David Huchthausen
Artist’s Statement
Creation is a continual and evolutionary process, constantly digesting and reevaluating past experiences and current perspectives. My work has always been deliberately enigmatic and mysterious. I constantly strive to generate a strange and curious quality that both tantalizes and challenges the viewer to develop his own response system. The work must have an existence of its own if it is to have any real significance.
Biography
EDUCATION
University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria.
Fulbright Scholar - Research Grant.
Illinois State University, Normal Illinois
Master of Fine Arts - Academic Honors.
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Bachelor of Science - Academic Honors.
University of Wisconsin, Wausau
Associate of Arts - Academic Honors.
David Huchthausen was one of the first artists of the Studio Glass Movement to emphasize cold working fabrication techniques such as cutting, sawing, laminating, and optical polishing. Within his crystal-clear geometric forms, Huchthausen integrates complex shapes, concave lenses and intricate color panels, refracting light as it hits the shapes and reflecting colored glass patterns in the fractures and lenses below and around them. The colored glass patterns occasionally include dichroic glass, a composite non-translucent product made by stacking layers of glass with micro-layers of metals and oxides which, depending on the angle at which they are viewed, can cause an array of colors to display. Huchthausen’s sculptural narrative has always been enigmatic by design, challenging the viewer with its curious and unknowable quality.
With hundreds of one-man and group exhibitions on his resume, Huchthausen is considered a leader in the field. His work is represented in over 75 public collections, including: The Corning Museum(NY); The Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); The Detroit Institute of Arts (MI); The High Museum(Atlanta, GA); The Hokkaido Museum (Sapporo, Japan); The Los Angeles County Museum (CA); The Metropolitan Museum (New York, NY); The Museum of Fine Art (Dusseldorf, Germany); The Museum of Fine Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland); La Musée de Verre (Liège, Belgium); The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); The Tacoma Art Museum (WA); and many more.
BIOGRAPHICAL LISTINGS
Who's Who in America
Who's Who in American Art
Who's Who in the West
International Dictionary of Biography
International Contemporary Personalities
Who's Who in SocietyInfluences
While a work-study student in the ceramics department at the University of Wisconsin, Wausau, Huchthausen discovered an old glass furnace. He had always been fascinated by glass in architecture, so he blew the dust off the furnace and learned how it worked. Huchthausen knows how to weld, is a good woodworker, and in general subscribes to the philosophy that if you want to know how to do something, you put in the work and figure it out. Soaking up the sparse glass knowledge of those around him, he taught himself the basics. He melted 475 glass marbles developed by Dominic Labino for pulling fiberglass strands, for lack of access to other materials. Soon, he was teaching a night class and selling at fairs. In the early 1970s, he became one of Harvey Littleton’s graduate assistants at University of Wisconsin, Madison, helping to build his first electric furnace, revitalizing equipment, and rebuilding the coldworking shops. Huchthausen has since become a pioneer in coldworking techniques—complex processes that he developed “by the seat of his pants over a long period of time” which suits his hardworking and tenacious disposition. In 1974, at the invitation of glass innovator Joel Myers, Huchthausen went to Illinois State University to finish his MFA then take over their glass program while Myers was on sabbatical. In 1977, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in the J&L Lobmeyr Studios in Vienna. After Vienna, Huchthausen served as Design Director for Milropa Studios in New York and as a university professor in Tennessee.
Exhibitions
Having participated in over 500 national and international exhibitions and included in 80 permanent museum collections, Huchthausen is considered a leader in both the glass specific and larger art worlds. His public collections include: The Corning Museum(NY); The Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA); The Detroit Institute of Arts (MI); The High Museum(Atlanta, GA); The Hokkaido Museum (Sapporo, Japan); The Los Angeles County Museum (CA); The Metropolitan Museum (New York, NY); The Museum of Fine Art (Dusseldorf, Germany); The Museum of Fine Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland); La Musée de Verre (Liège, Belgium); The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.); The Tacoma Art Museum (WA); and many more.
Website
Showing all 5 artworks
David Huchthausen
Sphere series
Cut, laminated, and optically polished glass $13,000.00
David Huchthausen
Golden iridescent Milropa Air Trap vessel - Small round
5 x 5 ″ Blown glass $480.00
David Huchthausen
Green iridescent Milropa blown glass vessel - Small round
5 x 5 x 5 ″ Blown glass $480.00
David Huchthausen
Ruby spiral vase
10 x 5.5 x 5.5 ″ Blown glass $3,400.00