What Holds

Originally from Gdańsk, Filomena Smoła is one of the few women in Poland who blow and work hot glass independently. She studied in the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass and in painting at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. She then received a scholarship for an MFA at Kent State University in Ohio, one of the oldest glass programmes in the United States, where she now also teaches. She has held fellowships and residencies at UrbanGlass in New York, at the Chrysler Museum of Art and with the lighting company Bocci, and her work was selected for New Glass Review 43 by the Corning Museum of Glass.

For Smoła, glassblowing is a matter of intimacy and direct physical engagement with a demanding material. Each piece is blown and shaped by hand, and her forms balance fluidity and tension, fragility and presence. Her family roots also shape the work: a recent series of vases draws on the Lemko region of the Beskid Niski mountains. Her pieces have been shown internationally, from the Prague Gallery of Czech Glass and the Glass Art Society to Milan Design Week, 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen and Spazio Giallo in Rome.

Working between Poland and the United States, she pursues what she calls an endless search for beauty in blown glass.