Featured Artist: Michael Bokrosh, Mountlake Terrace WA
As a child, I showed no artistic talent yet, decades later, I built a successful art career by challenging those early beliefs by opening new doors and making authentic choices to discover who that artist really was.
I started my career in glass at the early age of 14 working in window glass with my father after school by learning to cut and belt grind glass. After graduation I moved to Corvallis to start a career in science. Like so much in life, my early plans changed, so I left college in 1974 and moved to Portland, where I began working at Glass Craft Studio in Old Town. At that time, it was the leading stained-glass studio in the Pacific Northwest, with access to a vast collection of original glass from 1890 to the 1930s. A significant portion of the glass originated from the historic Tiffany factory in New York, creating an environment distinguished by varied stained glass textures and vivid hues. As is typical in many glass studios, most employees were accomplished professionals who accepted their roles primarily for financial reasons. At that stage, I regarded myself chiefly as a developing craftsman, without any intention or expectation of pursuing artistry. So, I wiled away the next 5 years by becoming an expert at stained glass repair as well as teaching myself how to shape & bevel glass, and as it turned out, those coldworking skills would be my main avenue propelling towards creativity that at one time I could have never dreamed of.
In 1979, I went to Europe to study with glass masters in Pula, Yugoslavia, and later attended Orrefors Glass School in Sweden. There, Swedish experts taught me both blown glass and my specialty, cutting and engraving cold glass. After classes I shared housing with many talented international classmates who impacted & influenced my own curiosity about art and creativity.
In 1981 I moved back to the states where I took a job at the Glass Eye Studio in Seattle and worked there doing production glassblowing day in and out for 4 years. Engaging in repetitive production tasks while not being an inspired glass blower prompted me to reevaluate my career choices, which led me to embark on a lifelong commitment of personal reflection combined with Shamanic/Earth based Ceremonial healing. Through my consistent dedication to this healing path, I discovered enhanced access to a creative potential that had previously remained untapped. After receiving a scholarship to Pilchuck glass school, I began to explore glass sculpture through my own hot glass work. However, it was at Pilchuck that I finally got honest and realized that hot glass was NOT my forte and that coldworking was the avenue to help bring me into alignment with my own creative process.
Over the years I had been collecting coldworking equipment, so it was now time for me to set out on my own. Thus, Bokrosh Studio opened in 1985, starting in a 1 car garage in Fremont and then spending the next 8 years in Columbia City. I originally began fabricating pyramid-shaped glass skylights, drawing on my experience in welding and stained glass. While the skylight work progressed, several glass artists asked if I could perform cold glass finishing on their blown glass. This led me to a new market: providing cold glass services to other glass artists which brought the studio a modicum of secure income. Fortuitously In 1987, the important undiscovered glass artist Greg Engelsby brought a piece of bright, clear optical glass into the studio. This stunning glass, crafted in the United States, is widely accessible as an artistic material. Working with this new optical medium has had a profound effect on my career in art glass, seamlessly complementing my creative pursuits. I began to visualize and create innovative designs, bringing them to fruition and by the end of the year I had completed my first full production line of optical art glass paperweights.
Using this new work, I participated in several ACC exhibitions and traveled to California, where my work was showcased by Gump’s in San Francisco, Geary’s in Los Angeles, and other esteemed glass art galleries.
In early 1996, I embarked on a project to develop large-scale optical art sculptures. To achieve this goal, I designed and built a machine—currently available for purchase—that enables the cutting and polishing of optical art glass at an unprecedented scale. Much like the famous line from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” One very large piece of transparent gold optical glass that weighed over 3,600 pounds came to me from Pilkington Glass of England. This massive piece of optical glass enabled me to realize my large-scale artistic vision. For over the past two decades, I have crafted four significant optical glass sculptures, each featuring hundreds of precisely cut facets that not only reflect light but refract it in the most magical and mesmerizing ways. Now after 54 years of dedication to my artistic path I have begun my retirement years in which I desire to support artists as they continue their own artistic growth and grow into their own authenticity and abundance.
See more of Michael’s work at MichaelBokrosh.com
