John Geci
John Geci is a North Carolina based glass artist whose studio practice is rooted in the tradition, experimentation, and community of the Penland area, an environment long celebrated for craft excellence and creative exchange. Working near Penland School of Craft, Geci has built a life around glass that reflects both deep technical fluency and a thoughtful, inquisitive approach to material, an approach that can be traced back to his earliest studies and the path that first brought him south.
Originally from Litchfield, Connecticut, Geci’s creative journey began not in a hot shop, but in the world of ideas. While studying philosophy at Hartwick College in upstate New York, he first realized his interest in glass, an encounter that resonated with the kinds of questions philosophy tends to sharpen: How do we understand perception, form, and transformation? What does it mean to make something both functional and expressive? Glass, with its paradoxical qualities, fragile yet durable, solid yet seemingly fluid, transparent yet reflective, offered a material language that felt uniquely suited to curiosity and contemplation. What started as an interest became a calling, and he committed himself to learning the craft with seriousness and purpose.
After graduating in 1994, Geci traveled to Penland School of Craft, drawn by its reputation as a place where skill and experimentation coexist, and where makers learn not only through instruction but through immersion. At Penland, he was a student and also a studio assistant to local glassblowers, an experience that placed him in the rhythm of daily practice and the discipline of production. In that setting, learning extended beyond single techniques into a broader understanding of the material’s possibilities. He absorbed a diverse array of approaches, technical, aesthetic, and conceptual, while developing the steady instincts that can only come from repetition, observation, and time at the bench. Assisting in the studio also reinforced the collaborative nature of glass, a medium that often requires teamwork, precision, and trust, and it grounded him in the values of craft: patience, rigor, and respect for process.
Geci’s evolution as an artist is inseparable from this early period of layered learning, watching experienced hands at work, stepping into the pace of a professional studio, and discovering how subtle changes in heat, timing, and movement can alter a form. Over time, these formative experiences became the foundation for his own voice, a practice attentive to detail and guided by a sensitivity to line, proportion, and the way light activates glass from within.
John Geci is a North Carolina based glass artist whose studio practice is rooted in the tradition, experimentation, and community of the Penland area, an environment long celebrated for craft excellence and creative exchange. Working near Penland School of Craft, Geci has built a life around glass that reflects both deep technical fluency and a thoughtful, inquisitive approach to material, an approach that can be traced back to his earliest studies and the path that first brought him south.
Originally from Litchfield, Connecticut, Geci’s creative journey began not in a hot shop, but in the world of ideas. While studying philosophy at Hartwick College in upstate New York, he first realized his interest in glass, an encounter that resonated with the kinds of questions philosophy tends to sharpen: How do we understand perception, form, and transformation? What does it mean to make something both functional and expressive? Glass, with its paradoxical qualities, fragile yet durable, solid yet seemingly fluid, transparent yet reflective, offered a material language that felt uniquely suited to curiosity and contemplation. What started as an interest became a calling, and he committed himself to learning the craft with seriousness and purpose.
After graduating in 1994, Geci traveled to Penland School of Craft, drawn by its reputation as a place where skill and experimentation coexist, and where makers learn not only through instruction but through immersion. At Penland, he was a student and also a studio assistant to local glassblowers, an experience that placed him in the rhythm of daily practice and the discipline of production. In that setting, learning extended beyond single techniques into a broader understanding of the material’s possibilities. He absorbed a diverse array of approaches, technical, aesthetic, and conceptual, while developing the steady instincts that can only come from repetition, observation, and time at the bench. Assisting in the studio also reinforced the collaborative nature of glass, a medium that often requires teamwork, precision, and trust, and it grounded him in the values of craft: patience, rigor, and respect for process.
Geci’s evolution as an artist is inseparable from this early period of layered learning, watching experienced hands at work, stepping into the pace of a professional studio, and discovering how subtle changes in heat, timing, and movement can alter a form. Over time, these formative experiences became the foundation for his own voice, a practice attentive to detail and guided by a sensitivity to line, proportion, and the way light activates glass from within.