Last week, when DCist met with Michael Janis at the Washington Glass School, the studio was abuzz with artists working. Janis’ colleagues Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers were there working on their own projects, and the team was preparing for several upcoming events: this Saturday’s Gateway Arts District Open Studios, the many glass events at Artomatic, and the June 4 grand opening of their public art project at Ballston Liberty Plaza, as well as their regular regimen of teaching classes, creating artwork, and displaying in galleries nationwide.

At WSG, Janis and his colleagues encourage innovation in classes and in their own work.

You learn technique. You learn the craft. Now, what are you going to do with it? You can just make the most pretty, decorative bowls, but you can also start saying, ‘once you learn the technique, you might want to add more of yourself to that piece, and where do you go from there once you learn it?’… It’s a lot of fun to see these people take it through and see where … they find their voice, and how much they explore with it.

Sometimes in my classes, I’ll actually step away when they’re doing something I consider so wrong, because I think that there actually might actually be an idea in there. And, I’ll let them do it wrong, and it will come out completely against the way they are thinking about it, and I’ll say, ‘Stop thinking about that it’s wrong. Think about what you just made. Reevaluate…Don’t worry about the flaws; actually embrace them as part of the piece.

Janis applies this way of thinking to his work as well, stating, “Sometimes a failure is not really a failure, it’s only how you categorized it. The piece there is actually a failure when I pulled from the kiln, this Submergence of Ophelia (pictured). I had intended there to be the thinnest, finest line.” After hiding the piece away, he brought it out again to reevaluate, and realized the piece works despite his original intention.