Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend

Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, a past board member of the Glass Art Society (1982-86) and an Honorary Life Member, served as the first woman president from 1984-86. She was a partner and co-creator of the architectural glass studio, Renaissance Glass, from 1973-1987 in ­Austin, Texas. Her work in glass and mixed media, architectural glass, hot glass and public art is included in many private collections and public institutions including the LA County Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Museum of Art and Design, NY, and City of Los Angeles among others. Stinsmuehlen-Amend has taught at the Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, WA for over 25 years since 1980 and has been a visiting artist at RISD, RIT, Tyler School of Art, CA College of the Arts, CA State Universities at San Bernadino and Fullerton, Massachusetts College of Art, The Pittsburgh Glass Center, and numerous other glass and public art conferences. A Trustee Emeritus of The American Craft Council, she has served as Chair and member of the Arts Commission for the City of Ojai, CA from 2001-2014, and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Pilchuck Glass School. She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pilchuck Glass School Hauberg Fellowships, the 2007 Brychtova/Libensky Award, and 2006 Artist Residencies at Pilchuck and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington.

Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include the Fresno Art Museum, 2020, Porch Gallery, Ojai, 2015, Craft in America, Los Angeles, 2014, and the Channel Islands Studio Art Center, Blackboard Gallery, Camarillo, During Covid, Amend finished the last two of eight leaded glass windows for the Jewish Community of Ojai Temple. She and her husband, artist Richard Amend, designed and fabricated contemporary glass windows for the chapel at the new Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, CA.

In her review from Glass Quarterly for Stinsmuehlen-Amend’s solo exhibition at D&A Fine Arts in Los Angeles, Annie Buckley writes about her work:

“Words and images are frozen in place, suspended in the glass as unmoving as an obsessive worry or a tune you can’t get out of your head. Whether a pop song or the memory of a whisper, Stinsmuehlen-Amend’s work functions like a visual soundtrack, mapping the unpredictable rhythms of thought.”