Dana Robbins began his exploration with glass in the late 1980’s during his undergraduate studies at San Jose State University. While in college, Dana created works of art using several different materials including ceramics, glass, and metals such as silver and bronze. Dana created many 3-dimensional sculptures using mixed media while at SJSU. It was here that he first developed his signature blown glass and cast bronze sculptures.
Dana earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education at SJSU, while he also continued working as a TA, teaching glassblowing to the beginning students and continuing to create new artwork. During this time at SJSU, Dana had an opportunity to explore his ideas and create sculptures bronze and glass sculptures that received national recognition from the Corning Museum of Glass. Slides of this work were published in the 1989 and 1990 annual “New Glass Review” and these images are now in the permanent archive collection at the Corning Museum of Glass.
To enhance his design and technical skills using glass, Dana also attended summer workshops at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA. Here he studied with master glass artists from all over the world, learning new techniques and applications for Art Glass. This learning experience at Pilchuck was extremely inspirational for future design ideas in glass.
In 1992, Dana started a flat glass design business, sandblasting and deep carving on sheet glass. Dana with two other business partners worked together creating architectural glass designs for restaurants, casinos and private homes. Their partnership was very successful and Dana learned a great deal about the flat glass business, however, the other partners wanted to move in different directions. Dana Robbins had an opportunity to build his own hot shop and create his own art glass company. The rest is history.
Karen Robbins began her artistic career working on theater and film productions at the University of Massachusetts in the early 1980’s. During her undergraduate studies, Karen was working on productions in several areas of the industry from painting and designing sets to producing short films. In 1986, Karen transferred to the University of California where she pursued a career in video and film production and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from UCSC in 1988. After finishing college, Karen continued to work in the production industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, creating short films, producing documentaries, event videos, live events and television productions.
Throughout her life, Karen had been involved in many areas of art, but had not experienced the art of glassblowing until she met Dana at San Jose State University. She came across the glass department at an open studio tour in 1990. There in the shop, Karen saw Dana working with hot glass and was captivated by this fiery molten material. She immediately thought it would be a great subject for a video and planned a video shoot of the glassblowing in action. Karen’s first experiences with hot glass were from behind the camera, shooting the students at work, learning the process from a different perspective and producing a short video on the art of glassblowing.
After studying the process for a couple of years from behind the camera, Karen finally decided she wanted to learn how to blow glass. She had an opportunity to work at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA where she picked up her first blow pipe. Both students and employees had access to some of the best equipment and instructors in glass from around the world. Attending Pilchuck is said to be a life-altering experience, and it was. After spending 6 weeks at the school, Karen was inspired to pursue this art form.
When she returned to California from Washington, Karen married Dana and decided to move to New Mexico where they could build a home and hot glass studio on the old family ranch. This was the beginning of their lifelong partnership and the start of Robbins Ranch Art Glass. Karen and Dana complement each other extremely well with their skills, talents and ideas which continue to build their business into a successful art glass company.
We are proud to represent Robbins Ranch at Art Gallery 66 and invite all of our friends to come in and see these spectular pieces of the glass blowers art!
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