At the Woburn Library, area youth spent the afternoon making carved designs that Levine and 14 MassArt students, all members of the College’s Iron Corps, then poured melted aluminum into so the participants could come away with their own one-of-a-kind creations once the metal hardened. MassArt Program Coordinator of Student Engagement John Intoppa was there, too, as was Holly Kelly (BFA ‘13), who teaches classes in Foundations. 

At the Salisbury Public library, Comic Arts instructor LJ Baptiste taught youth how to make four-panel comic strips. And at the Charlotte and William Bloomberg Medford Public Library, Fashion Design Chair and Professor Jennifer Varekamp led an interactive project where each participant contributed their own creative ideas while learning how to work toward a more sustainable future. With sewing machines supplied by MassArt, each participant also made their own tote bags out of used sails. The sewing machines were left behind for future use by the library’s teen program.

Fully 94 percent of participants responding to a questionnaire said they’d like to see more MassArt offerings at their library. “It gave kids an opportunity to ask questions about careers in the arts that they may not have had before,” says Woburn Library Director Hermayne Gordon.

Adds Amyot, “You know the impact the arts have on kids, especially around mental health. There’s been a lot of research since COVID about mental health issues kids are having and how the arts can help with that. This is a fantastic way to dovetail with that research and really help out teens.” She comments that she was glad to see teen boys show up as well as girls “because they are a very difficult group for libraries to reach.”

The Summer Art Workshops were so successful that the library board is thinking of them as a pilot program and hopes to collaborate with MassArt faculty and students to expand to more libraries next summer. “I’ve already heard from 20 libraries,” says the board’s Communications Director, Celeste Bruno. They want to know: “‘How do we get to do this?’ We’re at the beginning of something really exciting,” she comments.

Levine attests to the workshops’ value. The kids “weren’t running around and pretending to play sword fight,” she says. “They were really focused and engaged and said things like, ‘I didn’t think I liked art. This is so different.’” She isn’t surprised. When young people have any access to art, she relates, “it’s pretty limited and often not-three dimensional. But with this,” she notes, “you’re using a different part of your brain. It’s more gritty, and it’s magic. You’re melting metal. You never know who’s college bound and who might stumble on this. It can be a door that gets blown wide open for some kids.”

The advantages of the workshops weren’t limited to the attendees. Levine says it’s “equally important to get our students out engaging the community, to use the knowledge and skill base they’ve been developing at school. How cool if you’re a sophomore or junior — it’s a really empowering thing to help run this workshop. So from both sides, there’s so much benefit.”

Says Bruno, “A large part of the success is that MassArt is one of the best art schools in the country. People recognize that name. It really means something to them.”

Q: Being part of the Venice Biennale is an exceptional honor. How did your art come to be chosen?

James McLeod: I think I was contacted in part because of my position at MassArt. The European Cultural Center reached out and asked if I had any work I wanted to propose for the exhibition. I had a project that had been asleep for a while, and I thought this was a great opportunity to finish the series. It’s images and photos of life in Hebron that I printed on glass panels made with fusing and enamel techniques. My wife Libby partnered with me, taking some of the photos.

Q: What brought you to Hebron?

James McLeod: This was back in 2013. I had just finished leading a MassArt student group in Turkey — two weeks of glassmaking, and then we went around exploring the contemporary art world. The cousin of someone I was teaching with came to Istanbul while I was there — and on a whim I said I would visit her in Jerusalem. She was stationed there with the United Nations. But as I was about to fly over, she got pulled to the UK on a project. She did say, though, that someone in her office works on cross-cultural projects between Israel and Palestine and tries to pair people. ‘He will take you into a town in the West Bank and drop you with a family there for five days,’ she told me. ‘They have a glassblowing studio; they’ve been wanting to collaborate with somebody for a long time.’

Q: Then what happened? 

James McLeod: I stayed with a glassblowing family in Hebron—their last name is Al Natsheh. The vision of the man who headed the enterprise was that I would come as somebody who may have had more world experience in glass and share what I knew. But when I got there it was clear within seconds that I was the student, the apprentice. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to offer, but I saw that it was my role to observe and learn. 

Q: What do you mean?

James McLeod: This is one of the oldest glassblowing families in the world, dating back a couple thousand years. They have taught themselves how to work many times faster than we do, and with fewer resources – all recycled bottle glass. There are all these little tricks and techniques. For instance, we have these big fancy work benches; they work entirely on their laps. There used to be glassmaker artists all over Hebron. As far back as the thirteenth century it was called the crystal city. One of the things I discovered was how to make handles there with better consistency. Because of what I learned there, I can now work through everything much more quickly with far fewer tools. What they taught me puts more control in my own hands. 

Q: What was it like to be there? 

James McLeod: I thought it was going to feel very dangerous. And there are certainly tense parts everywhere. But it felt remarkably normal. This was a family that has just found a way to stay their course, to pursue their craft, and go on with business as usual and just exist in their world. Their attitude is, ‘We’re glassmakers. This is what we do.’ They’re looking for more ways to sell their work. 

Q: How might that happen?

James McLeod: For one thing, the border’s very porous if you’re not Israeli or Palestinian, although even there glassblowers from the two cultures try to make friends. But if you’re from somewhere else you can just hop on a bus from Jerusalem to Hebron. A year later I went back and taught in Jerusalem at the Betzalel Academy of Art. As an American I could go back and forth.

Q: What’s next for you?

James McLeod: I’m finishing up working on a film about the Al Natsheh family that I’ve been collaborating on with a filmmaker — I received a MassArt grant to do this, and the school loaned us all the equipment  — and it will be shown at the Venice Biennale later this year. I’m hoping to screen it here on campus, too. I’ve also been spending time on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean’s West Indies.

Q: What’s going on there?

James McLeod: I’ll be bringing two mobile glass studios down there at the end of the year to work with both private companies and the government in order to pioneer a recycling initiative on the island, showing how to take glass and turn it into something else so they don’t have to import as many things from overseas.

Q: Can you give an example?

James McLeod: The island’s industry is 90 percent tourism, so there are a lot of used alcohol bottles. You can process that glass back into sand and then reintroduce the sand into the construction industry as a component of concrete. Currently, all of the sand for construction is brought in primarily from West Africa because the sand on the island is needed for the beaches. By turning recycling glass into sand, they can offset those expensive imports.

Q: Wow, that’s fantastic. Did you ever imagine when you were younger that this could be your life, not only creating art as a glassmaker but also traveling to different lands to learn, to teach?

James McLeod: When I was younger, I applied to MassArt as my first-choice college when I was a senior in high school and didn’t get in. I had come out here from California with my parents and toured the campus. Not being accepted was a big disappointment. So no, I didn’t know where life would take me. I just knew I had to keep making  my art. From there, fate collaborates with your intentions.  

The Venice Biennale 2024 runs through November 24th.