and they had done things. But I think what the Americans did – and the coining of the studio glass movement, which was just capturing the ability for people to make things on their own and not have to rely on the factory.

Actually, Harvey [Littleton] had taken that idea from meeting Erwin Eisch in Frauenau, Germany. He had a small studio within the factory complex where – small furnace where he could – he and an assistant could make their own work, make Erwin’s work, or Erwin could work without disturbing the factory production.

And Harvey had this idea that artists could make their own glass, and that’s how he started the glass movement. And he took that, and it was through the American pioneering spirit that it developed internationally, even though there was glass around in various countries and even schools teaching some things, but they didn’t have this independent aspect of what they were doing. Due to culturally, due to philosophically, they didn’t do it quite the same way. There were some people throughout the world who had independently done some things. But other people didn’t pick up on this. And it was Harvey’s idea and Harvey’s promotion that made it go international, and other people keyed off of what Harvey had done in his early experiments and had done in his class – at the first classes at the University of Wisconsin. So, this just grew until now it’s really an international community, international family. And a lot of the people know each other and relate to each other and visit each other and so on.

MR. KARLSTROM: It sounds to me as if yes, indeed, studio glass, then, is to a large extent an American creation or phenomenon.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Studio glass is an American phenomenon, yeah.

MR. KARLSTROM: Studio glass, yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: But not glass and not people working in glass.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: The independence was because of the freedom that we had in this country. And also – very important – also, we didn’t – we here didn’t have traditions to follow. We broke whatever tradition there was, and it was much more difficult for other countries and other people to break the traditions that they had been brought up in. So, we had that freedom. And I think that’s what allowed the rest of the world to develop that freedom that we had in the United States.

MR. KARLSTROM: But what about this, and this is – and we certainly will be returning to some of your specific experiences abroad as we go along. But this, I think, follows from describing a tradition in Europe abroad – in fact, I don’t know about ancient, but there was Roman glass and so forth – it does go way, way back – and then, the factory type of situation; contrasting that to a freedom that you described in this country. And it seems to me – well, I should let you answer this – [laughs] – that that also would apply to this move from function to form and other expressive qualities, where function became far less important – how do you feel about that in terms of the studio movement itself, than in your own work, in particular? To what degree is there still a connection to function, if at all? [Pause.] Two parts to that question.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, that was – [laughs] – yeah, that was a little bit broad.

First of all, there really wasn’t any Roman glass. The Romans didn’t make glass, didn’t blow glass. They brought in people from the Middle East, and primarily Jews to work in glass.

MR. KARLSTROM: Interesting, interesting.

MR. LIPOFSKY: And the Italian early glass blowers were Jewish. The popes changed histories and rewrote things. And people have termed it “Roman glass,” but the Romans imported workers to make glass –

MR. KARLSTROM: Artisans.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Artisans, primarily, in that time. And they were the workers in the small factories.

Well, I don’t know – of course, things started off as functional work. And that was the natural way, the natural development of – I don’t have any problem with that; I was never a very good functional maker of functional things. I never made very good wine glasses. I never made very good vases. I remember making some vases for my mother and giving her about two or three vases, and when she saw them, she said, “Oh, I don’t want those. I want your good work!” [Laughs.] And I had made a particular effort to make her something that she could use.

So, I just never had a great deal – [laughs] – of interest in making functional glass. I tried. Actually, I tried to make some things like that, but they weren’t very good. And my interest didn’t happen in that aspect of glass. I’m very supportive of people making functional things in glass. It’s just not my particular interest.

And when I was teaching, I always tried to push the students to work nonfunctionally, to work in a more artistic, a more sculptural way. And if they rebelled and if they didn’t do it, then I knew that that’s where they were going to go; that function was very important to them, and they had the opportunity to explore other aspects. And if they chose to make just wine glasses or whatever, then that’s what they chose to do, and they had the opportunity to go in another direction. And function was the way they chose to go. So that was just fine. But I always gave them the opportunity to learn about other things, too.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, it seems that this, actually, then refers back to the earliest part of the interview, when we were talking about those issues and what distinguishes, perhaps, in any craft or basically any endeavor, between primary attention to the useful – to function, as opposed to opening up – broadening the expressive possibilities, and that’s what you’ve just described. You know, say, “here are two ways to go about it,” and you basically put it to your students – I guess maybe not directly in those terms, but gave them an option to consider what they want out of their involvement in glass.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, that’s true. And this is another aspect to it. I mean, I know that there are artists who buy functional things – painters and sculptors from the people who make glass. And it’s that there shouldn’t be any differentiation, because many people use what’s made by potters, glass-blowers, and many artists use those objects, too.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, think of ceramics, and I don’t want to get off-track here, but I’m thinking of Pete, Pete Voulkos. Of course he is the shining exemplar of pushing, well, ceramics into a different – well, into, fine quotes, “high-art sculpture,” at least art sculpture. And I – but then, there are other very revered crafts people, or clay artists. I think, like, maybe Natzler, Otto Natzler, Otto Heino –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Otto Heino, and Natzler, right.

