Glen Echo Glassworks presents Gathering Perspectives, a group exhibition of blown and fused glass artwork in the Popcorn Gallery.

Featuring artists: Paul Swartwood, Michaela Borghese, Ian Kessler-Gowell, Mark Hill, Carol Hurwitch, Michele Rubin, Ian Schmidt, Amy Snyder, Phil Valencia, Karen Wilson, and Janet Wittenberg. 

Hours & Information >>

Glen Echo Glassworks presents Gathering Perspectives, a group exhibition of blown and fused glass artwork in the Popcorn Gallery.

Featuring artists: Paul Swartwood, Michaela Borghese, Ian Kessler-Gowell, Mark Hill, Carol Hurwitch, Michele Rubin, Ian Schmidt, Amy Snyder, Phil Valencia, Karen Wilson, and Janet Wittenberg. 

Hours & Information >>

Glen Echo Glassworks presents Gathering Perspectives, a group exhibition of blown and fused glass artwork in the Popcorn Gallery.

Featuring artists: Paul Swartwood, Michaela Borghese, Ian Kessler-Gowell, Mark Hill, Carol Hurwitch, Michele Rubin, Ian Schmidt, Amy Snyder, Phil Valencia, Karen Wilson, and Janet Wittenberg. 

Hours & Information >>

Join us for an opening reception in the Park View Gallery. Marilyn Gates-Davis, the winner of the 2024 Park View Artist Award at the 53rd Annual Labor Day Art Show, presents a solo exhibition of dreamscape paintings. Light refreshments and beverages available.

RSVP (preferred, not required) >>  

Artist Biography
Painting since a child, Marilyn Gates-Davis has over 40 years and counting as an artist. She has been working as a graphic designer for the past 30+ years, designing magazines, books, and print materials. She typically paints intimate portraits of friends and family members as well as iconic figures. 
To counteract negative stereotypes, she chooses to depict the joy of the black culture through her paintings. Marilyn paints images that celebrate grace, strength, dignity and love of black people, often utilizing her art to share personal stories and childhood memories. 
Marilyn paints primarily in acrylics and oils. She also creates collage work using cut paper, acrylic paint and other organic textured materials. Her goal is to take the everyday images and life experiences and elevate them to tell stories that connect us all.  

Artist Statement: Pieces of a Dream
I dream a lot. Some of my dreams feel so vivid and real that I wake up carrying the emotions they stirred within me. As a teenager, I often found myself daydreaming, letting my imagination take flight. These moments of dreaming—both asleep and awake—are the foundation of my creative journey and the inspiration for Pieces of a Dream.

After the passing of my grandmother in 1999, her presence became a recurring theme in my dreams. Sometimes she appeared directly, and other times her essence seemed woven into the fabric of the dreamscape, appearing in unexpected places. Someone once explained this as her way of watching over me. These experiences deeply influenced my art, as they blend personal memory with a sense of connection to something greater.

In my dreams, I often find myself floating freely through rooms instead of walking. This sensation has been interpreted as a symbol of freedom, happiness, satisfaction, and success. These themes resonate in my work, as I strive to evoke a sense of possibility and emotional connection.

Through Pieces of a Dream, I explore the interplay between cherished childhood memories, personal loss, and the symbolic language of dreams. My goal is to create pieces that invite viewers to reflect on their own subconscious worlds.

Join us for an opening reception in the Stone Tower Gallery. Artist Jill McCarthy Stauffer present a solo exhibition, If Saltwater Heals Wounds. Light refreshments and beverages available.

RSVP (preferred, not required) >>  

Artist Statement:  Jill McCarthy Stauffer’s work explores the transmutation of natural spaces through memories, myths, and digital manipulation. In local and coastal ecologies, they see metaphors for transformation, growth, cycles of death, and the hope for restoration. Mixed media installations combine personal experiences of light, sound, and shape in nature with scanning and natural samples in order to unify both qualitative and quantitative experiences of natural places. Stauffer negotiates the increasingly interconnected relationship between technology, memory, and nature — the quality of the representation of natural landscapes in digital interfaces, built with materials mined from the earth, increases as the natural environment is further degraded. At the core of the work is a sense of anticipatory grief - of fear for a future where natural spaces are primarily experienced through digital media in the absence of the original, and how this shapes our relationship with the natural world.

Artist Bio: Jill Stauffer is an installation artist from Pembroke Pines, FL, currently living in College Park, MD. They are a third year MFA candidate in Studio Art at the University of Maryland, College Park where they also work as a Teaching Assistant. In 2019, Jill received a BA from Middlebury College with majors in Studio Art and Architectural Studies. Jill has participated in artist residencies with NE Sculpture, Josephine Sculpture Park and Snow Farm. Notable exhibitions include the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Juried Exhibition at TF Green Airport, Currents at NE Sculpture Gallery, and LevelUp at the Brentwood Arts Exchange, where they received the Juror’s Award. Jill’s research at the intersection of art and technology has been recognized by their reception of the ArtsAmp Interdisciplinary Grant and the Clarvit Research Fellowship from the University of Maryland. Their work has been featured in articles by the Washington Post and the Independent RI. In addition to their art practice, they have worked in support of community arts organizations as an arts administrator and teaching artist.  Jill creates mixed media installations that explore the transmutation of the natural environment through digital documentation, artificial replication, storytelling, and memory.

