Joan Glass - Biography - Career

Career

During the war Glass joined the Women's Royal Naval Service and worked in military censorship. After her marriage, she became known as Joan Clifford-Smith but continued to sign her work under her maiden name (Joan Glass). She is best known for her textile designs and one of her carpet designs became one of the biggest selling commercial carpets available in Britain during the 1950s and 60s.

In 1952 she moved to Buck’s House in Great Bardfield, Essex. While in Great Bardfield, Glass and her husband became friendly with the village art community known as the Great Bardfield Artists. They organised a series of large open house exhibitions during the 1950s, which attracted thousands of visitors. Glass exhibited textiles and pictures at all these shows. Known for her fine sense of colour her textiles and paintings were mainly semi-abstract in design. Some of her work is included in the collection of the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex.

The Bardfield art community fragmented in the early 1960s and Glass and her family (which now included four sons) briefly moved to London before relocating to (15th century) Little Baddow Hall, near Chelmsford, Essex. During this time the artist’s output was restricted to making and decorating ceramics, Following the example of the earlier Bardfield summer exhibitions, Glass established in 1971 a series of large summer art festivals at her Essex home. These were very popular with the local art community and in 1974 she converted her house and established the Little Baddow Hall Arts Centre.

Musicians and artists attracted to the centre included Howard Shelly, the Medici Quartet, John Miller (artist) and Andy Warhol, as well as prominent local artists Geoffrey Burnand, John Doubleday and Humphrey Spender. According to her obituary, the Arts Centre’s ‘enormous popularity was due in no part to Joan’s own stamp of style and sophistication, combined with a welcoming lack of pretension.' Despite its popularity with the mid Essex art community, the arts centre closed in 1979 and in 1990 she moved to a smaller house in Little Baddow.

Read more about this topic:  Joan Glass, Biography

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.
    Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)

    From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)