Written by DCist contributor Kelly Rand

With Leonardo DiCaprio riding around in a hybrid car and Al Gore winning an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, “green” seems to be all the rage these days. But glass artist Erwin Timmers was “green” before “green” was cool. Co-founder and director of the Washington Glass School and Studio, Timmers experiments with firing techniques to incorporate discarded tempered glass into his art, giving it new life and diverting it from the waste stream. DCist caught up with him after a talk at his show, "Re-Creation: A Green Artist's View", at Studio Gallery.

Throughout your career, you have worked with reclaimed and recycled materials. What brought you to that, and what do you like best about working with these materials?

The feeling inside. Using something that nobody else would use, that would probably end up in a trash heap somewhere. That already gives me a good feeling right there. Then, to be able to make something that other people respond to, something beautiful that draws in people. That is the icing on the cake. I think part of my recycling heritage also comes from my up bringing. I was born in Holland, raised in Holland. Holland is actually quite different from the United States. In fact, it is a very small country with very limited resources and everybody is very careful about what they use. Everybody turns off the light when leaving a room, turns off the heat when they leave the room, that sort of thing. And here, I rarely find that. Some of the installations we’ve done for wealthier people, who can afford chandeliers or art pieces, or general people in the suburbs I meet; that mentality is not there. They are more concerned about the way their environment looks; they are not so concerned with how they impact that environment.

I actually have this discussion with my wife sometimes, too. When it's cold in the house, I’ll be the one to put on a sweater and she’s the one to turn up the heat. I liken it to how she likes to adapt her environment to her, whereas I like to adapt to my environment. I think it’s all a part of trying to minimize my impact on the environment, my footprint, they talk about these days, or carbon, or environmental footprint. I think that’s a great analogy, the smaller the footprint I make, the less of a problem trail I’ll leave behind later.

"Re-Creation: A Green Artist's View" has been getting a lot of attention because of the green element. “Green” is a hot issue. Do you see this as a trend or fad? How would you continue on, after or if the “green” fad goes out of style?

I hope it’s not a trend. I do believe that people are starting to see a long term need for change, and I think changes are already seeping in and I’m hoping they are here to stay. I think we’re starting to change a little bit and I think we need to change a whole lot more, before everything is more in course with the way it should be. Since this has been getting so much attention, I have been confronted with the attention, that I didn’t see so much of before, when I was using the recycled metals and thing like that. I’ve always listed it as using recycled materials, but it has never really bounced back to me the way that it is now. I think I can use this and grow with it more. I’ve joined a couple of environmental groups that meet around D.C., that talk about environmental topics, things like what we can do personally, what we can do as artists. The Green Festival is coming up in D.C. in the fall and I’ll have a booth there and am working on trying to get some speaker panels together, where we as artists, talk about what it means to be artists of change, how we in our art can address the issue, and in our process how we can address the issue.

Art and social change is another big topic, looking at what can be progressed though art. Do you see yourself as one of those artists?

I hope to be. It’s all about being in the right spot in the right time and it seemed to be that this right time is right now. I want to do whatever I can to make this social change happen. I hope I am doing the right things. It’s always tough. There are so many things that you can do, certain things you’ll never think of, some things you’ll think of that don’t work. It’s also a matter of having the right tools at the right time.

You mentioned earlier in your talk that you hoped the show would be something to express ways that people could change one or two things in their lives.

That is what the whole show is about. Basically to make people look, at first of all the art, but what the art stands for - society, our living situation - and take from the show that you can look beyond the surface and look a little bit deeper and see what changes can be made. What changes you can affect or affect in others, to guide our society to a more sustainable practice.

You bring a humorous element into the show, with Mr. Cobra Head and The One that Got Away, and juxtapose it with more of the serious side of the issue.

The humor sometimes just pops up. You have to stay humorous through it all. Recycling and the environment, you can get really depressed about it if you really start to think about it hard. I was watching a video this morning and it had constant images of natural disasters and chemical spills flashing across the screen constantly, and I had to turn the TV off. You can get really depressed if you think about it too much. I want to bring the humor in, to lighten it up to bring it back to reality. Reality, for you and me, is we are here in D.C. and not fighting for our lives in an ocean somewhere, not jumping from ice flow to ice flow like the polar bears. We’re here, and these are the people that I am reaching out to, so I want to keep that levity to not let the show have too much of a heavy impact.

Glass is a fascinating medium in that it straddles the line between craft and fine art. Where do you define glass for yourself?

My glass, I never really started as a craft. I’m not a seasoned glass blower. I started with glass five years ago, so I don’t pretend to know everything. I worked with glass to add it to my sculpture. I have always seen it as sculpture. I have been involved in these discussions many times, between art and craft. The way that I am approaching the art, the craft part is there in order to make the pieces; you always have to craft something in order to make the art. My emphasis is not on the craft, my emphasis is more on bringing a message across, making people aware, drawing people in more with a look or a concept then with some glistening perfection.

You have the Washington Glass School, the Washington Glass Studio, a gallery show, public art works; you seem to have a lot on your plate. How do you balance everything?

A lot has happen this year. I have the show; we’ve been moving our studio from first where the baseball stadium was, to our temporary location, now to our permanent location. Really, I don’t know. I have two kids at home and they need attention, too. There are three of us working together at the studio; we had a great intern, who now unfortunately left for the summer. So we’re training some new ones, so slowly but surely. We haven’t had any vacation.

What brought you to teaching?

I’ve always taught. I lived in Italy for a while. I taught English as a second language. I love interacting with people, especially in a smaller class. I don’t enjoy as much, standing in front of a class of thirty people. I enjoy smaller workshops that we have. Right now I am teaching a welding class; there is only four students and a TA and it’s great. We all interact with each other, exchange ideas. Each person gets a lot of individual attention, and I feel like I’m really able to help them make something and guide them. I guess it’s a love of helping. Seeing other people grow is very rewarding. You see someone make something great after you have shown them how to do it, it is fantastic.

It is progressing the field?

I guess it does. Yes and no. I like the concept we have as a school where we teach focused classes, certain projects, making a certain item, not just like a blanket statement where everybody goes off and does their own thing. We really give personal attention, and that broadens the field. We’re also worried that we are teaching our competition. We have worried about that and then realize that there is nothing we can do about it. There is no real competition in art, I guess. It’s all individual artists interacting with galleries, interacting with the public.

What do you like best? The individual pieces you make for gallery work, or public art works?

Good question. It’s hard to make the choice, as they both have their pros and cons. In my pieces I don’t have to make any compromise. Only, the compromise in my mind, as far as being able to hang it on the wall, put it in a gallery, a logistical compromise. For public art, you go through committees, the work changes so many times. There is a piece that we are putting up in Sliver Spring, and it’s still a year away. We went through the public art committee, twice, no three times, and every time they change something – they don’t like this, they don’t like that. They went from a conceptual piece to a more abstract, color reflection type thing. And so we were a little disappointed in it. But usually when we start these projects they are really fun to work on. You are focused for a couple months at a time making and it’s big, it’s such a great high when it’s done. I prefer my own pieces first, followed closely by the other.

Do you see value in doing public art works?

Definitely. Just last week was the opening to the Environmental Protection Agency installation. It was so good to see that everybody was looking at the work. The glass draws people in to look at it. The piece there is an educational installation; the glass and artwork is around a cistern. It brings people in and gives people something to think about while just strolling through the courtyard. It really focuses people in on the cistern that is the focus of the courtyard. And that’s really great.

"Re-Creation: A Green Artist's View" is on view at Studio Gallery through June 17th.