Michael Mikula Works

Bio

Born 1963 in Grand Junction Colorado and raised in Chautauqua County, New York, Michael Mikula earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1987. He studied at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and Fundacio Centre del Vidre (now closed) in Barcelona, Spain.

Michael has been self-employed, maintaining a full time studio practice since 1988.

From 1988 to 1996 Michael was a junior member of Benchmark Glass Studio, owned and operated by his mentors, former Professor Brent Kee Young and Mark Sudduth. In 1994, Michael completed a residency at the Creative Glass Center of America in Millville, New Jersey.

In 2009 Michael was awarded a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship grant, administered by Community Partnership For Arts And Culture. In 2013 Michael was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.

Michael lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2017 he relocated and named his studio, MIDTOWN GLASSWORKS, to The Cleveland Commerce Center in Midtown Cleveland, a mostly industrial neighborhood which also houses a lively mix of artists, designers, creatives and entrepreneurs. MIDTOWN GLASSWORKS is the fourth glass studio in the neighborhood, dubbed Cleveland’s Glass Corridor.

Process

Michael Mikula is always looking up - examining the built environment for its patterns, forms and details to spark his imagination. For more than two decades Michael has explored a process using multi-part graphite molds as a tool for introducing imagery into blown glass. He calls the resulting body of work which highlights the visual effects of positive and negative form “Architechtonic Blown Glass”. 

With a jazz-like sense of improvisation, Michael composes graphite molds from a large and growing library of interchangeable hand cut components. No two compositions are ever alike. After Michael prepares his unique mold compositions, he starts each blown form by capping the blow pipe with colored glass. He then “gathers” successively thicker layers of molten clear glass from the furnace until he has enough to fill the mold. Standing above the mold, Michael drops the glass, still attached to the blow pipe, into the mold and puffs more air through the blow pipe into the molten glass. He then quickly removes the hardening glass form from the pipe, placing it into the annealing oven for a timed cooling process. Once cooled, the resulting deeply dimensional blown forms are cut open, faceted and polished.

The individual glass elements are thoughtfully recomposed within an integral metal armature of anodized aluminum and stainless steel. Michael designed this robust custom structural system so that it can be scaled for table top sculpture or larger site specific installations. Michael says, "Think of a Louise Nevelson sculpture to imagine what a mold looks like as molten glass fills the form - taking its shape in reverse. My use of color is purposefully understated to focus attention on form and how the imagery and light is captured and reflected through the glass. My goal is that each piece be a well-designed and crafted object with integrity and lasting value". 

Michael also continues to make a series of related functional and sculptural blown glass vessels. These were the genesis of his current sculptures and use the same graphite mold elements.