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24Sep

Glass in His Blood: How Ben Johnson Found His Life’s Work

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CIA professor and glass artist Ben Johnson in the college’s Glass Studio, where he teaches and creates work using centuries-old Italian glassblowing techniques. Courtesy Cleveland Institute of Art.

by Rebecca Meiser

When Ben Johnson was a preteen in a small Indiana town, he told his parents he wanted to move to Italy to be a professional glassblower.

“Italy’s pretty far away,” his mom and dad said with a laugh. “Maybe start closer to home.” Like Seattle. “They were supportive but practical,” Johnson recalls.

That mix of big dreams and down-to-earth advice perfectly captures Ben’s journey — a balance between passion and pragmatism that has shaped his artistic work and career as an associate professor of Craft + Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Drawing on centuries-old Italian glassblowing techniques, Johnson creates contemporary vessels that emphasize color and optical effects. Inspired by everyday patterns and his fascination with color theory and texture, his layered designs are achieved by applying colored overlays during blowing and then engraving cooled surfaces to add intricate textures and patterns.

Johnson’s work has been widely exhibited and is held in several prominent collections, including the Indiana State Museum. He’s been recognized as a Rising Star in contemporary glass by the Museum of American Glass and is a recipient of the prestigious Windgate Fellowship.

But despite that early declaration, it wasn’t always clear that Johnson would make it as a glass artist. In this Canvas interview, he reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped his craft, the mentors who pushed him forward, and how he balances technical mastery with artistic vision.

Canvas: What initially attracted you to glass over ceramics or other media?

Johnson: Honestly, I thought I’d be a potter. I didn’t go straight to college; I just wanted to make ceramics. I took a ceramics class in high school and was basically living in that studio by senior year. Later, at an art center in Indianapolis, there was a glass studio next door. I took a glass class on a whim, fell in love, and started taking fewer ceramics classes.

Canvas: What is it about glassblowing that holds your interest?

Johnson: It demands your full attention. From the very beginning, you have to be all in—fully focused, with no distractions. It just attracts me: the idea that you are forced to do this thing until it’s done. There aren’t many things like that today.

Canvas: How did your path evolve in college, especially given your initial business studies?

Johnson: I was kind of pushed to go to college. I went to business school because it seemed practical, but I kept taking art classes on the side. I sold ceramics and glass at fairs, and my art teachers wondered why I wasn’t going all in on art school and doing this more. My parents, being parents, were like, “He’s not going to art school.” But I kept making and selling more work. I was spending tons of time at the glass studio—helping teach, monitoring it, involved in everything except running or full teaching. Eventually, I found the courage to switch into the art program. Later, I did a summer course at Kent State (University) and and thought, “This is great. I can have more access here.” I was exposed to equipment and resources I hadn’t seen in the small community studio, so I transferred there. It felt right— close to home but with more opportunity.

Glass artist and CIA professor Ben Johnson demonstrates his craft to (from left) recent BFA graduate Annie O’Brien, emeritus faculty Brent Kee Young, and studio manager Zac Gorell in the CIA Glass program studio. Courtesy Cleveland Institute of Art.

Canvas: When did you start thinking glass could be a career, not just a hobby?

Johnson: Near the end of undergrad, I honestly wasn’t sure. I thought I might get a “real” job. But one professor—an emeritus who founded the glass program—pushed me hard. He asked, “What are you going to do after school?” I said, “I don’t think I’m pursuing this. It just seems hard.” He said, “You’re going to be a studio assistant.” I thought, “No way.” But he was really pushy—a tough old Brooklyn guy who just said, “You’re gonna do what I say.” So I interviewed, moved to Rhode Island, and was a studio assistant for a couple years. He also nominated me for the Windgate Fellowship—$15,000 for ten undergrads nationwide.

Canvas: You’ve received several other fellowships and awards. How have they impacted your work?

Johnson: I’ve been lucky. Beyond the Windgate, I’ve gotten teaching awards with cash prizes, and creative renewal fellowships worth $10,000 to $25,000. These awards are usually unrestricted money, which is a huge blessing to an artist. You don’t have to sell your work to get them—you submit, they recognize your work, and you keep both your work and the money.

