John Littleton

John Littleton/Kate Vogel
Born	August 25, 1957/August 11, 1956 Madison, Wisconsin/Wimpole Park, Cambridgeshire, England
Nationality	U.S. citizens
Other names	John C. Littleton/Katherine E. Vogel, Kate E. Vogel
Occupation	Glass artists

John Littleton (born 1957) and Kate Vogel (born 1956) are American studio glass artists who have worked collaboratively since 1979. They are considered to be among the third generation of American Studio Glass Movement artists who trace their roots to the work of Harvey Littleton in the 1960s. John Littleton, the youngest child of Harvey Littleton, grew up in the shadow of his father's accomplishments in Madison, Wisconsin, where he experienced first-hand the personalities and events of the early glass movement. Glass, however, was not John Littleton's first medium of choice when it came time for him to select a career. It was only after majoring in photography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison that he began to create in glass. He soon formed a collaborative partnership with another art student, Kate Vogel, who had exchanged her study of two dimensional art for glass. The artists' earliest collaborations in glass were the bag forms for which they are well-known today. Since 2000 their work has included a series of arms and hands cast in amber-colored glass. Over the years the hands have held various objects, including river stones, large faceted glass “jewels”, and colorful cast glass leaves. In recent years Littleton and Vogel have also become known for their series of functional glass and wrought iron side tables.

John Littleton is the son of glass artist Harvey Littleton and his wife, Bess Tamura Littleton. He was born in 1957 in Madison, Wisconsin, where his father was a professor of art at the University of Wisconsin. Known as the father of the Studio Glass Movement, Harvey Littleton had introduced glass as a medium for the studio artist in two workshops that he organized on the grounds the Toledo Museum of Art in 1962. That fall, Littleton began teaching glass in a garage at his rural Wisconsin home and later secured University of Wisconsin funding to rent and equip an off-campus glass department in Madison. Harvey Littleton soon gained significant exposure for his artwork in glass and became a self-described “evangelist” for the medium, lecturing about its potential for the studio artist throughout the Midwest and Northeastern United States.

As a boy John Littleton grew up around glass art and his father’s colleagues in glass, including Dale Chihuly, Fritz Dreisbach, Erwin Eisch, Robert C. Fritz and Marvin Lipofsky. When it came time to select a course of study in college, John Littleton, in a bid to establish his identity apart from that of his father, majored in photography with Cavalierre Ketchum (b. 1934) and did independent study in glass with David Willard. He graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science in Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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