Quotes
About working with Alex
We are so thrilled to have Alex’s artwork adorn our walls. We are a small mental health practice who believes that art has the power to heal and soothe – which is precisely what Alex’s art provides. Having clients sit in our space surrounded by her art that is both calming and elevating, peaceful and stirring, serene and uplifting – is a true gift!”
—Erika Ruber, LCSW, Owner of Moving Inside Out
Ms. Hirsch’s work is the perfect complement to our school’s Art Gallery. Students are able to reflect, explore, and meditate in the space. She was also very informative and intentional throughout the development and installation process. We are deeply appreciative for what she shared with our school community.”
—Melayne Jones, Principal and Jim Ohlinger, Assistant-Principal, Sunrise Elementary
I was the Project Manager for Alex’s public art commission at Sunrise Elementary in Washington. Working together was a real pleasure. She was consistently sensitive to the school’s needs and delivered outstanding work that not only enlivens the space but will serve as an educational opportunity for multiple disciplines. This achievement is made more impressive since the committee meetings took place over zoom, and the commission was designed, fabricated, and installed during the COVID pandemic.”
— Chuck Zimmer, Executive Director, Open Space for the Arts and Community
In addition to her aesthetic eye and talent, Alex’s clear communication and sensitivity to our client’s needs were invaluable.
As project manager, I personally appreciated that she is attentive to detail, flexible and reliable. Alex delivered a beautiful, technically sound product on budget and on time.”
—Ken Blanchard, Project Manager, Presentation Design Group
The great thing about working with Alex is that she understands what we as architectural and interior designers want to accomplish.”
—Stephen Domreis, AIA, LEED AP
Alex possesses a great artistic sensibility that enables her to positively transform spaces through art and shape the experience of its users. Working with Alex, I value her professionalism, flexibility and open communication. These qualities allow her to adapt to the needs of her clients and to successfully combine her artistic vision with the practical challenges of a public art project.”
—Anna Rothfuss, Project Development Manager, Derix U.S.
Alex Hirsch is a joy to work with. Aside from being a talented artist, she’s professional and detailed oriented. She’s able to look at the big picture of a project. She plans ahead for the unexpected, successfully and creatively completing her projects. We are so happy to have her artwork Sky Dance as part of the Washington State Art Collection at Auburn High School.”
—Marissa Laubscher, Project Manager, Art in Public Places, Washington Arts Commission
Over the ten years that I have worked with Alex, what stands out to me the most is the amount of care and deliberation with which she approaches each new commission. Alex has the ability to synthesize the wishes of the client with her own artistic sensibilities, displaying an eye for the nuances of glass coupled with a sharp awareness of color and its relationship with both the viewer and the greater environment where the work is seen. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with her in achieving her vision in glass, which in the process leads to further my own understanding of the material.”
—Jeff Wallin, Lead Studio Technician, Fireart Glass
I commissioned Alex to produce imagery for a small, intense book about feeling at home (or not) in the Northwest. I trusted her to respond creatively and not too literally, and she seemed to understand immediately what this project needed.
We went through several extremely productive rounds of give and take. When I asked her to expand her contribution, she entered into the larger challenge with the same confident skill. The author and I were thrilled with the result, which elevated this already excellent book. It was named one of the best indie press books of the year.”
—David Oates, Publisher and General Editor, Kelson Books
We host many events in the Commons of Auburn High School. It serves as a hub to both our school and our community. I’ve heard comments from our community members particularly in the late afternoons when the sun illuminates the windows most directly. I think we get to see Sky Dance’s true brilliance in the afternoon sun when we are privileged to see a “light show”. Community members have described the windows as beautiful, warm, bright, brilliant, cool, and pretty. Due to the local public art process, Alex was chosen to create and install this artwork several years after our new building first opened. Our staff remarked that Sky Dance brings everything together in this space and is a wonderful addition and centerpiece for our commons.
It truly is a wonderful and well thought out piece. And I’ll always remember when Alex explained to our students her choice of the color pink for the flower petals. Earlier in her career she was counseled not to use flowers nor pink in a proposal. You did it this time. I thought to myself, “Alex is truly an artist and not a politician, so good on her for not listening.”
—Jeff Gardner, Principal AHS
About Alex’s work
Among the contemporaries, you are the best I have seen. You combine technical rigor with evanescent mystery. I don’t know how you do it but you do. You speak tenderly to the viewer, and don’t lecture or confront. But there is a gentle guidance into unexpected worlds. Amazing!
—Cynthia Sowers, Lecturer University of Michigan
Alex Hirsch’s glasswork pushes and extends the traditional range of expression for glass. She captured the vibrancy and sensitivity of her watercolors and the luminosity of glass, and created something truly unique, exquisite and spectacular.”
—Horatio Hung-Yun Law, Artist and former Professor of Art
It’s like being inside of a watercolor.”
—Teresa Chenney, FASLA, Landscape Designer
The windows make the stairwells sing.”
—Saralyn Hilde, retired Public Art Manager, Oregon Arts Commission
I go to the building just to see what the projections are doing.”
—Peg Sjogren, Professor of Art, Southern Oregon University
Upon seeing the windows, a prosepective student expressed her delight by spontaneously singing Ave Maria.”
—R.H., scholar and grandrather of prospective student
I loved the windows themselves, rising up to greet the sky, and the reflection down to the earth. Such a harmonious connection between the realms. And of course, your use of metaphor to generate images that leap beyond their boundaries is wonderful.”
—Cynthia A. Sowers, Lecturer, University of Michigan
The combination of all these different stripes is like the diversity that makes up our community.”
—Sophomore student, Auburn High School
Your glasswork is so painterly, so fluid.”
—Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich
How lovely to find this as I sat outside for lunch on a cloudy day and just as I finished watching the video, the sun came out. How wonderful for students to experience this art installation that will lift and inspire them… These students reflect on the light and color that illuminates a first crush or pulls them out of a funk on a bad day. So beautiful, so important.”
—Jon Ensign , Designer/Contractor
Alex suggests mystical places with superimposed forms… orbs of gold, silver, and white… The patterns expand, coalesce and reorganize outwardly in a way that reminds one of a musical score or dance… Her palette is limited… to reduce distraction pulling the viewer to further quiet, irenic tracks.”
—Shoshanna Lansberg, Oregon Jewish Museum
It was great to see your watercolor—and to have my impressions confirmed. It really is perfection both in terms of its technical rigor and vision. I was able to appreciate the structure of the work when I viewed it in person—the white boundary falling helplessly through space, yet still trying to frame what was beyond framing.”
—Cynthia Sowers, Lecturer, University of Michigan
I saw your pieces at the Oregon Jewish Museum and was astounded at both the eerie beauty of the pieces and the way my brain flooded with emotion and ideas as I looked at them. Your art made me flush with thoughts and feelings in unanticipated ways.”
—Marian Fish, Chiropractor
I literally find your work breathtaking. I can sense and feel your inquiry deep into the moment. My body grounds, and I become more spacious in the presence of your work.”
—Anet Ris-Kelman, Performance Artist and Educator
The work was so subtle, so lyrical, so satisfying.”
—Martha Pfanschmidt, Painter and Glass Artist
It’s a frightful, terrorizing thing to witness this work and also really beautiful. There’s a kind of hope that something so terrifying and upending could have such beauty.”
—Kate Zabertini
We’re held in a real and true tension, kept in the circuit of seeing, thinking, feeling, which is always shuttling us from the inward to the outward world, and back again.
—David Oates, author
A Way Home
What a beautiful (cover) drawing. You help the world see…and make the hand reach for Scott’s book.”
—Kim Stafford, poet, essayist and founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College