Every time I’ve gotten an award, I’ve made something that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. It’s expensive to make monumental things, but if you’re not paying for it, it’s not expensive. Every one of those awards gives me the time and space to propel my career forward. It’s really hard, if you’re just a studio artist, to take those risks. So all of those awards and the cash prizes have really allowed me to not just repeat the same thing.

Canvas: Your work explores environment through patterns and textures. Has this focus been consistent?

Johnson: Higher education teaches you to overthink everything, which is good. I realized I’m drawn to symmetry, optical effects, and texture. Two themes keep coming up:
time and texture. I’m not into glass for quick results—I like spending ridiculous amounts of time on engraving, sandblasting, grinding—the things that aren’t flashy but require patience.

Canvas: How do you merge technical skill with conceptual ideas in your work?

Johnson: They go hand in hand. I practice “process-based abstraction”—immersing in a material I know well and letting the process guide the work.

Canvas: How has teaching influenced your art?

Johnson: Teaching lets me be the mentor I once needed. It keeps me connected to community and experimentation. When I was living on a mountain in North Carolina and blowing glass, I was isolated. I would make work and leave to sell it in places like Florida, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Philadelphia. I realized I wanted to be around people and share my skills and abilities with others.

I have one graduate this year—who won the Windgate, which was kind of a cool full circle moment.

Canvas: Anything else interesting we might want to know?

Johnson: Yes. I found out that almost 100 years earlier, a family member set up a glass factory in my hometown making containers. When I say I have “glass in my blood,” that’s why. Did that influence me subconsciously? I didn’t know until my 30s. The universe is weird like that.

CURRENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
- Ohio Designer Craftsmen’s Best of 2025
(Aug. 28 – Oct. 23 at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster)
- 2025 Faculty Exhibition in CIA’s Reinberger Gallery (Aug. 28 – Oct. 5, 2025)

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24Sep

The Small Town Gallery Leading a Big Conversation

Posted by: CanvasCLE Categories: Artist Features CanvasCLE
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A new gallery in Hudson is using creativity to change the conversation around art and mental health

Art is an avenue to create conversation to create healing, says Rick Kellar, president and CEO of Peg’s Foundation. He appears here beside the foundation’s second-floor offices, which features a children’s nook—complete with pegs—inviting even the youngest guests to join the conversation. Courtesy Rami Daud, Kent State University.

by Carlo Wolf

As you approach Peg’s Gallery in downtown Hudson, the message becomes clear: This is a different kind of space. On a meadow next to the entrance stands a massive aluminum and enamel sculpture called Bipolar Butterfly. Created by Stow-based artist Kimmy Henderson, the work’s vibrant, mismatched wings symbolize the dualities of mental illness—its chaos and its beauty.

“I actually didn’t start painting until my second child was born and the Butterfly Project didn’t start until after my first manic episode in 2016,” says Henderson, who was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder at age 35. She sees her work as a bridge between art and advocacy. “I think it shows how art has the power to bring about social change and activism.”

That connection—between creative expression and mental health—is at the heart of Peg’s Gallery and the foundation behind it. “Art is an avenue to create conversation, to create healing,” says Rick Kellar, president and chief executive of Peg’s Foundation since 2005.

Mimentic character, Lady Godiva, Cybernetic gentleman: Sketches from Dali that were on view at Peg’s Foundation. Courtesy Peg’s Foundation.
The butterflies here symbolize the dualities of mental illness – its chaos and beauty, as interpreted by Stow-based artist Kimmy Henderson, seated. Courtesy of Tracy Ganghi Photography.

A Mission Rooted in Lived Experience

More than just a gallery, Peg’s is also the foundation’s headquarters and a platform for experimentation—a think tank for reimagining how mental health can be addressed through culture and creativity. “A gallery could just be a gallery,” says Courtney Cable, Peg’s Foundation Lead of Arts & Communication. “But it’s really not just the gallery.” It’s a facilitator—a portal to start hard conversations.

That mission is reflected in the intimate, jewel-box 3,000-square-foot gallery designed by Peninsula Architects, which opened on Oct. 22, 2024. The gallery serves as the public-facing arm of Peg’s Foundation—a philanthropic organization with more than $106 million in assets, according to Guidestar, dedicated to improving the lives of people with serious mental illness.

