John Healey

John Healey is an American glass artist from Buffalo, NY. His career began in the mid-1970s on his studio, called Elmwood Gallery. This gallery primarily showed the works of emerging artists, such as Howard Werner and Imogene Cunningham. Healey works as a professional photographer, dabbling in everything from fine art photography, investigative photography, weddings, nudes, fashion, and celebrity photography.

By the time the 1980's came around, Healey became more involved in glasswork and started his path towards glass sculpture. Initially Healey worked in stained glass and beveled glass before transitioning fully into three-dimensional sculptural works. In 1990, Ema Tanigaki was recruited and added her more scientific mind to the mix and the technology of optical glass and laminations began to develop rapidly. Later on, in 1997 Tanigaki became a partner, and they became Healey Studio LLC, still in Buffalo New York. At the end of 1999 the studio moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2005 Healey and Tanigaki became married and continue to work together and individually on many varieties of creative works.

Even after his transition into a glass sculptor, Healey continued his photography using his talents to do commercial glass photography for himself and other artists. Later Healey’s “Abstract Series” would develop from his experience photographing his own sculptures. After decades of extremely hard physical labor from working in subtractive glass methods, Healey has since resumed his pursuit of photography as his primary artistic expression. Looking through the lenses have always piqued his curiosity. Known for having a constantly curious mind, Healey started researching the glass – and with much help from new friends in the optical industry – he developed his own methods for creating optical glass sculpture. He showed internationally at the top glass galleries for decades. Eventually just being a pure glass artist became constraining and Healey then added other media, including stone and bronze to become a mixed media sculptor.

His work has been shown and displayed both in the U.S. and internationally. Some notable locations include: New York, California, New Mexico, London, Ontario, among others. In 2023, Healey’s glass work was part of the “Lipsey Glass Collection” exhibition at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.