\u201cArt is a strange business because we distill emotions into a form.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
-Harvey Littleton-<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At Hillbrook, young Lucas Kernan (Class of \u201913) was already known for their creativity and artistic passions. \u201cEven when I was at Hillbrook, people who knew me could tell you I always had more pots than I had hands.\u201d A frequent fixture in Hillbrook\u2019s art rooms at every possible moment, Lucas painted, wrote, drew, and acted in between classes and before and after school. \u201cI loved the experimental and the community aspects of making art. I always felt free to explore whatever side of my artistic self I wanted to in all our classes\u2014the teachers did a great job of starting us all with a project prompt and then just seeing where it would go. At a Hillbrook art show, you might walk past thirty ceramic pandas, but each one would be distinctly different from the other.\u201d Hillbrook parent and teacher Mary Hammers said, \u201cAs long as I\u2019ve known Lucas, I\u2019ve been amazed by their drive to create, whether it\u2019s painting, acting, bonsai, cooking, comedy, even duct tape creations.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt Hillbrook, art was always meant to be shared,\u201d Lucas added. \u201cI do hope to teach in some capacity one day, so I look forward to giving my students a very similar feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just before their final year at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, the first wave of the pandemic overtook New York. Lucas found that their artistic passions\u2014already a core piece of their life\u2014became more than just creatively fulfilling. \u201cIt was a survival move,\u201d Lucas said. \u201cI\u2019m a super stir-crazy person, so when we all got sent home and separated from the networks we had built up for ourselves\u2013\u2013both professionally and personally\u2013\u2013my first thought was how am I going to take care of myself?<\/em> I always turn towards creativity in times like that, so I threw myself into every passion that I had. I started a digital magazine with a few friends, shot and edited a couple of comedy videos, painted\u2014all sorts of stuff. I kind of tripped and fell into the glass opportunity in the wake of all that. The process was an extension of the way I already thought.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Glassblowing requires a certain amount of natural ability, and an artistic legacy came directly from Lucas\u2019s grandfather, an artist, teacher, and pioneer in American glassblowing. \u201cHe studied with Harvey Littleton, who is considered the godfather of the midcentury American glass art movement,\u201d Lucas said. The movement was a leap forward for the American glassblowing industry, establishing artistic possibilities alongside its industrial and practical ones. Lucas\u2019s grandfather was one of the first students in Littleton\u2019s glassblowing introductory class (making him one of the first people to study glassblowing in an American university!) and continued on as a lifelong artist and professor, teaching glass arts at the Institute of Art in Chicago and establishing the glassblowing program at Virginia Commonwealth University. \u201cGlass is absolutely in my genes, and I feel like the way I learned glass is through a bloodline of sorts. That’s my favorite part of the whole thing, especially because the tradition of glass blowing in Europe is a familial one; it\u2019s a trade that is quite literally passed from generation to generation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The process was far from easy\u2013\u2013learning how to sculpt molten glass is as much a study in heartbreak management as artistic creation. \u201cGlass is equally as fragile when it\u2019s hot as it is when it\u2019s cold. You can do everything right through 90% of the process, have a beautiful piece that is nearly ready, and flub it at the last minute. I\u2019ve spent upwards of an hour on some pieces only to have them die on me right as I\u2019m about to finish them.\u201d Lucas\u2019s early apprenticeship was \u201cpretty hands-off. [My teachers] coached me through the essentials for the first couple months\u2026but beyond that they just kinda put the pipe in my hand and said go forth!<\/em>\u201d The sandbox approach allowed Lucas the artistic freedom to try again and again, wading through mistakes toward new benchmarks and triumphs as the months went on. \u201cOnce you grow accustomed to the indefinite amount of failure you face over and over and over<\/em> again, blowing glass becomes a lot more like dancing. When you stop worrying about what you look like and just have fun with it, that’s when you really open yourself up to discovery.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n “When you stop worrying about what you look like and just have fun with it, that’s when you really open yourself up to discovery.”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n After graduating from NYU in the spring of 2021, Lucas found work as a technician at UrbanGlass, one of the largest art studios in New York City; their sense of art as a joyful community experience has continued to expand in Lucas\u2019s creative life. \u201cSince moving back to New York and getting into the glass scene here, I\u2019ve met all sorts of amazing people who make their living in glass in so many different cool and interesting ways. I was always told in drama school that work begets work<\/em>, and I didn\u2019t really believe it, because the acting industry is super-tough\u2014but in glass, it\u2019s totally true. The more you work with people, the more people you talk to both personally and on the studio floor, the more it opens doors for you. Glass is a niche industry in its own way, and uniquely connected because of it. The American glass movement is pretty young compared to a lot of other fine arts industries, so we all have to help each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glassblowing offered a surprising new use for Lucas\u2019s theater training, as well; as their skills developed, Lucas discovered surprising parallels between stage and studio. \u201cI\u2019ve always been super-interested in intersectional practice in the art world\u2013\u2013merging disciplines that one might not expect could work together.\u201d Their acting experience had already revealed the extraordinary power of controlled breathing, and the power of a focused breath to create a scene and a sculpture. \u201cGlass is a mysterious, elusive substance, and you have to listen and be observant, and listen to what IT wants to do. On a molecular level, there\u2019s not a lot that behaves the way glass does. I learned something called the Meisner technique in acting, where your attention is on literally everything but yourself\u2014you have to listen with more than just eyes and ears.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the simple act of breathing has taken on new meaning over the past two years (getting enough of it; the harm we might do with it) in Lucas\u2019s studio breath has become a transformative force to create stunning works of art. \u201cIn glassblowing, all of your power comes from your own lungs,\u201d they said. \u201cWhen you breathe with intent, you\u2019re creating an expanse within yourself. All of human life is centered on it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" _________ \u201cArt is a strange business because we distill emotions into a form.\u201d -Harvey Littleton- At Hillbrook, young Lucas Kernan (Class of \u201913) was already …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,57,202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-extraordinary-educational-experience","category-the-hillbrook-quarterly"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lucas-hbq-profile-photo.jpg?fit=1160%2C772","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2001,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/2001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lucas-k-young.jpeg\")
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