STEPHEN POWELL

Born: Birmingham, Alabama 1951

Resides: Kentucky

Stephen Powell exhibits his work nationally and internationally, but his greatest impact has been in the Art Department at Centre College in Danville, KY. Powell was hired by Centre College in 1983 to teach ceramics and sculpture. Thanks in part to to Corning Glass in Harrodsburg, he founded Centre's glass program. Powell has participated in workshops, demonstrations and lectures all over the US, as well as in Russia, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. He has demonstrated at several Glass Art Society conferences, and at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. The highlight of his travels was an exhibition of his work at “Venezia Aperto Vetro” in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Italy, where he was one of only eight American artists invited.

Describing Powell's work in American Craft magazine in 2001, critic James Wood wrote:

“Many art media concern themselves with color and light, but at the end of the day these are the trump cards of glass. In no other medium do color and light so suggestively interweave, shifting, changing and endlessly cross-pollinating. Among the most nuanced seekers after the eternally sensual and elusive mysteries of light and color in glass is Stephen Rolfe Powell, whose upbeat vessels for more than a decade have bubbled, blistered and erupted in fugues of chromatic suggestion. He can be seen as an accomplished color-field painter, though he neither paints nor makes color-fields. Instead, his world provides globular prismatic bursts, an irrepressible ebullience of hue and a tintinnabulation of tincture that maintains, as Van Gogh put it, that 'color expresses something by itself'.

But what's the point of color without form? The pointillist play of Powell's blots of pure color is tremendously energized and reinforced by the very shapes they come to sheathe and define. He makes vessels, round and bulbous, curvaceous and ribald, replete with generous Intimations of the sensuality of the human body. Their lobes and swellings inevitably suggest buttocks or breasts or testicles, the soft and vulnerable zones of sexuality, in a warm eroticism heightened by the fantastic color scheme. The weight of these lobes, the sense of their being pulled down by gravity, is countered by the exquisite tension of Powell's attenuated and elongated necks, which strain upward in some Parmigianino rhythm, as if these vessels were simultaneously bulb and sprout. Through these forms Powell makes color volumetric, enhancing its possibilities.”

EDUCATION

  • 1983 Master of Fine Arts, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  • 1980 Teaching Certificate, Birmingham-SouthernCollege, Birmingham, AL
  • 1975 The ProvincetownPainting Workshop, Provincetown, MA
  • 1974 Bachelor of Arts, CentreCollege, Danville, KY

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

  • 1989 - Present Professor of Art Glass, Centre College,Danville, KY
  • 2007 Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA
  • 2007 Pilchuck GlassSchool, Seattle, WA
  • 2006 Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
  • 2005 Muskegon Art Museum, Muskegon, MI
  • 2005 Pittsburgh GlassCenter, Pittsburgh, PA
  • 2005 University of Miami, FL
  • 2004 Glass Art Society, New Orleans, LA
  • 2003 JB Speed Art Museum,Louisville, KY
  • 2002 Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
  • 2001 Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
  • 2000 Bowling GreenUniversity, Bowling Green, OH
  • 1990 Mukhina Art Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
  • 1990 Red May Glass Factory, Vishny Volochok, Russia
  • 1990 Livov Art Institute, Livov, Ukraine
  • 1983 - 1989 Assistant Professor of Glass and Ceramics, Centre College
  • 1981 - 1985 Assistant in Hot Glass at:
    • - The Pilchuck School,Stanwood, WA
    • - Haystack Mountain Schoolof Arts, Deer Isle, ME
    • - Penland School of Crafts, Penland, NC
  • 1976 - 1980 Art and Ceramics Instructor, Indian SpringsSchool, Birmingham, AL

SELECTED MUSEUM AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

  • Muskegon Museum of Art,Muskegon, MI
  • Sheikh Al-Thani - Foreign Minister, Doha, Qatar
  • Montgomery Museum of Fine Art,Montgomery, AL
  • The Corning Museum of Glass,Corning, NY
  • Cincinnati Museum of Glass,Cincinnati, OH
  • Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
  • Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI
  • Cleveland Museum of Art,Cleveland, OH
  • Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
  • Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery,Wagga Wagga, Australia
  • SydneyCollege of Art, Sydney Australia
  • The Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand
  • Huntsville Museum of Art,Huntsville, AL
  • Mobile Museum of Fine Art, Mobile, AL
  • Birmingham Museum of Art,Birmingham, AL
  • Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
  • Red May Glass Museum, Vishny Volochok, Russia
  • Livov Art Institute, Livov, Ukraine
  • Haystack Mountain School, Deer Isle, ME

AWARDS AND HONORS

  • 2012 In March 2012, Powell will accept the Distinguished Educator award from the James Renwick Alliance
  • 2005 “Award of Excellence” International Glass Invitational, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
  • 2004 “Acorn Award”, Kentucky Council on Post Secondary Education
  • 2003 Distinguished Alumnus Award, Centre CollegeAlumni Association
  • 2002 Outstanding Alumnus Award, Indian SpringsSchool
  • 2001 “6th Annual Rude Osolnik Award”, Kentucky's Most Accomplished Community Craftsperson
  • 2000 - 1999 Kentucky Professor of the Year, Carnegie Foundation