Woodeye Studios
Eccentric Glassworks
Woodeye Studios is an independent, artist owned and operated glass studio featuring a designer line of custom glassware by Jeffrey Woods. We currently operate online only, offering retail and wholesale custom glassware via Woodeye.com and via a variety of other online and retail galleries and boutiques around the country. Wholesale inquiries should be made via email and include your basic company info and your website url for us to review.
As a small limited run studio please understand nothing here is mass produced. All glass designs are individually crafted with an eye for detail. With this in mind please understand that not all wholesale inquiries will be accepted. We wish to grow our glass line with care, maintaining the quality at all times, and ideally we are looking more for smaller galleries and boutiques rather than large shops, or overseas import/exporters. So if you think your shop or gallery would be a good match please contact us via the feedback link, or signup for our affiliate program below.
Artist Statement:
For years I had experimented with a large variety of art forms (view my Past Works gallery to see some examples). Then after many years I came across some stunning work being carved into glass by Tucson, AZ artists Michael Joplin and Debra May, and it did not take long before I realized this was the direction I wanted to go. I signed up for a workshop with Michael Joplin and began creating designs and exploring the process on my own while waiting for the workshop date to arrive. By the time the workshop finally began, I had already accumulated a rather large body of original, etched glasses and vases. I was very impressed with what he had to show us, and left his workshop excited and invigorated... and Woodeye Studios officially launched a couple months later!
In late 2006 I began developing a technique of combining glass paints with the sandblasting process to create crisp and dramatic designs on all types of glassware. I airbrush every glass with dishwasher safe, oven hardened glass paints and then use high pressure sandblasting combined with various types of resists to etch or carve my original designs into a variety of glass. This allows me to offer up my designs as functional pieces of art that I hope you will enjoy every day.
Art does not have to be a special occasion, so why not add some to your table today!
Jeffrey Woods
Artist Bio:
1972 - Jeffrey Woods popped into being as a small, mostly formed squishy, wiggly
little fellow.
1992 - Following a brief and rather unfocused
year at Kent State and then a year of working 80 hours
a week (working on bridges during the day, and fast food
at night), I began more serious studies focusing on Visual and Literary Arts at Antioch College,
Yellow Springs, OH .
1992 - During an intensive studio experience over my first
Co-Op (supervised by Gary Bower, later Director of the LaCoste
School of Arts
in LaCoste,
France) I produced 37 paintings over a blustery winter in
a rented studio, set on the shore of Shawnee Lake in Jamestown,
OH.
1992 - Staged my first one-person show at the Noyce Student
Gallery, Antioch College.
1993 - Exhibited 3 large painting as part of the opening
group exhibition at Studio Savoy in Dayton, OH.
1993 - Canoed down the Mississippi River with 12 people
as part of the Antioch College
Environmental Field Program (and first began my life long
dabbling in the art of the harmonica).
1993 - Awarded the Herndon Fellowship to attend the GLCA
New York City Arts program. Apprenticed with architectural
installation artist Glen Seater and assembled Glen's show
at the Nuerberger Museum, SUNY Purchase, upstate NY. While
an excellent learning experience, it was also that which made
me decide the NY Arts scene was not for me. I don't mind
if my art sells there, and I would certainly visit again,
but it's not really the climate I find most conducive for
my art.
1994 - Apprenticed with New Mexico potter Kate Brown at
her hot springs ranch in the southern tip of the Gila Wilderness.
I also completed a series of alabaster stone sculptures while
there, and made many great friends. Now this is the kind
of place I find conducive to my art!
1995 - Received an Antioch Community Grant to teach evening
Life Drawing Workshops. The workshops were free and open
to the public and very well attended, with much time spent
on candle light sessions sketching shadow play in relation
to the human form.
This turned into a series of wire sculptures which I am still quite proud of.
1995 - 1996 - Two-year period as Gallery Manager and then
Student Director of Antioch College's Herndon Gallery, featuring
shows by artists from around the country, as well as local
and
student
artists, and including a ground breaking show of works by
Cuban photographers arranged by Denni Eagleson.
1996 - Staged a two-person show with Faina Gakh at the Springfield
Museum of Art (OH) featuring a series of pen and inks juxtaposed
with metal and stone sculptures intermingled with Faina's exuberant
surrealistic figure paintings.
1996 - Staged senior show in the main room of the Noyce
Gallery, featuring enlarged pen and ink drawings, small alabaster
stone carvings, welded steel, and balanced metal sculptures
pinned
into position by their own weight. This series was very well
received, and is still that which I am most proud of for
it's method, imagery, and message.
Of
course balanced steel sculptures that can topple at the slightest
touch are hard to translate into semi-permanent gallery or
museum pieces. So this was not a path I followed any further
after this show.
1996 - Graduated from Antioch College with a bachelor degree in visual arts.
1996 - This was a turning point in my life, where I had
the option of going to France to study further at the LaCoste
School of Art, or stay locally and learn the art of gold smithing
from a local artist, named Berhle Hubbuch. In retrospect
perhaps I should have gone to France and started down the
path of a gallery artist, which is where I seemed headed
at the time. However I was weary of travel, not overly thrilled
with the "art world" and interested in learning
what Berhle had
to teach
me. But being an impatient fellow, I opened my own silver smithing
studio and art gallery in Yellow Springs
less than a year later. The Woodeye Studio and
Gallery was quite an experience, and allowed me to feature
shows by a number of young area artists who I felt had great
skill. While I did create some interesting work, and hosted
some excellent artists, it was far from a financial success,
and rather than dig myself too far in the hole, I closed
up shop and moved to Arizona in 1998.
1998 - 2005 - Wandered the desert meditating and searching
for the Lost Dutchman
Gold Mine while prospecting for bugs tucked into the soft under
belly of a major financial software package. I moved to Silicon
Valley for a few years before returning to
Tucson to begin building my studio.
2005 - I studied with glass artist David Joplin at the Sonoran
Glass Foundation in Tucson, AZ learning the finer elements
of artistic sandcarving and seeing examples of David's ability
to stretch the medium to it's utmost. I have found that so
many of the skills I learned in my silver smithing and sculpting
were directly applicable to carving glass, and worked perfectly
with my style of pen & ink drawings. With the tools I now
have I can literally draw and sculpt glassware just as I
once
designed
jewelry,
or
carved
stone. Yet now I could create functional art, not merely
things to set on shelves and hang from walls. Within months
I had put together my shop, and begun building my inventory.
2005 - In late 2005 I launched Woodeye Studios to begin
to sell my custom line of unique glassware, and I hope
to be doing this for many, many years to come...
Contacting Woodeye Studios
Mailing Address:
Woodeye Studios
725 S Rosemont Ave
Tucson, AZ 85711
Phone:
Toll Free @ 866-417-7675
Email:
sales at woodeye.com
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