Feature.. Glass Alumni Fan Out Across the Globe
Glass Alumni Fan Out Across the Globe
Around the world, Alumni from JamFactory’s one-of-a-kind Glass Studio Associate Program are translating their learnings into careers that are as individual as their artistic sensibilities.
Madeline Prowd, Bailey Donovan, Tala Kaalim and Noah Hartley are all very different glass artists, but their histories with the medium have two things in common.
First, and curiously, they each found themselves mesmerised by the medium after brief encounters with glass blowing in either school or university. And secondly, they’ve all developed their glass practice through the JamFactory Glass Studio Associate Program. Unlike the first commonality, this is something Madeline says is unsurprising. She characterises the Jam program as a clear choice for serious glass artists.
“I wanted to be a good glassblower, and the pathway for that is going to JamFactory,” she says. “There wasn’t at the time, and there still isn’t, a program that’s like it anywhere in the world.”
All four glass artists spent their respective two-year stints in the Associate Program learning intensively through a curriculum that balances teaching with creative practice, skills development and production work. From there, their careers have taken them to all corners of the globe.
Tala Kaalim. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Tala Kaalim, whose artistic practice often focusses on capturing the fluidity of glass’ molten state in its final, static forms, is in the Maldives. Her graduation from the Associate Program in 2020 coincided with COVID’s peak, and after continuing her relationship with JamFactory as an Assistant over the last few years, she is now working at Soneva Art and Glass. There, she runs workshops for members of the public, assists visiting artists, and produces glass work for retail and commissions.
Spending five days a week in the workshop, Tala often finds herself drawing on the huge variety of experiences she had whilst at Jam.
“There was a group of four of us that went through. We all just spend as much time as possible blowing glass and being in the environment,” she says. “It’s fun, just being able to dedicate so much of your life to just one thing for two years.”
Closer to home, Madeline has been building her career steadily since completing the Associate Program more than a decade ago in 2011. After working extensively with artists Nick Mount and Clare Belfrage in Adelaide, as well as performing a Technician role in the JamFactory Glass Studio, Madeline last year relocated to New Zealand.
She is now the Manager of New Zealand Glassworks, which is the major hub for glass art in that country and its only public-access glass studio.
Settling into her role there, Madeline is expanding the number of community workshops the organisation offers while also maintaining the facilities for professional artists, and spending at least half a day per week on her own creative work.
“I’m just trying to boost the community and find more ways to connect… and all that comes from being at JamFactory,” Madeline says. “Jam, and especially the glass community, is huge in Adelaide, and hugely supportive and vibrant and amazing.
“Coming from that and knowing how great community can be and what it can achieve, what we can achieve together, it gives me the fuel to put it into this place.”
Noah Hartley. Photo: Courtesy of S12 Galleri og Versted
Bailey Donovan. Photographer: Connor Patterson.
Hundreds of kilometres away, in Norway, Tala’s fellow 2020 alumni Noah Hartley is preparing for his first solo exhibition in between his work as Studio Manager at S12 Galleri og Verksted.
Noah’s job at S12 involves supporting a residency program for artists experimenting with glass, something he says continues on the spirit of collaboration he first experienced at JamFactory.
“By far the most important thing [in the Associate Program] was being able to make mistakes while so many other glass makers were around to give advice,” he says. “To learn in a studio with 50+ years of institutional glass knowledge is pretty special.
“[Now] My job is to make work, or assist making work for these artists, run the studio, and maintain or repair the glassmaking equipment… there’s so much to learn from working with other artists, especially if they haven’t used glass before. Learning to have an adaptable approach to glassmaking has been invaluable, I have to consider the material in entirely new ways with each new visiting artist.”
Madeline Prowd. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
That sense of support and community has been key for Bailey Donovan, who only completed the Associate Program in 2022, but is already in a glass teaching role at Sydney College of the Arts and studying for his Master’s at Australian National University.
Bailey says none of his achievements would have been possible without the confidence bestowed on him in his time at Jam.
“[It was] not just confidence in my abilities and the material, but also, a real self-confidence unrelated to glass – being able to give talks about my work or chat to random donors at functions,” he says.
“At the start of the program, I was a very, very shy person. So that was one of the big things that helped me, aside from just the incredible technical skill development that I otherwise would have had to spend years doing other things to try and get.”
In his Masters in Canberra, Bailey is looking more deeply into theory. Exploring, as he puts it, the “why” of his glass practice.
In different ways, all four of the alumni are doing something similar. They are working constantly with glass – on their own practice, with other artists and with enthusiastic amateurs – and every day, they deepen their relationship with the medium. Every day, they continue the grand experiment of creativity they first set in motion in the blasting heat of JamFactory’s Glass Studio.