Marvin Lipofsky Blows Glass

March 9 – August 17, 2025 

Fig. 2: Marvin Lipofsky (American, 1938–2016), California Loop Series #3, 1969. Glass, paint, and rayon flocking, 8 x 17 x 10 ¼ in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Marvin Lipofsky Studio, 2024.51.2. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree.

Fig. 3. Marvin Lipofsky (American, 1938–2016), Chico Spring Series 1988 #10, 1988. Glass, 14 x 13 x 11 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Carol Scott and Patricia Grant in honor of their grandparents, Abraham and Elizabeth Nahigian, 2014.106.

Berkeley-based artist Marvin Lipofsky (1938–2016) [figs. 1] helped reinvent the challenging material of glass through experiments in scale, color, and technique. Marvin Lipofsky Blows Glass celebrates the Lipofsky Estate’s most recent gift of eleven artworks, including two blown and flocked sculptures from his California Loop Series [fig. 2] and five of his later signature open forms. This gift significantly deepens the Museum’s existing holdings of American studio glass, which includes Lipofsky’s early blown-glass pieces acquired by the Crocker in the 1960s, and the large bubble form Chico Spring Series 1988 #10 (1988) acquired in 2014 [figs. 3]. 

Lipofsky studied ceramics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, before turning to glass in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied with renowned glass artist Harvey Littleton. Lipofsky’s contributions to studio glass during the mid-to-late 20th century can not be overstated. In 1964, during the early years of the Studio Glass Movement and at the young age of twenty-six, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he built the university’s first glass furnace with the help of six students. In 1967, after leading a summer glass workshop at the California College of the Arts and Crafts (CCAC), Lipofsky taught courses at both Bay Area institutions for five years. Between 1972 and 1987, he worked full-time at CCAC and was a founding member of the Glass Art Society, participating in national and international glass communities and inspiring a new generation of artists working in California. 

Fig. 4. Marvin Lipofsky (American, 1938–2016), Glass Form 1969, 1969. Glass, 12 x 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. Courtesy of the Marvin Lipofsky Studio. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree.

Fusing humor with homage, Marvin Lipofsky Blows Glass borrows its title from a short archival film of the artist blowing glass at UC Berkeley in 1968. Instead of focusing on finished artworks, the film lingers on various aspects of Lipofsky’s early glassblowing process, conveying the importance of timing, heat, motion, and skill in the creation of the work. At Berkeley and CCAC, he tested the boundaries of studio glass in works like Glass Form 1969 [fig. 4], a work in glass and copper etched with horizontal stripes and the words “I only want peace,” reflecting the Free Speech Movement and antiwar activity on both campuses.  

In addition to copper, Lipofsky obscured the shiny surfaces of his early sculptures using mirroring, paint, and flocking. “I denied the quality of the glass material for a long time because the quality of the glass material that we were using wasn’t very good, but that wasn’t important to me,” he explained. “It was just important to use the material to make shapes and forms in an organic sense and abstract.” Inspired by the ceramics of Peter Voulkos, the psychedelic colors of the hippie era, and the visual politics of activism at the time, Lipofsky’s early series of California Loops and antiwar pieces showcase his ability to confront the historical moment through movement and action—tenets also central to the art of glassblowing. 

Fig. 5. Marvin Lipofsky (American, 1938–2016), L’viv Group 2001–2002 #2, 2001–2002. Glass, 8 1/2 x 18 1/2 x 18 in. Created by Marvin Lipofsky with help from Ivan Karolovich Shumants’kyi, Roman and Taras. Finished by the artist in his Berkeley studio. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree.

Throughout his six-decade career, Lipofsky traveled to glass factories in Europe, Asia, the Soviet Union, and Mexico, where he took photographs of glass from all over the world, led workshops, and crafted new pieces with local glassblowing experts. Once Liposky began to work with a team, he was able to create larger multi-colored sculptures. Put simply, to make one of his colorful bubble forms, he collaborated with a glassmaster and team of glass handlers in a factory. After colors were selected, glass bubbles were blown into a wooden mold or free-blown before Lipofsky manipulated them using a variety of wooden tools while the glass was still hot. These unfinished bubble forms were then shipped back to his studio in Berkeley, where he finished them using a variety of coldworking processes, such as sandblasting, polishing, and grinding. In some works, such as L’viv Group 2001–2002 #2 [fig. 5], he broke the bubble into smaller pieces, which he then reassembled to form new open compositions. For some viewers, the open forms recall the curves, shapes, and colors found in nature. Many also liken his organic forms to the human body for the ways in which they appear to give shape to breath and echo the softness of internal organs. 

Though Lipofsky primarily lived and worked in Berkeley, it was in Sacramento where he found an audience for his glass sculpture early in his career. In 1965, just one year after arriving at UC Berkeley, Lipofsky was invited to participate in California Crafts V by the Creative Arts League of Sacramento (CALS), which named him a California Living Treasure in 1985. In 1967, the Crocker organized the one-person exhibition Marvin Lipofsky: Glass/Sculpture, breaking ground in presenting a contemporary body of work entirely in glass. Almost six decades later, Lipofsky’s work is again the subject of a solo exhibition at the Crocker. This time, the exhibition takes a longer look at Lipofsky’s career through a survey of artworks and select ephemera, illustrating his journey towards deeper aesthetic expression and self-discovery.