Sometimes the smallest decisions lead to the biggest results. Heading for a degree in sociology and anthropology from Virginia Commonwealth University in the mid-1980s, glass artist Michael Hatch found himself in need of an elective and chose glassworking — a course housed in a ramshackle studio behind the university president’s house. “On either side of the room, glass furnaces roared at 2,000 degrees,” Hatch recalls. “When the instructor began gathering glass and blowing shapes, I was hooked.”
That instructor happened to be the late Kent Ipsen, an influential glass artist of the mid twentieth century and a founder of what became known as the American Studio Glass movement, which reinvigorated traditional glassmaking as an art form. Ipsen allowed his students 24-hour access to the studio, complemented by two demonstrations every week. “We were encouraged to explore the potential of molten glass as a sculptural material,” Hatch says. “There was very little focus on technique. Glass became my permanent elective.”
Today, Hatch produces a stunning array of glass forms from his Crucible Glassworks, installed in a newly constructed studio he designed just north of downtown Weaverville. Incorporating elements from traditional crafts, painting, and sculpture, the work ranges from the elegantly decorative to the artistically contemplative. There are goofy, colorful blown-glass “face jugs” reflecting the Appalachian ceramic version; highly polished bowls and beakers; whiskey cups and other bar ware; and, in a more serious vein, complex sculptural and enameled pieces that require hours and sometimes weeks of work.
“I definitely sketch out ideas for the imagery and the blown forms that they’re painted on,” Hatch says. “Once the firing process is started, there’s no going back, so I like to have all the design components figured out before I begin painting them.”
The imagery in these works is striking, revealing Hatch’s interest in science, mythology, and anthropology — and often combining the disparate fields in one painting. “These pieces allow me to express myself beyond the aesthetics of color, form, and function,” Hatch notes. With only an introductory college course in drawing as his formal training, Hatch finds himself drawn to painting the more he works in glass (especially the process of “reverse painting” on glass using enamel pigments).
First, he paints the outlines of a new drawing in a thick enamel mixture that mimics black ink, using a calligraphy pen. Then comes a first firing, followed by applications of color, each stage requiring a separate firing. The result often evokes a delicately woven tapestry or an Old Master etching — the latter an especially apt comparison: Hatch has become fascinated by engraving techniques, and applies them to his preparatory line drawings.
An enameled piece can take Hatch weeks to complete, rivaled in hours of labor only by a continuing series of what he calls “Character Studies,” figural pieces drawn from Americana, commedia dell’arte characters, and mythological sources. “They’re more about thinking through the process of assembling complex structures from multiple sculpted components in the hot shop,” Hatch explains, referring to the intense heat needed to fuse the components. “It’s a tricky process where no part can be below 1,000 degrees, and sometimes as many as 12 components are being created and assembled. Everything can go wrong in the blink of an eye.”
Equally appealing is a collection of abstracted vertical forms inspired by the five years Hatch spent in Santa Fe managing the hot shop of a studio just outside of town. The muted colors of the desert are mimicked in the pieces by dusting with glass pigments before firing, creating an adobe-like texture.
More complex are mixed-media works — the “Boxes,” as Hatch calls them — with frames constructed from reclaimed wood. The structures enclose an assortment of materials and objects — wire, straw, or anything else that catches the artist’s fancy — accompanied by a blown-glass figure of some kind.
“I’ll sit down at the table with a bunch of odds and ends of things that have caught my eye over the years and begin playing with them,” Hatch says. “I enjoy making the boxes because the process is so different from the immediacy of the glassblowing process. If I don’t like how things are coming together, I can walk away and come back later: hours later, weeks later.”
The new Weaverville studio replaces the one Hatch set up in 1998 in downtown Asheville, at the lower end of Lexington Avenue, a year after he and his wife moved from New Mexico. Instrumental, during their ten years downtown, in transforming a rough-and-tumble neighborhood into an arts center, Hatch built the new facility after a three-year residency at the Energy Xchange, the groundbreaking Burnsville art studio powered by renewable energy sources including methane.
“I’m still fascinated by the process of transforming molten glass into solid objects,” Hatch says. “I often joke that once it’s below 1,000 degrees, you can have it; I don’t care about it anymore. Which isn’t exactly true — but there is something magical about the process.”
To view samples of Michael Hatch’s work online, or to see a schedule of classes he teaches, visit crucibleglassworks.com. Studio hours at Crucible Glassworks (60 Clarks Chapel Road, Weaverville) are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-5pm (call first if you want to see a demo), or by appointment. 828-645-5660.