John Nygren earned his Master of Fine Arts in pottery at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1968 and that same year took a life-changing three-week glassblowing course at Penland School of Craft, where Mark Peiser was the newly appointed and first Resident Craftsman in Glass. A year later, in 1969, he moved to Walnut Cove, North Carolina and shifted his art practice to glass completely, building New Branch Glass Studio. His artwork has always reflected his love of nature and focuses on themes of landscapes and animals.
Nygren’s Blue Ridge Mountain Bottle is featured in our exhibition Western North Carolina Glass: Selections from the Collection, on view in Judith S. Moore Gallery, level 3.
John Nygren, Blue Ridge Mountain Bottle, 1976, blown and hot-worked glass, 7 ½ × 2 ½ × 2 ½. Museum purchase with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Asheville Art Museum. © John Nygren. 