Exhibition Concept Statement:  If Saltwater Heals Wounds features three new media installations that reference the coastal ecologies of southern Rhode Island, as warped through the memory and digital replication of the artist. Stauffer negotiates the increasingly interconnected relationship between technology, memory, and nature - the quality of the representation of natural landscapes in digital interfaces, built with materials mined from the earth, increases as the natural environment is further degraded. Starting with organic coastal debris collected in these ecologies, Stauffer explores how different methods of documentation  (2D scanning, 3D scanning, photography, video recording, and audio recording) augments and alters memories of light, sound, shape, and movement in the environment. Using the products of these documentation methods (3D models, images, recordings), Stauffer devises digital replicas of natural phenomena occurring in these ecosystems as a method of preserving their own memories of these natural spaces in an era of rapid change.
 

Join us for an opening reception in the Popcorn Gallery. Glen Echo Glassworks presents a group exhibition of blown and fused glass artwork. Light refreshments and beverages available.

Featuring artists: Paul Swartwood, Michaela Borghese, Ian Kessler-Gowell, Mark Hill, Carol Hurwitch, Michele Rubin, Ian Schmidt, Amy Snyder, Phil Valencia, Karen Wilson, and Janet Wittenberg. 

RSVP (preferred, not required) >>  

When: Saturday, December 6, 2025, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

What: Georgetown University history students who participated in a Clara Barton focused course in the Fall of 2025 will share the results of their new research. They conducted this research as students and as volunteers for the National Park Service. A lead speaker will be followed by three panels of three student volunteers who will discuss their research and answer questions from the audience. The work of the student volunteers will help connect people to Clara Barton National Historic Site (NHS), a park-site that will soon benefit from a renovation project. If not already closed for renovation, the Clara Barton NHS which is adjacent to Glen Echo Park will be open before and after the symposium. Free parking is available for this free event and no reservations are needed. With questions please call 301-320-1410 or e-mail kevin_patti@nps. gov.

Where: Ballroom Back Room

Join us for an exhibition of paintings by Yellow Barn Studio Founder & Director Walt Bartman, open November 9 - November 10.

Walter Bartman is Founder and Director of the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery, and has created each of our other studios. Walt teaches landscape, still life and figure painting classes and workshops, here and abroad. His career spans four decades. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Art History from American University and he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Belgium and Holland. His philosophy of painting centers on personal interpretation and the unique approach to the ordinary. For him, a great painting includes all the arts. He works with all levels of students and challenges them to ‘see’ more. Walt’s own work is representational in subject, but with an abstract approach to seeing and expressing his thoughts on canvas. He is a colorist and he shares his knowledge with his students.

Join us for an Artist Talk with Walt Bartman in conjunction with his exhibition New Work: Paintings by Walt Bartman, currently on view in the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery. Bartman is Founder and Director of the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery, and has created each of our other studios. Walt teaches landscape, still life and figure painting classes and workshops, here and abroad. His career spans four decades. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Art History from American University and he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Belgium and Holland. His philosophy of painting centers on personal interpretation and the unique approach to the ordinary. For him, a great painting includes all the arts. He works with all levels of students and challenges them to ‘see’ more. Walt’s own work is representational in subject, but with an abstract approach to seeing and expressing his thoughts on canvas. He is a colorist and he shares his knowledge with his students.

Join us for the Opening Reception of Glimpses of the Sky and Other Scapes: An Exhibition in Memory of Jacob by artist Ann Schlesinger.

Ann teaches painting and drawing with an emphasis on composition, perceptual observation, color and surface.  Her philosophy is simple – the visual arts should be visually compelling, pulling you in and making you see!  Ann has a BA in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Virginia, an MFA in Painting from American University, and had a year of postgraduate study at the Fine Arts Academy in Munich, Germany.  Awards include a Fulbright Scholarship in Painting, the Annette Kade Fine Arts Fellowship, the David Lloyd Kreeger Award, and the Art Prize from UVA.  Ann is an Adjunct Professor of Art at Georgetown University, and has taught extensively at area schools including the Yellow Barn Studio, AU, Maryland, NVCC and the Smithsonian.

Invitation from the artist: 

Please join me and my family for Glimpses of the Sky and Other Scapes, an art exhibition in honor of my son Jacob.

The show’s opening will be Saturday, October 26, from 4 – 7 pm at the Yellow Barn Gallery of Glen Echo.
This will be the fourth exhibition in honor of my son, Jacob, who passed away in October 2020. Each year since his passing, our family has had an art show in his memory at the Yellow Barn Gallery.

Stop by for some great music, refreshments, and to see my most recent pieces.

This show will consist of paintings, drawings, photos and other tributes, and it will be a celebration of life through art – an opportunity to remember Jacob and keep his spirit alive. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the Jacob Schlesinger Lustig Fund for the Homeless, created in his honor. As many of you know, Jacob cared deeply about the homeless, and spent time with homeless communities across the country and abroad. Since its creation, this fund has contributed to eight local charities.

I hope to see you there:) If you cannot come, please consider a donation to this cause. You can read more about Jacob and the fund here.
www.jacobfundforhomeless.com