Bio

Richard Jolley Bio

     Richard Jolley was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1952 and then moved in his youth to Oak Ridge,

Tennessee. In 1970, the artist began his studies at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee,

studying glass under Michael Taylor. Taylor was then invited to create his next program at

George Peabody College in Nashville (now a part of Vanderbilt University) where Jolley later

completed his B.F.A. In the fall of that year, Jolley further polished his technique at Penland

School of Crafts in North Carolina under the instruction of Richard Ritter. Jolley continues this

teaching tradition by frequently returning to Penland and through unique programs designed

to involve at-risk students in the Knoxville community with professional working artists.  

 

     Building and maintaining a glass studio in Knoxville since 1975, Richard Jolley has participated

in over 65 solo museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the country as well as Europe and

Japan. Early in his career, Jolley had been included in some of the most important glass

exhibitions at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporro, Japan, and the International

Exhibition Glass in Kanazawa, Japan, as well as Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey and

Laumier Sculpture Park in Missouri. Over the next decade the artist continued to be included

in important museum exhibitions surveying contemporary glass and sculpture such as the

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Renwick Gallery of the

Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art and most recently in the

Wornick Collection exhibited at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. After numerous solo

exhibitions Mark R. Leach of the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, organized

the first cohesive exhibition of Jolley’s mature glass sculpture works in 1997. Then in 2002

Richard Guber, then Director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Stephen Wicks,

Curator of the Knoxville Museum of Art, organized the artist’s first major retrospective

exhibition that traveled to 14 museums in the US over five years. Richard Jolley’s

extensive body of work along with the glass work of Tommie Rush, his wife, will be

re-examined by the Mobile Museum of Art in April of 2011.

 

      Since 1973, the artists’ work has been extensively collected both privately and by

public institutions. Found in over 33 public collections, notable establishments

including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Corning Museum of Glass, Knoxville

Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts,

Boston, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC,

and the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles.

 

     Richard Jolley has additionally been honored for his art through a variety of awards,

commissions, and invitational workshops in Tennessee and abroad. In 2007 Jolley was

the youngest visual artist to ever receive the Tennessee “Governor’s Distinguished Artist

Award” and acknowledged with the 2010 “Individual for Outstanding Accomplishment in

the Field” by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. In 1998, the Tennessee Arts

Commission selected the artist to participate in a Tennessee/ Israeli Cultural Artist Exchange,

and in 2009 started exhibiting his work at the Litvak Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel. Then in 2011

the artist was invited to complete a new series of art at the Berengo Studio, Murano, Italy, and

will exhibit the work at Venice Project, Venice, Italy, in May of 2011.

 

     Richard Jolley has received several private and public commissions including

“Absolut Statehood: Tennessee” 1993 national ad campaign for Absolut Vodka followed

by the creation of a custom martini glass for Bombay Sapphire Gin international ad campaign.

Current prominent sculpture commissions include “Everything and the Cosmos” (2007)

installed in the Seven World Trade Center, New York City and the forthcoming largest glass

installation at the Knoxville Museum of Art to be completed in 2013.