Glass Faculty

Meet Our

Glass Faculty

  •
    Associate Professor of Instruction and Program Head of Glass
    Glass

    Jessica Jane Julius

    • Email: jessica.julius@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-280-6521
    • Office: Tyler 120C
    • Website: www.jessicajjulius.com

    • Jessica Jane Julius is an artist, educator, collaborator and performer who creates glass installations, objects and imagery that examine how fear is infiltrating the ways in which we navigate the world and presents a look at the anxieties and complexities of our current “culture of fear.”  

      She is the co-founder of the artists’ collective and performance group, The Burnt Asphalt Family, who produces collaborative, participatory and edible works. Together they have performed at prestigious venues including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Chrysler Museum and Urban Glass. Her...

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  •
    Associate Professor, Program Head of Sculpture and Graduate Program Director
    Glass, Sculpture

    Sharyn O’Mara

    • Email: sharyn.omara@temple.edu
    • Phone: 215-777-9128
    • Office: Tyler 120D
    • Website: www.sharynomara.com

    • Sharyn O’Mara is an artist and educator whose interdisciplinary works explore the marks of language and the language of marks. Her practice is comprised of drawing, sculpture, glass, printmaking and installation.
       
      O’Mara’s current work involves reflections on empathy and longing while living in a media-possessed culture that so often feels devoid of intimacy and trust. Deeply connected to her dogs, she works with the residue of their existence—nose prints, shed hair, cremains—taking otherwise overlooked materials and phenomena and giving them significance through...

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  •
    Adjunct Professor
    Glass

    Madeline Rile Smith

    • Email: madeline.smith0003@temple.edu
    • Phone: (215)2669071
    • Website: http://www.madhotglass.com

    • Madeline Rile Smith is an artist specializing in glass with a focus on performance, video, and body-activated sculpture. Informed by her background in music, she creates objects and videos that explore connection, isolation, and degrees of bodily compromise. Madeline’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Toyama Glass Art Museum, Fuller Craft Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art. She is a recipient of the 2022 Saxe Emerging Artist Award. A passionate educator, she uses social media to bring awareness of glass art to...

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  • Adjunct Professor
    Glass

    Victoria Ahmadizadeh

    • Email: victoria.ahmadizadeh@temple.edu
    • Website: www.vahmadizadeh.com

    • Victoria Ahmadizadeh writes poetry in which the speaker longs to transcend the limitations of corporeality and urban life. These writings are then made tactile as images and objects. Glass serves as a central element in her work—its sharp softness, slick transparency and rich colors are used as a means for translating poetic metaphor. 

      MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University 
      BFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture

  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Glass

    Megan Biddle

    • Email: megan.biddle@temple.edu
    • Website: www.meganbiddle.com

    • Megan Biddle is an interdisciplinary artist whose work orbits between sculpture, installation and drawing. She produces experiment- and process-driven work with an emphasis on materials and their distinct characteristics. As an observer of nature, she responds to the elusive and subtle, reflecting on variations of time, cycles of growth and erosion.

      MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University
      BFA, Rhode Island School of Design

  • Adjunct Professor
    Glass

    Amber Cowan

    • Email: tuc16990@temple.edu
    • Website: www.ambercowan.com

    • Amber Cowan is a sculptor using the material of glass as her primary medium. She is currently working with a process which involves flameworking, blowing and hot-sculpting recycled, up-cycled and second-life glass from thrift stores, flea markets and post-production factory runs. She was the recipient of the 2014 Rakow Commission from The Corning Museum of Glass and her work is in the collections of the RISD Museum and the Shanghai Museum of Glass.

      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
      BFA, Salisbury University

  • Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Glass

    Kristen Neville Taylor

    • Email: kristen@temple.edu
    • Office: 120D
    • Website: www.kristennevilletaylor.com

    • Kristen Neville Taylor creates immersive installation-based environments designed to lead the viewer through a phenomenological and pedagogical experience that probes the events that shape human perception of nature. Taylor is a recent alumna of Vox Populi gallery, a recipient of the Laurie Wagman Prize in Glass and co-founder of the Philadelphia art gallery and collective, Little Berlin.

      MFA, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University

  • Adjunct Professor
    Glass

    Leo Tecosky

    • Email: leo.tecosky@temple.edu
    • Website: www.leotecosky.com

    • Leo Tecosky’s work is an investigation into the intersection of cultures and crafts. He is interested in recontextualizing traditional techniques to create new forms of decorative artifacts.

      MFA, School of Visual Arts
      BAFA, Alfred University