WRA art teacher earns national recognition

Western Reserve Academy faculty member Tom Armbruster’s glass sculpture, Displaced Tonality, was featured on the American Craft Council’s website.

The article describes the piece as one where “each linear shape is individually cast and is unique, but then is combined and balanced with other unique forms to create a cohesive whole.”

Armbruster, of Hudson, has taught at WRA, a co-ed boarding and day school in Hudson, since 1983. He said he was looking for a way to use glass when inspiration struck.

“I want to make things that express my observations and over the years I’ve noticed there is a certain balance that exists in life,” he explained. “In this work I am configuring dissimilar shapes into a larger whole. The sculpture is working when I achieve an interdependent tension in the relationship between parts. The visual qualities of glass can be used to express the wonder we experience as we observe a curious balance around us.

“These pieces are about the natural tension that surfaces in our daily lives, our relationships and in our environment. It is the necessary interaction of things which are in a continual state of about to be. If we are open to it, we can sense a balance that is there as we are changed by our relationships and things growing around us.”

In his 3-D art studio in the Knight Fine Arts Center, Armbruster has created an environment where students can discover the joy of being creative while working with a variety of materials, from plaster to clay, wood, metal and plastics.

“Making things with your hands and thinking creatively is a nice balance to the academic rigor that our students have on a daily basis,” he said. “In the studio, I share the enthusiastic energy I have for creating artwork, the students see it and they have an affinity for it. I love seeing the sparkle in a student’s eyes when they are making what they want to make. The energy generated by a room full of these individuals is really something.”

Armbruster’s work with cast glass sculpture has been recognized over the years through three Ohio Arts Council fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2005, one of his pieces was selected for inclusion in New Glass Review, a survey of 100 images published each spring by the Corning Museum of Glass.

His sculptures can be found in The Corning Museum of Glass Twentieth Century Collection, the Columbus Museum of Art Permanent Collection, the James A. Michener Collection at Kent State University and The Corporate Collection of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

After 29 years, Armbruster still relishes the daily opportunity to help his students develop their skills.

“My job is to set the studio up so that I can then enjoy watching the students find their way as artists,” he said. “I just show them what I know and they are very bright kids who get it. If the students get the impression that they are artists sharing a studio space with me, then I have succeeded.

“When people are excited about what they are doing it is a nice place to be.”

To view more of his work, visit www.tomarmbruster.com.