New Sculptures by Jeremey Popelka and Stephanie Trenchard Featured in CHROMA EXHIBITION through April 13th

For more than thirty years, Jeremy Popelka has worked as a glass artist and educator. After exploring techniques with notable glass artists such as Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky, Bertil Vallien, and Joe Phillip Meyers, Popelka mastered widely different approaches used in art glass, including blowing, sand-casting, and Murrini in his Wisconsin hot glass studio.

Popelka received his MFA at California College of the Arts in 1989 and, soon after, established his unique style of sand-cast glass. Popelka quickly began to exhibit his work across the globe, including at the Hokkaido Museum Of Modern Art's World Glass Now and the International Exposition of Glass in Kanazawa, Japan. 

Recently, Jeremy Popelka and his wife, Stephanie Trenchard, helped establish BGC Glass Studio in Bangkok, Thailand. The facility is the country's first learning center for art glass, offering training courses in glass design and glass forming techniques. 

One of the allures that made me dedicate a career as an artist to using glass was the mystery and the magic that is embodied in the enigmatic medium. Outside of the obvious, its luxurious transparencies, interplay with light, and brilliant saturated color, the material has been used historically to create objects that defy logic.

- Jeremy Popelka

Poured decorative cast glass slabs are manipulated over a positive sand mold with insulated Kevlar gloves. As the glass slowly becomes three-dimensional right before my protected eyes, slumping over the mold, I feel as if I’m looking into the face of something familiar and fundamental.  I feel a direct connection to becoming a creator at this moment, where I’m not creating life but a relic of an innate process for self-expression. 

- Jeremy Popelka

To see all of Jeremy Popelka’s available work, please click here

Stephanie Trenchard's sculptures reveal historical and fictional narratives, often involving women, in painterly, luminous glass. These stories are drawn from memories or impressions, sometimes her own, and other times, other artists' biographical information. For Trenchard, creating glass sculpture requires the spirit of collaboration with others and a dialog with the material itself, which, by its fluid nature, can become a catalyst for expression. 

As a glass artist, Trenchard has expanded her creative expression within the medium through investigation and invention. By 2002, Trenchard was not only working in glass but inventing and perfecting a technique that incorporated sculpture, sand-casting, and painting, resulting in works akin to still-life paintings in glass. 

Trenchard has worked as an artist for over 30 years and holds a BFA from Illinois State University. Along with her husband, Jeremy Popelka, Trenchard has owned and operated a working glass studio since 1997, all while continuing to create and show work on a national scale. Trenchard has taught workshops and classes at the Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle, Washington, and the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. Her work is found in public and private collections throughout the United States. 

 I sculpt and paint objects that tell illusory narratives. I do this through the creation of a visual vocabulary in glass. Using these totems I tell stories about the artistic experience and the ensuing personal relationships.

-Stephanie Trenchard

A successful work is technically sound as well as lyrical in the combining of images. Also, the combination of images must express ideas of the story of the piece. The best pieces have multiple ways of reading the story.

-Stephanie Trenchard

To see all of Stephanie Trenchard’s available work, please click here