Paul Stankard giggles often at his 50-year tenure in the studio glass art industry the work he’s done.
By KRYSTAL NURSE
The Sun
Studio glass creator Paul Stankard has been perfecting his craft for nearly 50 years. In his Mantua home and studio, he looked back on his life in the art world, and how he grew to love education and to motivate students to explore their respective career paths.
A graduate of Salem Community College’s scientific glassblowing program (formerly Salem County Vocational Technical Institute), Stankard said his father helped him find his niche in the art industry.
“My dad was a chemist, and he found out about Salem’s scientific glassblowing program,” said Stankard. “The students will craft laboratory glass art, and he was excited about that, so he encouraged me to enroll in it.”
Stankard was in school while South Jersey was in the midst of a boom in its glass-making industry as artists were eagerly signing up to enroll in bachelor’s and master’s programs at area colleges.
Nine years following his 1963 graduation, Stankard left the scientific glassblowing industry to become a self-employed studio artist crafting various paperweights and native flowers using glass. He said paperweights were highly sought after in South Jersey in the 1970s.
“I always wanted to be a maker,” said Stankard. “I didn’t want to be with a company that had a lot of people working for me. I just wanted to make things.”
Stankard’s main source of inspiration for his works, he said, comes from what he sees in nature.
“Native flowers of the Pinelands have always been a source of inspiration and joy,” said Stankard. “I’ve enjoyed visiting the native flowers in the Mantua parks. I enjoyed the trails in Chestnut Branch. I know when certain flowers bloom, and my favorite flower is the mountain-laurel.”
Flowers, and J. Kenneth Leap’s creations, were an inspiration for his art piece that was recently installed at Rowan College of Gloucester County, which Stankard attended briefly when it was formerly named Gloucester County College.
“It’s really a master of work and the motif is one with a sunflower and honey bees, the other is a foxglove with honey bees,” said Stankard. “They’re very special, and what was so nice is they positioned it that it hits the sun. I was very flattered that they gave it a lot of thought.”
He added that “beauty can be inspirational” and students will have the chance to see his interpretation of nature and the details he put into the two pieces because of how the college installed them.
Stankard said he and his wife, whom he met at a dance in Oaklyn, value education and are proud to donate pieces of his work to Rowan College of Gloucester County and Salem County College. He adds those colleges helped him find his niche in the art industry.
“They gave me an opportunity, a foundation and a platform to allow me to reach my full potential,” said Stankard. “Basically I didn’t have good grades or an interest in things. So I signed up, did my best, and it was wonderful.”
He added he and his wife will teach at the Gloucester and Salem counties’ colleges frequently and will sometimes host classes from area art schools in his studio, which was built in 1997, for lessons or tours.
The glassblower also takes time out of his day, when he’s not creating, to listen to books on tape and educates himself on whatever piques his brain at the time.
For students seeking to “make it big” in the art industry, he advised them to look at all past creations and to study how the artists made a certain piece of art and to push themselves to create something better.
“In this virtual dimension to my work, it’s about pursuing excellence and competing with the past that was made well, however many years ago, and with skill, you could bring that level of accomplishment to the future and make the work personal,” said Stankard.
Crafting intimate works of arts allows for others to become more fascinated with the objects and relating to it easier whether or not it’s abstract, added Stankard.
Stankard’s creations are spread out across the world in more 80 museums, including the Wheaton Arts’ Museum of American Glass in Millville, which has an exhibition on his work until the end of December. Information about the exhibit can be found at www.WheatonArts.org.
