Texas 2025 conference attendees: take advantage of a FREE opportunity to have your portfolio reviewed by one of our experts! Curators, educators, and artists will be available on Friday, May 16 from 12 to 2 pm at the UTA University Center Lecture Room to review portfolios of GAS conference attendees.
This year’s reviewers are: Kalina Banka, Sarah Darro, David Gappa, Jiyong Lee, and Heather Sutherland.
Reviews will last 20-30 minutes each, and a limited number of slots will be available on a walk-up, first-come, first-served basis. A waiting list will be kept in case of cancellations.
Bańka-Kulka is a graduate of the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław; she completed her doctoral degree there in 2020. Bańka-Kulka has had 12 individual exhibitions and participated in several dozen glass and art exhibitions and competitions in Poland and abroad (e.g. USA, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Turkey). Her glasswork “Noise” was selected for publication in New Glass Review 38. She has taught classes at Bildwerk Frauenau and Pilchuck Glass School.
SARAH DARRO (she/her/hers) is a curator, writer, and visual anthropologist working at the nexus of contemporary art, craft, and design. She has established an intersectional curatorial vision that is invested in reinvigorating museum spaces as forums for discourse, innovation, action, and engagement through experience. She is the founder of Green Room Gallery, a moveable kunsthalle and dedicated long-form color study. She lives and works in Houston, TX, where she is the Curator and Exhibitions Director of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Darro was the 2022 Jentel Foundation Art Critic at the Archie Bray Foundation and the 2019 American Craft Council Emerging Voices Scholar Awardee. From 2021-2022, she was the Gallery Manager of the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC; in 2020 she completed a Curatorial Research Fellowship in Modern and Contemporary Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass; and in 2018 she completed a three-year Windgate Curatorial Fellowship at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
She holds a Master’s degree in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology from the University of Oxford and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Art History and Anthropology from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her research interests include artist communities and collectives, relational aesthetics, movement and performance practice in craft, architecturally-influenced design, radical accessibility, systems esthetics, and the life histories and agency of objects.
Artist David Gappa has found that the passion of his life is working with the shifting energies of molten glass. Armed with a Master of Science in Architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington, Gappa seeks ways to both envelope and integrate the Art of Glass into both public
and private spaces.
Gappa founded Vetro Glassblowing Studio & Fine Art Gallery in Grapevine, TX in 1999, and has successfully cultivated a team of extremely talented glass artisans.
David chose glass as an artistic medium for many reasons: the complexity of color and light; the classic beauty of glass; the challenging mental and physical discipline required;
and the poetic and seductive nature of molten glass integrated into our everyday space.
Jiyong Lee (b. 1971) is a studio artist and educator based in Carbondale, Illinois, USA. As a professor of art at Southern Illinois University, he has led the university’s glass program since 2005. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Lee earned his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, where he also taught prior to his tenure at SIU. His extensive teaching career has taken him to some of the world’s most renowned art institutions, including The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts, Domaine de Boisbuchet in France, Canberra Glassworks in Australia, and Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin, Ireland, among many others.
From 2009 to 2015, Lee contributed to the glass arts community as a board member of the Glass Art Society. His accolades includes being a finalist for the 2021 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, winning the 2017 Bavarian State Prize at the International Trade Fair in Munich, and receiving the Emerging Artist Award from the Glass Art Society. Lee’s work has been highlighted in major publications such as Glass Quarterly, American Craft, Neues Glas (Germany), New Glass Review by The Corning Museum of Glass, and American Art Collector. His art has been showcased in prestigious exhibitions worldwide, with recent highlights including Thoughts on Thickness in Milan, Italy, the Translucency exhibition at the Tallinn Applied Art Triennial in Estonia, the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition, and KOREA NOW at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. His works are part of prominent public and private collections, including those of the Barry Art Museum, The Corning Museum of Glass, Chanel in France, and Samsung Corporation in Korea.
Heather Sutherland, also known as H$, is a glass artist with an MA/MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University, an instructor at Governor’s School for the Arts, and a part-time instructor at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio in Norfolk, VA. Her art explores the complexities of gender, sexuality, and body image, confronting struggles that shape the human psyche and embracing the beauty of failure.
Heather’s work has been featured nationally and internationally, with notable exhibitions including the traveling show “Autonomous Zone” at Traver Gallery in Seattle and BWA Gallery in Wroclaw, Poland. She has participated in prestigious residencies such as Emerging Artist in Residence at Pilchuck Glass School and Creative Glass Fellowship at Wheaton Arts. After a hiatus, Heather is revitalizing her practice and looks forward to future endeavors.