David Willis grew up outside of New York City and earned a BA in Interdepartmental Field Studies from UC Berkeley with an emphasis on Social Change and a Minor in Conservation and Resources Studies. He began working with glass in 1994 which marks the beginning of a decade’s long immersion in the field and has led to a diverse body of work. Drawing heavily from nature and taking a cross-disciplinary approach to the material, his work focuses on the idea that the most intimate and important aspects of an individual’s life are common to all people.

Willis has been Lecturer at the University of Washington in the School of Art, Art History and Design. He has also been instructor at institutions including the Pilchuck Glass School, the Corning Museum of Glass Studio, the University of Oregon, and the Penland School of Craft. He has been a featured artist at the Niijima Glass Art Festival in Japan and has demonstrated many times for the Glass Art Society. Willis has been honored with an Award of Excellence for Artistic Mastery of Glass at the International Flameworking Conference, and a Visiting Artist Residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA.

His work is included in public, private, and museum collections nationally and internationally, and has been published in books and magazines including ARTnews, American Craft, New Glass Review, Contemporary Flameworking Vol III, and Lampworking the 20th Century to the Present.

In addition to his personal artistic practice, Willis has acted as a lead assistant to some of the world’s blue-chip contemporary artists who wish to broaden their sculptural work in the media of glass. He has worked internationally as an assistant and fabricator to artists such as Jim Hodges, Kiki Smith, and Urs Fischer.

Serving on the Board of Trustees of the Pilchuck Glass School, Willis has been the Chair of the Green Committee and Co-Chair of the newly established DEAI Committee.

I work mostly with glass and consider it under explored as an art medium. Due to the scale of energy and often equipment involved in heating glass to a workable state, for most of history it has been used in the production of functional and trade goods, often in a factory type setting. Only relatively recently, during about the last sixty years, have independent artists had the leisure and privilege to access and explore the material.

I am continually excited and thankful to be engaged in experimentation. My curiosity about, and attraction to the properties of glass as a has led me through a broad range of practice. Although what I am doing is often tied to investigations of process and possibility, it is not about them.

I generally find my work close to home. Most of my subjects are drawn directly from my interest in natural forms and from the physical environments I find myself in, also my garden, my family.