When it comes to glassblowing, local artist Jacob Stout says, simply, “it’s a challenge.”
Opening Studio 55—Stout’s glass art gallery—at the beginning of 2020, the challenge went beyond mastering glass art techniques. Upon unveiling the first gallery show in the space, Stout’s business was shut down along with other retail businesses across Ohio. After three months of closure, though, Studio 55 has reopened—with precautions—hoping to reintroduce glass art to Cuyahoga Falls.
“My appetite for hot glass making has been the challenge to create something beautiful with a terribly difficult medium,” Stout says. “Glass art has only been in the American studios since the mid ’60s. If you wanted to make a piece of glass, you had to do it at a factory—there just weren’t tiny little glass studios around. That changed in Toledo in the ’60s, when a bunch of ceramic artists got together and hired a glass scientist from the factory next door, and they learned how to build the glass melting part of it.”
Toledo having paved the way, glassblowing has grown across America—especially for Stout, who grew up in Northeast Ohio and graduated from Kent State University’s School of Art.
“I knew I wanted to explore art once I got to college. I did enough of it in high school that I needed to at least see what collegiate art is all about,” recalls Stout. “I just happened upon it. I walked through the school of art looking at the different studios and I saw this fireball in the corner…What attracted me to it was the pace and the danger and the intensity, and also the teamwork. I’m real big on teams and that aspect of putting together a team, getting everybody on the same page, and producing this piece of art is attractive to me because it’s unlike most other mediums… Once you start gathering glass out of the furnace and it’s molten on the inside, there’s no break.”
Since graduating in 2000, Stout became an apprentice to a glassblower from Philadelphia, where he learned the intricacies and techniques of fast-paced Venetian-style glassblowing, often used for creating decorative wine glasses and chandeliers. From there, he toured the country working in different studios and building glass equipment for other artists, such as kilns.
“With glass, it’s more like a sport. It’s more like you’re going in, you’re on the court and you’re in the game and you better perform or you get pulled out of the game and that’s all for you,” Stout says. “That was the attraction early on, as a 19-year-old kid.”
In addition to Stout, Studio 55 currently displays the works of six different artists, showing the variety of subjects glass can be molded around. Stout’s tall vases incorporate multiple pieces of varying colors to create precise designs and shapes. Chicago artist Mike Da Ponte blends mediums in much smaller pieces, such as “No Lifeguard on Duty,” depicting life under the pressure of prescription drugs through glass sculpture. Looking at the world through a much larger mold, internationally-known Jason Chakravarty and Jennifer Caldwell worked together to produce a variety of seafaring work, blending Caldwell’s intricate details created on a torch with Chakravarty’s hand-blown scaled bowls. While originally planned to only last until spring, the exhibit will remain available for visitors through the summer.
Despite reductions in quarantine, Stout plans to keep guests safe with appointment-only individual and family visits and classes. Current classes include learning to frost designs in premade glass using vinyl sheets and sandblasting. Heading into summer, Stout plans to introduce a mobile kiln for demonstrations in front of the building.
“It’s a hands-on approach to making your own art,” he says. “It gives customers, clientele, and even just enthusiasts who want to come through the ability to understand one little aspect to what it takes to a piece of glass. I think the experience is necessary in front of the retail community. I don’t know that it’s enough to put up an art gallery anymore. People want more than the visual.”
Still relatively new to the Cuyahoga Falls art community, Stout hopes to make his work and gallery more well-known now that he has reopened, especially being located on State Road where there is no walking traffic.
“I look forward to meeting more local artists and putting shows together. I’ve always appreciated local art. Who’s in your community? What are they doing? What are they making? What are they saying? I think supporting that builds more than just the artist community. I think it builds the greater community.”
Studio 55 is located at 4455 State Road. For more information about Jacob Stout and Studio 55, visit: https://studio55art.com/