The foundation is named for Margaret Clark “Peg” Morgan, an arts patron and mental health advocate whose son was diagnosed with schizophrenia. For Peg and her son, art was a shared refuge—a way to process, connect, and heal. Her motto, “Think Bigger,” still guides the organization. “She always said, ‘Hey, don’t come up with reasons why you can’t do something,’” recalls Kellar. “‘Think of how you can.’”
Visitors feel that spirit the moment they walk in, greeted by a large photo-collage “welcome wall” spotlighting Peg Morgan and the foundation’s mission, approach, and vision.

Tucked under the staircase to the foundation’s second-floor offices is a children’s nook—complete with pegs—inviting even the youngest guests to join the conversation.

Thinking Bigger–With Dali

That mindset is on full display in the gallery’s current exhibition: Dali Beyond Time: Fashioning the Future, an unexpected and ambitious show that pairs rarely seen Salvador Dali drawings and jewelry with futuristic garments designed by Kent State University fashion students. (The exhibition, which runs through September 27, opened June 12. Dali’s paintings were only on view through July 5th).

Dali Gallery opening: The opening of the Dali exhibit at Peg’s Foundation. The exhibit runs through Sept. 27, however, Dali’s paintings were only on view through July 5th. Courtesy of Rami Daud, Kent State University.

For a gallery in its first year of operation, mounting a show of this scale might seem improbable. But to Kellar, that’s the point. “You might think of a traditional approach to how you would do mental health, arts, or education—our three main focus areas,” he says. “I have kind of the opposite approach. We’re not a huge foundation; we’re not small, but we’re not huge. But to think that we could build a gallery of this size in this place and host Dali paintings within the first six or eight months—we did that.”

The seeds of the exhibition were planted decades ago, when Peg and Burt Morgan began supporting Kent State University, eventually endowing the fashion department’s directorship. At a dinner in New York last year, Kellar met an executive from Scabal, a luxury European fabric company that owns a collection of 12 Dali illustrations commissioned in the early 1970s to imagine fashion in the year 2000.

That meeting sparked an idea: What if Peg’s Gallery paired those works with new creations by fashion students—young designers who could bring Dali’s vision into the present?

Art as an Outlet

But the show is more than a visual delight. True to the foundation’s mission, Dali Beyond Time is also an exercise in creative healing and education. It includes workshops and opportunities for student designers to reflect on how art can serve as an emotional outlet.

“So it wasn’t just about bringing the paintings here, and it wasn’t just about the suits,” says Cable. “They wanted to encourage emerging designers through this experience as well. And that’s where the beautiful connection lies.”

Kent State student Ashleigh Stephenson, who led a croquis [figure drawing] workshop at the gallery and won a Dali Vision Award for a winged dress she created, says the experience affirmed her belief in the power of art to support mental health.

“Peg’s Gallery is an inspiration to me,” she says. “Mental illness is something that affects everyone, whether you yourself struggle with it, or it’s someone you know and love. Having
a creative outlet like fashion and art is a crucial part of my mental health.”

To Stephenson, galleries like Peg’s aren’t just places to view art—they’re spaces for healing. “It’s so important to bring awareness to mental health and advocate for a better future for those with mental illness,” she says. “And that is exactly what Peg’s Gallery does.”

A Different Kind of Gallery

Kellar credits his own experience as a former Green Beret with shaping the foundation’s unconventional approach. “Part of being in the Army is to be disruptive and contrarian in how I think about how things should be,” he says.

That mindset has fueled Peg’s ambitious growth. Before opening the new space, the gallery operated from a modest 300-square-foot lobby in a different building across the street. Even then, artists were lining up—both professionals and amateurs—to show their work.

“Artists are coming out of the woodwork,” Kellar says. “This is 10 times that capacity. It’s how you manage and do it right and protect your brand. And it’s all opportunity.”
One of the gallery’s most attractive features for emerging artists? It takes no commission on sales—unlike most galleries, which often take 40% to 50%.

And what comes after Dali Beyond Time?

The team is already thinking ahead. The next exhibition could feature local, national, or international artists—or some combination of all three. Peg’s Foundation will keep pushing boundaries, Kellar says, and continue proving that creative spaces can be catalysts for serious change.
There’s no reason a gallery in a small Ohio town can’t be a leader in mental health innovation. It just has to be willing to think big.

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