In Puget Sound, renowned as one of the world’s most creative regions for glass art, artist John Hogan is creating works in cast and blown glass that facilitate and complement the beauty, intensity and radiance of light. Hogan’s work and career has followed a steady, consistent progression, guided by his own passion, a strong education and a string of mentors that have helped shape his outlook and craft.

John Hogan hails from a region steeped in this history and tradition, from an place that has long prided itself on its inven-tion and independence. The Studio Glass Movement was born in the mid-west 50 years ago, when artists in Toledo, Ohio first started making art with glass. Hogan grew up next to a glass-blowing studio and, from the age of six, knew he wanted to be a glass artist. At 15, Hogan enrolled in his first glass blowing courses at the Toledo Museum of Art. Later, he attended Bowling Green University just south of Toledo, majoring in Political Science, with a minor in Fine Arts.

After graduating in 2008, Hogan was drawn to Seattle, to a region known for the depth and strength of its glass arts community. In 2010, he co-founded “5416” studio, named after its Ballard Street address, and was soon showing in local galleries as well as in New York, Miami and Europe. His work, characterized by its subtlety and simplicity, began attracting a following of designers from around the country.

The next stage of Hogan’s education consisted of a series of mentorships and studio studies under leaders of different glass traditions around the world. He worked with artists Osamu and Yumiko Noda at Pilchuck in 2013 and later at their atelier in Niijima. His first two days with the Nodas consisted solely of traditional Japanese calligraphy, a requirement before apprentices were allowed to enter the studio. The Nodas view brush work as an analogue for the fine eye-hand skills needed to craft the most meticulous glass pieces. The Nodas approach to glass was more experimental and free than anything Hogan had yet seen, and their playful, sensitive approach left a lasting impression. Hogan next studied at Novy Bor, in the Czech Republic, in the studio of Milan Handl, study-ing the sophisticated kiln technology Handl used to make large scale cast works. Those techniques would come to both inform and define Hogan’s work, allowing him to use cast glass as a medium to control and manipulate light.

Hogan’s first opportunity to experiment with architecture came with an invitation to work with MOS Architects on a project for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Together, they created a 16-foot tower in load-bearing, stacked, cast-glass blocks, a conceptual design updating the 1922 competition for an office tower for the Chicago Tribune, one of the landmark events of Modern architecture. Hogan and MOS Architects continue to collaborate, working to further develop and refine the systems they began at the Biennial to build structures and interiors with glass.

The story of Hogan’s collaboration with Westbank and architect James Cheng begins with an exploration that started at the Shangri-La Vancouver. This was a project where Westbank and JKMC Architects first experimented with the layering of screens, a concept they later continued with Kengo Kuma on Alberni by Kengo Kuma, through the Japanese design philosophy of layering. They had been thinking about a screen layer on the podium of their project at Third and Virginia for some time, when a senior Westbank staffer first identified Hogan’s Chicago Biennial designs. On researching his other work, she suggested Hogan might be the artistic collaborator they’d been looking for to help refine this screen concept. Soon Hogan was in conversation with Westbank founder Ian Gillespie, discussing how a glass installation could modify light coming into the building: “We were talking about a second skin, how a veil of silk could be draped over the building podium.” Hogan went back to his studio and produced five concepts, and together, he and Westbank chose Light as a Common Thread, Glass Veil.