KCJ Szwedzinski + David Walters: "(Image)ination"
The Bay Area Glass Institute is honored to welcome KCJ Szwedzinski and David Walters to our studios to teach their class, "(Image)ination" from January 28th through February 1st 2026. To celebrate their class and give the broader community a chance to learn about Szwedzinski and Walters' artistic perspectives and practice, BAGI will host Community Night on Friday, January 31st at 7:00 pm where the artists will give a brief talk before we move into the Hotshop for a live glassblowing demonstration. All are welcome to attend this fun and free event.
"(Image)nation" is a five-day intensive which focuses on imagery on glass; utilizing form and enamels to tell a story. Students learn different ways to use enamels and how different forms in the hot shop can support a visual narrative. Other methods of applying enamels to glass are also discussed. Students will leave with a better understanding of glass enamels, the different ways they can be applied to glass, and an elevated knowledge of blown glass techniques.
KCJ Szwedzinski was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but moved frequently up and down the Eastern seaboard growing up. As an interdisciplinary artist, Szwedzinski’s work addresses perception, legacy, and belief as recurring themes. As a form of artistic autoethnography, she uses found materials and glass elements to create work that considers not only what we remember and believe, but how and follows narrative threads as they traverse time and place. With an interest in how people form belief, her work considers constructed systems that range from the sacred to the mundane including religion, consumerism, family ties, and politics. Within that framework she looks at the tension that exists between the dogma and the lived experience. Learn More
David Walters was born in Central Pennsylvania in 1968 and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1989-93. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993, he moved to Seattle to work for Dale Chihuly and many highly regarded artists in the Puget Sound area and beyond. He has worked most closely with the maestro Lino Tagliapietra over the past 26 years. David has been traveling teaching and demonstrating nationally and internationally for the past 18 years. David began using glass enamels in his work during a fellowship at the Creative Glass Center of America in 1995 and again in 2004. He uses the forms he creates to serve as a reference, as well as a virtual canvas, to the stories he illustrates on them. His incorporation of sound fundamental glass skills with a less than conventional approach to vessel making has enabled him to create a series of interesting and original forms on which to paint. He works mostly with characters from fairy tales and children’s stories, primarily for their familiar associations. He tries to incorporate into these cautionary tales a sense of his own history or personal experience in an effort to give them a more contemporary and personal relevance. Learn More
