Wheaton Conversations: Dan Dailey & Richard Royal

Wheaton Conversations: 
Dan Dailey & Richard Royal

Watch the Jan. 27, 2022 recording above

Join artists Dan Dailey & Richard Royal as they reflect and converse about their art-making processes, collaborative experiences, and current projects.

This event is part of “Wheaton Conversations,” a new virtual series highlighting select artists with ties to WheatonArts! To see the full schedule of conversations, Click Here. 

Dan Dailey stands outdoors. He has dark hair and wears brown sunglasses and a black and white striped button-up.

American visual artist Dan Dailey has simultaneously produced sculpture and functional art with an emphasis on lighting since 1970. Made primarily from glass and metal, every piece of work begins with a drawing. Dailey’s drawings and the objects they inspire depict human character and the world we inhabit, with many familiar forms rendered iconic. His myriad series explores extraordinary concepts with a broad range of themes and styles. These attributes and his forty years of achievement and recognition have made Dan Dailey a prominent artist in the history of glass and unique among American artists.

Dailey was born in 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Philadelphia College of Art. Dailey received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he founded the Glass Department in 1973. He has taught at numerous schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Pilchuck Glass School, and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He has given lectures and workshops throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. Dailey’s emphasis on the individual development of his students’ sculptural concepts has defined his approach to teaching. He now works in his New Hampshire studio with the help of a staff of assistants.

Since 1971, Dailey has participated in over 300 group, juried, and invitational exhibitions, and has had numerous one-person museum and gallery exhibits, including a major retrospective at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and a recent installation at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. He has completed more than 70 architectural commissions for corporate headquarters, hospitals, municipalities, a county courthouse, a performing arts center, and private residences. His work is represented in more than 50 museums and public collections worldwide. 

Glass Artist Richard Royal stands smiling, setting a hand on a piece of his work. He has grey hair and dark eyes and wears a gray blazer and a deep blue shirt.

Richard Royal, a native of the Northwest and resident of Seattle, is recognized internationally as one of the most skilled and talented glassblowers in the studio glass movement. His sensitivity and natural affinity towards the material reveal themselves within his extensive body of work. Richard’s artistic approach combines sensuality, fluidity, and bold abundance to deliver gracefully attenuated pieces that speak of their own elegance and sculptural verticality.

Royal began working as a hot glass sculptor in 1978 at the Pilchuck Glass School, located north of Seattle, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. After spending a number of years as a ceramist, the challenge of the material and the birth of a new artistic movement appealed to the young artist. Royal worked for several years as one of Dale Chihuly’s main assistants, building skills, exploring the limits of the material, and developing an intimacy with glass as an expressive, creative medium. Working with Dale and other creative powerhouses such as Billy Morris and Benjamin Moore allowed Richard to explore diverse approaches to making. This background enabled Royal to shape his own unique voice and consequently led to his emergence in the art market in the early 1980s. Royal has since been a prolific independent artist exhibiting work internationally in both solo and group exhibitions for the past thirty years.

Royal’s work is included in renowned public and private collections worldwide. His work is found in such noteworthy museum collections as The Mint Museum of Art + Design (Charlotte, North Carolina), The High Museum (Atlanta, Georgia), the New Orleans Museum of Art (Louisiana), The Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa, Florida), and the Daiichi Museum (Nagoya, Japan). Royal was one of the first Artists-in-Residences at the Waterford Crystal Factory (Ireland). He teaches as both a guest artist and faculty member at various universities and the Pilchuck Glass School. His artwork is also included in the SAFECO Collection, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, and the Westinghouse Corporation.