Trish and Art

Trish Duggan is an artist, entrepreneur, mother of eight, philanthropist, human rights advocate and longtime surfer. Trish has a strong commitment to improve the lives of human beings across the world. It is her belief that artists are the creative individuals who help put new ideas into existence. These new ideas change the world by creating the future!

Glass Art Production

Personal Artwork

Collaborations

Trish was born into a military family in Arlington, Virginia and spent the early years of her childhood in Guam. It was here she first developed a love for swimming, the ocean, and sunsets. This would later inspire much of her artwork as well as her love of surfing.

It was in a high school art class where she met her mentor, Mr. Nakamura, who introduced her to many new mediums and techniques including woodblock printmaking which she found to be entirely mesmerizing. Trish carved and then printed with tremendous enthusiasm which soon spread to Christmas cards, fabric, and all different types of paper including Japanese rice paper. Trish says, Mr. Nakamura influenced her life in a tremendous way by believing in her and giving her wonderful validation for her art which eventually led to her studying woodblock printmaking at Nanzan University in Japan. While in Japan, she also devoted a year to learn to speak Japanese, study sociology and learn Ikebana (the art of flower arranging).

Her love of the Japanese culture and glass art inspired her to sponsor a 2019 exhibition at Imagine Museum of the premier collection of glass kimonos created by the renowned artist Karen LaMonte. At that time, she also created an education room for children and adults to learn about Japanese culture.

Trish took a printmaking class while attending the University of California at Santa Barbara. At the end of the year, her teacher typically kept one print of the student whose work he admired. He kept two of Trish’s prints! After leaving the University, Trish studied stained glass as well as copper enameling. While raising eight children, she inspired each one of them to continuously create art.

Driven by an inquiring and imaginative mind, Trish has traveled around the world from Siberia to Chile and Hawaii to Thailand. Her favorite places are the Greek Islands (Santorini and its artists community), Machu Picchu, Peru where she hiked to the top of Huayna Picchu, Costa Rica and Hawaii where she enjoys surfing. She has adventured numerous times all over Europe and particularly loves Murano, Italy also known as the Isle of Glass.

When she moved to Florida, Trish began collecting the beautiful contemporary glass art by Marlene Rose who eventually became her mentor. She later was fortunate enough to be accepted as a working artist by the extraordinary Chuck Boux, owner of Sigma Studios in St. Pete, Florida. Trish was also able to work in the studio of the amazing Susan Gott in Tampa, Florida. Through Marlene Rose she met the insightful Corey Hampson of Habatat Gallery in Michigan, who assisted her in choosing the contemporary glass art for Imagine Museum.

Trish became seriously involved in creating glass art in 2015. Since then, she has created thousands of her own art pieces, in addition to collecting art from other talented artists around the globe. Trish was simply enchanted with the beauty of glass. Her house was filled with glass art she had created and collected to the point where she jokingly said that she would have to open a museum. And that’s exactly what she went on to do! It was only a few weeks later that she found the perfect building and began the creation of Imagine Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. The museum opened in 2018 with the purpose to uplift, inspire and educate our culture through this gorgeous medium of glass and to inspire future generations of artists to create art using the medium of glass.

Trish has found working with glass to be exhilarating! Always dynamic and changing, glass can be fluid, soft, cold, hard, opaque, transparent and more. She especially likes to work on large installations. While at the University in Japan someone told her that if a person made 1,000 Buddhas, they had a better chance to reach Nirvana. This inspired Trish to make 1,000 glass Buddha heads which are all on display in a gallery of their own at Imagine Museum.

One of her favorite Buddhist quotes is:

“Though you can conquer 1,000 men in battle 1,000 times, the one who conquers himself is the noblest victor of all.”

It is her intention to conquer life and do good in the world.

Ms. Duggan is a board member of the upcoming Museum for Peace in Costa Rica. She is also in the process of planning an International Museum that will feature modern glass art sculptures from around the world.

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