MR. KARLSTROM: And it’s – there’s just no getting around it, that there is a different – it’s – they seem to be about very different things.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. They’re from another culture, another era. They’re old-school-trained, and what they did was just fine, and how they did it was just fine. They were not sculptors. They were not particularly painters – maybe they were; maybe they could paint or draw. But they made functional ceramics. And that is just fine. And that’s wonderful. And what they made was something of quality. But that that’s an end-all and that’s where everything stops, is – I think is a mistake; that it doesn’t stop there, that there are other things to appreciate. But that they’re included and what they did should be included in the general – the general world. That’s just fine with me. And I think that it’s all deserving. That they’re any less is mistaken.

MR. KARLSTROM: I think – and now I’m sort of drifting a little bit – [laughs] – on these questions, but this brings to mind somebody else in Ojai, down there, my old friend, died at the age of 104, Beatrice Wood.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Beatrice Wood.

MR. KARLSTROM: And she, of course, occupies her own very special place anyway, because part of her story is being the dear friend and lover of, among others, Marcel Duchamp. So, that becomes sort of a cultural institution. But what about her, I guess, very, very personal work in – well, in ceramics, but especially working with glazes and so forth? And there’s almost – I don’t want to push this too far, but almost a sense in some of her little vessels of a glass surface, kind of a finished –

MR. LIPOFSKY: That luster-glaze?

MR. KARLSTROM: Yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I don’t see much relationship there.

MR. KARLSTROM: No?

MR. LIPOFSKY: I think that’s –

MR. KARLSTROM: I was thinking of it as an aesthetic or a sensuality –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. Well, she was just such a fantastic person. And she was such a – her stories and her life and what she did, that’s just – I forgot the name of her book there. Something, I – Myself.

MR. KARLSTROM: I Shock Myself [I Shock Myself: the autobiography of Beatrice Wood. Beatrice Wood, edited by Lindsay Smith; Ojai, California: Dillingham Press, 1985], right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I Shock Myself. That’s it.

MR. KARLSTROM: I’m even mentioned in there, by the way. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: Oh, really? Well, she’s just incredible. I never thought, personally, much of her work. In fact, her work was quite – to me, quite ordinary, except for her little personal things that she did, the little figures and parts of her life that she made into very personal sculpture.

MR. KARLSTROM: The figurines, yeah.

MR. LIPOFSKY: But I thought that it was kind of pedestrian and quite ordinary. I think she used –

MR. KARLSTROM: Naive, would you say, in a sense?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, she had a real knack for what she was doing; she had a feeling for what she was doing. And she did it, and she did it for so damn long. That’s just incredible. I mean, it was her life, her personality. She was just an amazing person. And she’s sort of an example of someone who never really made a great creative statement, but she made many things, and what she did was related to a lot of people and a lot of people’s life, and that was just – that’s just wonderful. And that’s very, very acceptable. I mean, if you compare her work with Pete’s [Voulkos], there’s just no comparison whatsoever, what she did. But she did it on a very personal and a very human way, and I think that’s absolutely fantastic. But on an aesthetic level, I don’t think she ever – she ever achieved what a lot of other people have achieved.

MR. KARLSTROM: One last question before we go eat, okay? Quick one, and it can then be a bridge to the next session. It has to do with meaning in your work; it has to do with perhaps symbolic considerations, which we’re really going to talk about a bit later, or I hope so. But the question of religion specifically, or maybe in a looser, broader sense, spirituality, are they important to you in any regards in your work? You know, religion or spirituality?

