“Not me!”
Almost three decades have passed since I heard those two words. Spoken emphatically but gently by the artist I’d just met.
Tom Prochaska, printmaker and painter, was one of eight instructors from the Pacific Northwest College of Art that we’d invited to our glass factory studio to explore the transition between their primary media – largely painting, but also sculpture, calligraphy and printmaking – and the material and methods of kiln-formed glass.
The symposium’s leader was the renowned Italian-American painter-turned-glass master Narcissus Quagliata. On the first day, Quagliata introduced the group to the possibilities of clear sheet glass kiln-fired with clear and black frits, powders, and stringers.
“Tomorrow we’ll work with color” Quagliata announced at the end of Day One to a studio of genially nodding heads.
“Not me.” Prochaska’s simple two-word negation jarred me. As the child of a life-long teacher, the mere idea of refusing to follow-the-leader, was incomprehensible to me.
In the subsequent days, I watched the gentle nay-sayer relentlessly explore the possibilities of the most minimal of palettes.
By the end of the residency, Prochaska had still not picked up a single shard of Bullseye Glass Company’s rainbow-shiny color range. Yet what he’d created evoked all manner of emotion, from skepticism to delight to shock to confusion, almost all with an undercurrent of intense sensitivity and wry wit.
To this day I’ve never seen another artist working in glass say so much with so little. Lines that soar, droplets that speak, powder that floats.
Nine days ago Tom passed. I’d seen little of him in recent decades but always loved what I saw. And never forgot – likely never will – the relentless focus and gentle good humor behind the simplicity and determination of those first two words.
Yes, you, Tom. Thank you.
By Lani McGregor, in memory of Tom Prochaska (1945-2026)
