It could have been just nine exhilarating and exhausting days: a dozen artists melting glass and twirling blowpipes with the curiosity of 10-year-olds tinkering with a chemistry set. But through a combination of tenacity and serendipity, what happened at a workshop in a garage on the grounds of the Toledo Museum of Art in March 1962 triggered art’s equivalent of a chemical reaction. Fifty years later, we are still feeling its effects.

The man behind the workshop and a second that followed in June was Harvey Littleton. Today he is an icon; back then he was a potter, husband, father, teacher, dreamer and indefatigable searcher. The son of the head of research at Corning Glass Works, Littleton took his father’s word for it that you couldn’t work glass alone, according to Littleton’s biographer and former student Joan Falconer Byrd. The prevailing hypothesis was that you could throw a pot and fire it in your studio, but to make something from glass you needed the kind of furnace and teamwork that only an industrial setting could provide. When it came time to enroll at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Littleton chose ceramics.

But there is “a romance to glass,” to borrow from Byrd, and for years Littleton carried a torch for it. In 1958, on a break from teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he traveled to Venice. Watching the glassblowers of Murano, he started to believe he could work glass solo. Back home, he melted glass in his kiln, blew some “bubbles,” and improvised a furnace and an annealing chamber—not Murano caliber, but the results were credible enough that word got around the craft community and glass emerged as a hot topic at the 1961 national conference of the American Craftsmen’s Council.

Still, there was a long way to go. As Corning Museum of Glass director Paul Perrot cautioned conference attendees, “The true potential of this fascinating material will only burst forth with the entry of many more craftsmen into the field.”

To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of the Winter 2011-2012 issue of AmericanStyle today!

In a small studio in Santa Fe, N.M., a modern-day alchemist bends over his worktable. Around him lie piles of twisted sticks, bicycle tires, baling wire, rusted screws and washers, torn canvas, medallions and a few tools. Layer by layer, contemporary sculptor Geoffrey Gorman builds charismatic creatures that, with the final touches, suddenly become “real.” As the puppet Geppetto once carved from wood turned into the boy Pinocchio, so do Gorman’s creatures come alive, exploring the territories between reality and legend, science and imagination.

Commenting on why collectors are increasingly attracted to Gorman’s work and why she is pleased to represent it, Jane Sauer, of the Jane Sauer Gallery in Santa Fe, said, “Geoffrey captures whimsy in the midst of a serious dialogue on the relationship between man and animal. His pieces are so complex that you can return again and again and see new details. For me, it was love at first sight. Geoffrey has an uncanny ability to illustrate the core traits of any animal, yet make them quite human.”

To read the whole story, pick up your copy of the Winter 2011-2012 issue of AmericanStyle today!

The jewelry of Sana Doumet is a study in contrasts. Graceful 18-karat gold tendrils entwine around sturdy shapes of sterling silver. Primeval spirals adorn a contemporary form. Warmth and coldness embrace each other.

Doumet’s pieces celebrate these contradictions: They are at once delicate and strong, ancient and modern, silver and gold. These contrasting elements combine into a harmonious whole that Doumet refers to as “the beauty of opposites.”

Lebanese-born Doumet began her artistic life as a sculptor. However, she found the large dimensions too unwieldy. She turned her attention to making jewelry, sculpture on a smaller scale.

Indeed, the three-dimensional qualities of her pieces reflect an affinity for sculptural form. In a shimmering necklace from her “Ribbed” collection, sterling silver bars enclose freshwater pearls. The “Bird’s Nest” collection features exquisite silver “twigs” bound together with golden wire. Her ring designs showcase layered bands of gleaming precious metals.

To read the whole story, pick up a copy of the Winter 2011-2012 issue of AmericanStyle today!

The first thing you notice about Geoffrey Gorman’s sculptures is their size: they are very big. And mesmerizing. And varied.

Some of them carry what look like whole boxes of bolts, hooks, screws, washers, keys, nails and wires on their backs. Others have mates. All come with Latin names, species identifications and fascinating back stories, courtesy of the irrepressible Mr. Gorman.

If you look at these animals long enough, you can even imagine a complete set of them marching two by two onto a new Noah’s Ark.

I had a chance to chat with Geoffrey about his evolving menagerie at the Jane Sauer Gallery during a recent visit to Santa Fe. Two parts Merlin, three parts Huck Finn, he relishes his role as mythmaking artist and thoroughly enjoys conjuring tales to match each new creature he invents.

Strange names come tumbling out—Degeeri (an otter), Dryomis and Perigyps (two ibis), Jayakari (an antelope), Paromius (a pelican). Body constructions include everything from cedar branches to flattened bicycle tires and talismanic trinkets hanging down from the animals’ torsos.

“We’re all trying to figure out each other’s cultural identifications,” Gorman says of the human race. All the bits and pieces of materials he uses to assemble his menagerie are meant to give hints about the animals’ origins.

Gorman has even created a cultural identifier for himself. ”Sometimes closer spiritually to the animals he creates than the humans he exists with” it reads in part, “Geoffrey Gorman (species name: Geoffrensis) is characterized by an obsessive fascination with discarded artifacts and the development of ‘animology,’ the study and documentation of animal societies showing advanced cultural complexities.”

For a complete profile of Geoffrey Gorman and a look at even more of the creatures he sometimes calls “stick figures with wire,” take a look at the Winter 2012 issue of AmericanStyle. And enjoy!

Pastellist and encaustic artist Judith Gebhard Smith stands in out front of her Nightwing Studio at the edge of Puget Sound, gazing at the gulls and ravens circling overhead. She knows the formula for encaustic: melt beeswax, add pigment, paint, then fuse. She also knows that she alone must pick up the tools to make her art happen.

It all began with passion and a gift. Recognizing her abilities in biology and science, Smith’s father encouraged her early on to become a doctor. Young and willing, she began premed studies at Chatham College in Pennsylvania, but soon opted to take a different path and transferred to the University of Pittsburgh to study art history.

“My undergraduate art history degree grounded me,” she says, ”allowing me to keep one foot in medicine and the other in art. I never regretted that decision, but I also knew it was just the beginning.”

To find out the rest of Judith Gebhard Smith’s story, pick up the Winter 2011-2012 issue of AmericanStyle.