MR. LIPOFSKY: No and yes. And I say that “no” first.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay. [Laughs.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah, there’s a spirituality. And I never thought about religion. It doesn’t seem to be very prominent. The aspect of me growing up Jewish and my – in a Jewish family and – I never, never used the religion, but I relate – I relate to some things that way, but it never was really part of my work. However, I did make a couple menorahs and –

MR. KARLSTROM: How functional.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah. Well, I was asked to do it. It was part of an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in San Francisco. It was quite interesting. And they had people make menorahs, candelabras – that were artists, and they just made the objects, and it didn’t always – it didn’t relate particularly to the Jewishness of it, because a lot of the artists were not Jewish, but it was on a creative level.

So, I’ve done two or things like that. But I did it just as a novelty and as something unusual and just, again, for the challenge of making it. I had no concept what I was going to do before I thought about it. I never thought about doing it until I was invited to be part of this exhibition on two occasions. And it was nice. It was a good challenge. And it was nice to do something with another meaning to it. I never got into the religious aspect of it so much as just the – as making the object, the challenge to make an object. That’s never been very important in my work. I don’t believe it’s ever influenced my work in any way.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, maybe we can save the other part – the – sort of the bigger part of that question or aspect, which is the spirituality, which can mean a lot of things to a lot of individuals. But that, as we know, can take many different forms. And I think maybe we should just go have lunch and save that for tomorrow.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Okay.

MR. KARLSTROM: Would that be a –

MR. LIPOFSKY: Spirituality – I was just reading – I just was sent a catalog of Christopher Wilmarth’s drawings, and he talks so much about –

MR. KARLSTROM: And he’s a good friend of yours.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Yeah – his spirituality and the spiritual aspect of what his work is. And I never – I guess it’s indirectly – my work is indirectly involved with it, but there must be some spirituality in the work, although I never discussed it or talked about it.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, good. Maybe we could think about it, and then –

MR. LIPOFSKY: I’ll think about it.

MR. KARLSTROM: All right.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Okay.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, good, Marvin. Thanks. We’ve – god, we’ve covered a lot of good ground. And so we’ll pick up tomorrow.

[Audio break.]

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay, this is beginning a second session with Marvin Lipofsky in his home in Berkeley. The interviewer, again, is Paul Karlstrom. It’s the following day, so it’s July 31, 2003. As I said, this is session two, interview for the Archives of American Art, and this happens to be mini disk 3 that we’re beginning with.

We’ve covered – we’ve got a real good start on dispatching these questions that are somewhat boilerplate but each one seems to open up some area for discussion. And on the last – we ended the last interview session talking about religion or spirituality as you feel it may be important in your work. And you basically said that – well, in terms of religion, you didn’t feel that that played any really important role, with the exception of a menorah thing that you did, but that that wasn’t, I guess, a compelling force or concern for you in your art. But you were willing to consider that – the broader concept, if you will, spirituality could very well play a role, and so maybe we could start there and see if in some way we can identify, or if you want to identify that spiritual component or perhaps even, may I suggest, it could go a bit further or more – shift it a bit to the whole idea of symbolic expression – symbolism. So I’ll leave it for you.

MR. LIPOFSKY: Well, starting with the question of religion, it’s not apparent to me that religion plays a role, but it may play a role socially or in an intuitive context, and that – just growing up in a Jewish family, not being a very religious person but growing up in that social context, there probably is some relationship to how I do things and how I think and so forth, but it’s not very formal. I can’t see any formal aspects of it, and I don’t think it comes out particularly in my work or in the forms of the context of my work, but it’s more of a social thing – societal maybe.

As far as spirituality, I don’t see any spirituality in my work. I am sure that other people could read things into it, but I don’t think in those terms. It’s – my work is just more physical rather than spiritual, but I think when you look at it, in the end maybe the whole process is very spiritual because it’s the doing, the making that’s important to me. So there is a spirituality there. It’s being in your studio with your work, working on your work. Even though it’s a labor, it still is somewhat meditative. When I’m in the factory blowing the work it’s rather hectic and it’s extremely physical, and there’s a lot of tension: what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen. But – so I can’t see that – in the making of the work in a factory situation or a studio situation, that it’s –

[END TAPE 2 SIDE A.]

MR. LIPOFSKY: – being someplace, doing something.

