Jack Schmidt

American, born 1945

BiographyJack Schmidt is a Toledo-based artist with deep roots in the local glass community. Schmidt received his education at Bowling Green University, and although he traveled to England and later to New York State to complete his postgraduate studies with Andre Billeci at Alfred State University, he returned to the Toledo area to pursue his career in glass blowing. Schmidt has ties to several important figures in the early Toledo studio glass movement; he studied with Fritz Dreisbach beginning in 1969 and assisted on a 1972 Dreisbach artwork currently in the Toledo Museum of Art’s collection, Tenth Anniversary Goblet (1973.4).

Schmidt’s sculptures incorporate metal, glass, and stone. Schmidt's work has always been anchored in Toledo, and immediately after he received his Bachelor of Science from Bowling Green University in 1968, he took a position assisting Fritz Dreisbach at the TMA’s School of Design. He later traveled to England to study glass and work with contemporary glass artists. He was also an involved member of the Toledo Studio Glass Movement around this time and worked alongside many other prominent pioneers of glassblowing throughout the mid-century renaissance of artisan, small-scale glass blowing. In 1970, he was an instructor and acting department head of the glass program here at the TMA.

The TMA already has an additional work by Schmidt in the collection (Purple Walker, 1991.134). Currently, he runs a studio in downtown Toledo, which he opened in 1981 with his wife, Shawn Messenger, who is also an accomplished glass artist.

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