Hot Shop Hot Nights with Richard Royal
Date
Friday
Jan 31, 2025
Hot Shop Hot Nights
January 31st, 2025 | 5-8 PM
The Hot Shop at Hilltop Heritage Middle School
During their week-long residency, renowned artists from the glass community set up in our hot shop, creating their own works, sharing with our students about their processes and experiences, and collaborating with Hilltop Artists.
The week culminates on Friday for our Hot Shop Hot Night, when we welcome our community to see the visiting artist and our young artists in action.
At Hot Shop Hot Nights, expect to see a professional glass artist working with and mentoring our advanced production students and alumni, creating spectacular collaborative pieces. The Gallery is open for shopping, and tea, hot cocoa, and coffee will be available.
This January, Richard Royal is in residence at Hilltop Artists!
Richard Royal, a native of the Northwest and resident of Seattle, is recognized internationally as one of the most skilled and talented glassblowers in the studio glass movement. His sensitivity and natural affinity towards the material reveal themselves within his extensive body of work. Richard’s artistic approach combines sensuality, fluidity and bold abundance to deliver gracefully attenuated pieces that speak of their own elegance and sculptural verticality.
Artist Statement
Work hard, have integrity, be authentic.
Royal began working as a hot glass sculptor in 1978 at the Pilchuck Glass School, located north of Seattle, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. After spending a number of years as a ceramist, the challenge of the material and the birth of a new artistic movement appealed to the young artist. Royal worked for several years as one of Dale Chihuly’s main assistants, building skill, exploring the limits of the material and developing an intimacy with glass as an expressive creative medium. Working with Dale and other creative powerhouses such as Billy Morris and Benjamin Moore allowed Richard to explore diverse approaches to making. This background enabled Royal to shape his own unique voice and consequently led to his emergence in the art market in the early 1980’s. Royal has since been a prolific independent artist exhibiting work internationally in both solo and group exhibitions for the past thirty years.
Royal’s work is included in renowned public and private collections worldwide. His work is found in such noteworthy museum collections as The Mint Museum of Art + Design (Charlotte, North Carolina), The High Museum (Atlanta, Georgia), the New Orleans Museum of Art (Louisiana), The Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa, Florida), and the Daiichi Museum (Nagoya, Japan). Royal was one of the first Artists-in-Residences at the Waterford Crystal Factory (Ireland) and he continues to teach as both a guest artist and faculty member at various universities and the Pilchuck Glass School. His artwork is also included in the SAFECO Collection, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, and the Westinghouse Corporation.