So I don’t know if that’s a very good answer. I don’t even know if I have an answer to that.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, it’s not a trick question, but it’s much more complex than that little single line with a question mark at the end would indicate, and lumping together religion and spirituality makes some kind of sense. Just in thinking about it myself, how might this apply to you in your situation, or artists in general – Mark Rothko is of course considered a very spiritual artist.

I suppose another way to put the question – maybe a more helpful way to think about it is art-making, creating these works of art, and by so doing touching some kind of transcendence, whatever that means. And of course in a religion it gets – it’s very specifically directed towards a creator, God and so forth, but, I mean, in a more general way, accessing perhaps something that is transcendent to the mysteries. It’s hard to pin down, but does any of that line of thinking resonate for you at all?

MR. LIPOFSKY: Not really. I don’t –

MR. KARLSTROM: Something beyond the everyday, something –

MR. LIPOFSKY: No, I don’t – I don’t think about those things very often.

MR. KARLSTROM: Okay.

MR. LIPOFSKY: I can’t see how that comes into my work and I can’t see how that’s influenced my work – maybe indirectly. As I said before, maybe someone else can see it in it but I don’t.

MR. KARLSTROM: What about this notion of breathing, something else I read about in here? And there is a series with Wilmarth, I think – there was a connection there and some work he did that – and I just barely – vaguely remember it from reading it in here. I don’t know which essay it was. We can at the break, look it up, but a notion of the making of glass as connected to breathing, to life. Sorry that I’m not more specific on that because –

MR. LIPOFSKY: No – well, yes. Actually, I just received from his wife his catalogue from the Fogg Museum, Drawing into Sculpture. I’ve just been looking at it, reading it. And he did a series when we met each other – I think it was ‘87, about that time, when we first met, and I invited him to work at CCAC with the students if he had any ideas. And he first said, no, no, he wasn’t interested in blowing glass, and then he came back and said, yes, he had some idea. And he was inspired to illustrate the translation of poems by Mallarmé translated by Frederick Morgan. A poet approached Chris [Wilmarth], and Chris then thought of the head form after he studied the poems. And this head form really came about because we had offered – I had offered him the opportunity to blow glass, and of course the blowing a glass bubble, blowing a form that relates to the head.

So from the poems – from the offer of making blown objects from this idea of illustrating the poems came the Breath concept for this series of work that he did with us. And he also did a series of prints and drawings, and they’re all based on the head form and this oval shape. And he naturally saw what the glass could do for him.

His approach was very, very simple and very direct to the glass, and he actually helped make some of the pieces by forming it with paddles and pressing the glass. He was involved with it; the students made – blew – I blew a couple of things for him and then the students worked with him. And he liked to work with the students and he found that they were very attentive, and found that experience very satisfying. He was teaching at Berkeley, the University of California at Berkeley as a visiting artist and led a seminar, and he didn’t like the students at Berkeley. They – he thought that they were all – wanted to – wanted him to tell them about how to be a successful artist, how to – how to grasp the ring or something, and he rejected that. When he came to my students, they didn’t ask anything of him; they were just very, very open to him, and he then gave my students a lecture, which he said he wouldn’t give to the university students. He was a little stubborn sometimes. And so he talked all about his interests and his career and his work and his travels and Brancusi, who influenced him so much. And it was very good, and he related – related that to the students.

And we became friends and we worked a number of times together, helping him, mostly on doing these heads, which he got involved with. Breath was the name of his catalogue and show that he did with this group of work where he took it back to his studio and cut some of the pieces and dealt with them in the way that he deals with glass.

MR. KARLSTROM: It strikes one – what you just described strikes one perhaps as having a connection to metaphors for creation, I suppose, in one way – infusing with life, infusing with the blowing, with the breath as a metaphor for, well, the act of creation and therefore spiritual anotherness, if you will.

MR. LIPOFSKY: It had something to do with life, I’m sure of that. Now, when we talked about religion and spirituality, Chris was spiritual – I mean, we were so opposite in that respect. Chris really was spiritual and a thinker. He was constantly thinking and questioning, and he was quite serious about his work, and I got a lot out of him from just watching what he did and how he approached things, and conversation with him about work. And I was just more go-at-it through the material, but he thought quite a bit about what he was doing.

His approach was through light. He approached glass through light, the transmitting of light, shadow, and he didn’t approach it from the material. It’s hard to see because he used glass and metal – or he really limited his ma