 1938 Marvin
Bentley Lipofsky was born September 1, at the Sherman Hospital
in Elgin, Illinois. With his parents Henry and Mildred Lipofsky
and his younger sister Barbara, he grew up in Barrington, a small
town 45 miles northwest of Chicago.
1962 Marvin
receives a B.F.A. in industrial design.
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In the fall, Marvin began his graduate studies at the University
of Wisconsin. He intended to work with both clay and metal. His
first class was Harvey Littleton’s ceramics course. Littleton
began the class by offering the students an opportunity to blow
glass for the first time in an American university.
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| Tombstones: An early series of Marvin’s were his “tombstones” — ceramic
slabs about three feet tall. |
1964 At twenty-six,
Marvin joined the faculty of the University of California,
Berkeley, Decorative Arts Department. With the
help of his six women students, he built the glass furnace
and equipment for the class in the new Wurster Hall building.
1967 Begins teaching at
the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC), Oakland,
CA, in addition to UCB. |
1964 MFA exhibition, featuring primarily
ceramic and metal sculpture.
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1968 Poster for the first Great California Glass
Symposium. The symposium was held at both UC Berkeley and CCAC
with Professor Harvey Littleton and Sybren Valkema from the Gerrit
Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands as the first guests. Over
one hundred guest artists participated during the eighteen-year
period that the symposia were held.
1968 Marvin's
connection with glass factories began in the
United States at the Blenko Glass Factory in Milton,
West Virginia.
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1969 Marvin
began to obscure the surface of the glass artworks he was
creating. He experimented with painting, copper electroplating
on glass, using rayon flocking, applying decals, mirroring,
and fuming metal salts on the hot glass. |
1970 In 1970,
Marvin was invited to teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie
in Amsterdam. While in the Netherlands, he was invited
to work at the Royal Leerdam Factory by Willem Heesen, a
designer at the factory. He designed pieces
and worked with the master glassblower, Leendert van der
Linden.
The result of that work was the Leerdam
Colour Series 1970, the first of his many collaborations with master glassblowers
worldwide. |
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1970 Marvin
was invited to work at the Nuutajärvi Glass Factory
in Finland. As he watched the workers blowing glass into
molds, he observed the "overblow," a superfluous
part that is extruded during the process of blowing the glass
into the mold. He remarks: “[T]he
afterblow (overblow) that came out the top was always very
interesting, very sensual and organic, but of course they
would cut this off.” He decided
to incorporate the "overblow" into his sculpture.
The Suomi-Finland
Series 1970 was the result of this work in the factory. |
1971 Marvin
was invited to be a visiting professor at the Bezalel Academy
of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Lipofsky and the students
built the equipment including all the glass tools in three
weeks.
1972 Working
with Serano at the Venini Glass Factory, Murano, Italy.
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1972 Working
with Maestro Gianni Toso at the Venini Factory,
Murano, Italy. His work with Toso resulted in the
first Venini Series.
He returned to work in Italy in 1975 and 1977.
The Italian masters are
the most skilled by far, and they have abilities in creating
both small and large objects that far surpass what is
commonly done...I
was trying to capture the feeling of the Italians, but
also trying to use my own way of visualizing things. .
. . The Italian color and the Italian technique is so overpowering,
it's difficult to try and introduce your own aesthetic,
interact, but I tried. . . . |
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1975 Working
at the Nanbu Glass Factory, Osaka, Japan, with Mitsuo and
Akiko Yanagihara. This resulted in Nanbu
Group 1975. |
| 1979 Through
an introduction by Peter Voulkos, Marvin met the sculptor
Christopher Wilmarth, a visiting artist at the University
of California, Berkeley. Wilmarth, who used plate glass in
his sculpture, was invited by Lipofsky to work with his students,
resulting in his sculptural series Breathe:
Inspired by seven poems of Stéphane Mallarmé. |
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1980 Serbian
Glass Factory, Paracin, Yugoslavia, where the Third International
Symposium took place, organized by the Republic Community
of Culture. During the symposium Marvin made the series
Fragments
Jugoslavia Stakla. |
1982 Stanislav Libensky invited
Marvin to work in at the Crystalex Corporations, Hantich
Factory in Novy Bor. Lipofsky was the first American to
successfully work in this Eastern bloc country. This
is the first time he began to create his own wooden
forms to shape the glass. This is Series
Crystalex-Hantich, Novy Bor 1982.
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1985 Working at International
Glass Symposium (IGS) II, Novy Bor, Czechoslovakia. He
is the only American artist to have participated in all
seven symposia. IGS
Series.
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1984 Working with Rich
Royal and Robbie Miller at the Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood,
Washington, to create Pilchuck
Series 1984. He returned to work at Pilchuck in
1988 and 1997.
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1985 IGS II
Crystalex-Hantich
Factory, Novy Bor, Czechoslovakia
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1985 Marvin in Czechoslovakia working with the glassmaster Stefan
Stefko and team.
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1986 Marvin is invited to be
a guest artist at the newly opened Pace Wilson Glass Studio,
Tulane University, New Orleans. This resulted in the work Newcomb
Series 1986.
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1987 Teaching at Miasa
Bunko Center in Nagano, Japan, with Koji Matano and Makoto
Ito. Because the studio was small inside, the students often
observed through the studio windows. See Miasa
Group 1987.
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1989 On
his way to the First International
Blown Glass Symposium in L'vov, Marvin stops by in
Moscow. He returned
three more times to L'vov, later renamed L'viv. See
the Soviet
Series and L'viv .
1989 Women workers
grinding Marvin's sculptures at the Experimental Ceramic
Sculpture Factory, L'vov, Ukraine, USSR.
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1990 Working with Rich Royal and Robbie Miller and
team at the Ben Moore Studio, Seattle Washington. See Seattle
Series.
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1996 Marvin
with glass sculptures created at the Dalian Shengdao Glass
Factory , China. He returned to work in China again in 1999.
See China
Group and China Group II.
"I used colors available
in the factory, and the work ended up primarily red.
I also incorporated small bits of color, representing
the many different peoples of China. I tried to incorporate
a feel of the mountains that were quite different in
shape than any other mountains I'd ever
seen. |
2000 Working with students at Centre College,
Danville, KY. This resulted in the Kentucky
Series. |
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2000 Marvin working with glassmaster Petr Novotny
at Bild-werk, Frauenau, Germany. See Frauenau
Group 2000.
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2004 Working at the Denizen Glass Studio, North Manly, Australia,
with Tom Rowney, et al. to create Australian
Landscape Series 2004.
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2005 Marvin was invited again to come to
the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design to work with the glass
students. Bezalel
Group 2005-6.
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2006 Invited to participate in the250th Anniversary Symposium of Gus-Khrustanly Glass Factory in Russia. Two of the sculptures remained with the factory collection. The remaining 10 sculptures can be seen here. |
2007 Marvin participated as a Resident Artist at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma Washington. For a short video and more photos of the event, visit the Museum's web site. The series is currenly in process. |
