Stephen Rolfe Powell 1951 - 2019

Stephen Powell was an internationally known artist whose elaborately colored glass vessels are held in permanent collections throughout the world; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Corning Museum of Glass, Detroit Institute of Art, Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Hunter Museum of Art (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Lvov Art Institute (Lvov, Ukraine), Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani Collection (Doha, Qatar), Mobile Museum of Art (Alabama), Muskegon Museum of Art (Michigan), Racine Museum of Art (Wisconsin), Red May Glass Museum (Vichny Volochok, Russia), Sydney College of Art (Australia), The Auckland Museum (New Zealand), and Osaka University Museum (Japan).

Powell has been featured on CBS-TV's Sunday Morning and Kentucky Educational Television and in print media including American Craft (cover), American Style (cover), Glass Art (cover), Glass, Ceramics Monthly, and Kentucky Monthly, which named him one of Kentucky's top 20 artists of the 20th century. Powell was one of eight Americans chosen for Venezia Aperto Vetro 1998, a prestigious glass exhibition in Venice. He demonstrates his technique around the country, including at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Powell was a guest teacher and artist at The Pilchuck School in Washington, The Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Portland School of Art in Maine, The Studio at the Corning Museum, Osaka University in Japan, The Muhkina Art Institute in Russia, The Lvov Art Institute in the Ukraine, The Sydney College of Art in Australia, and The Canberra School of Art in Australia.

Stephen Powell was also the H.W. Stodgill Jr. and Adele H. Stodgill Professor of Art at Centre College. He taught at Centre from 1983 until his death in 2019. He was named 1999 and 2000

Kentucky Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Counsel for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). He held the Stodgill Professorship from its inception in 2004 until 2019. In 2004 he was awarded the Acorn Award for the outstanding professor at a Kentucky college or university.

In 2012, he was awarded the Distinguished Educator Award from the James Renwick Alliance, Washington DC.

Powell studied at The Provincetown Painting Workshop, received a B.A. in painting and ceramics from Centre College (Danville, KY), and an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University.

In 2007, The University Press of Kentucky released Powell’s first full-length book Stephen Rolfe Powell Glassmaker.