From Podunk to the Big Time:

Glass artist’s work hearkens back to Midwest farm roots
by Geri Parlin, LACROSSE TRIBUNE

Gene Koss sits in his glass studio in New Orleans, working on vast glass sculptures and wondering how he ever got this far from the farm.

“I grew up in Mindoro (Wis.), a little cow town. I grew up on a big dairy farm. How I ever got out of there …”

The truth is, if he could be creating giant glass sculptures in the Coulee Region, this is probably where he would be living today.

“I love that place. La Crosse and that area, we love it. But the kind of work I do, I have to be connected to a big city.”

He could never have imagined what he would grow up to become — a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who is famous for his glass sculptures.

“I went to parochial school and the minister’s wife taught the art class,” he said. “I went to (University of Wisconsin) River Falls. I was scared stiff coming from a small town. But I had good teachers. I worked in clay, and I showed clay stuff at Art Fair on the Green years ago. But somehow, I got locked onto ceramics.”

It was ceramics that took him the next level — grad school at Tyler School of Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he first started working with glass.

Koss got offers to teach, and he accepted one from Tulane University. That was 27 years ago.

“I got paid $11,000 (that first year). I earned more working for Mathy Construction.”

Koss learned a few construction techniques on his way to becoming an artist. That knowledge comes in handy since his glass work is done on a massive scale and he often has to build support structures for them.

“I’ve built an empire in glass at Tulane,” he said. “The focus of my work over the last 20 years has been a series of pieces evoking Midwestern farm life. Working with a mechanical engineer and a project coordinator, I have developed the techniques to transform my memories of the mechanized Wisconsin farm of my youth into foundry-based glass sculpture.”

Koss works with glass because he likes the material. “It’s hard to work, it”s demanding, it’s unforgiving. I like it a lot.”

But he doesn’t like it because it’s pretty — not like the decorative craft glass.

“I wanted to make it not decorative. I wanted it to be fine art, not craft.”

And so he creates pieces like “Lake Neshonoc.”

“My work is site specific. The site inspires the art,” he said.

“Lake Neshonoc” is about his childhood experiences.

“When I was young, I would hitchhike down to Lake Neshonoc. That’s the place I went to swim and clear my head.

“That piece cost over $60,000 to make. My wife always says, ‘You’ve got good reviews but that doesn’t pay the bills.””

“Lake Neshonoc” is a monumental kinetic sculpture using cast glass, aluminum and motion.

“I spent years thinking about how this sculpture would speak and what it would look like,” Koss said.

The actual fabrication of the piece took 2½ years and involved hundreds of drawings, molten glass casting, engineering and high tech laser cut metal fabrication.

The six-ton glass lake is suspended on a single cable and after being slowly turned in one direction it will gradually unwind and rewind itself for an extended period of time. The light reflecting off the surface of the moving glass evokes the movement of lake waters.

“I give credit to my family. There was a discipline to running a farm seven days a week. I have a hard time taking any time off.”

That family is still scattered around the Coulee Region. Mom Esther Koss, 89, lives in Sparta, Wis. — “She’s still the boss.” Gene’s sister, Carol Sacia, and her husband Danny live in North Bend, Wis.; his brother, Doug Koss, farms near West Salem, Wis.; his sister, Joyce Wehrenberg, lives in West Salem; and another brother, Wally Koss, lives in rural Bangor, Wis.

“Family means a lot to me.”