About Hans Klemmer

Hans Klemmer (b. 1958, Chicago IL) is an award-winning, Illinois-based glass artist. His foundation in fused glass art arose under the tutelage of Prof. Karl Harron in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is also proud to have earned his Master of Fine Arts in Photography while studying with Prof. Paul Seawright, PhD., at the University of Ulster. Hans received a Bachelor of Arts in Photography from DePaul University and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Ulster in 2012.

Fascinated by the intersection of technique with the science of optics, physics, chemistry and aesthetics, Hans roots many pieces in location. An avid traveler, he’s visited dozens of countries, their cultures and memories imbued in each piece. Much of his work documents and depicts specific bodies of water: the glass lending itself to transparency and opacity, shallowness and depth. History and movement are also at play in his art, as well as the transformative impact of time on memory and perception.

His past careers as a firefighter and culinary artist further inform Hans’s glass work: a lifelong interest with the intersection of fire, danger, and radical transformation of objects through heat. He further enjoys the interplay between between strength and fragility and the ways in which they manifest sculpturally.

Hans’s art can be found in numerous private and public collections around the world. An enthusiastic and popular teacher, he has taught glass techniques at various Chicago-area colleges, and offers individual and group workshops in his glass studio in Chicago’s western suburbs.