Judith Schaechter explores neuroaesthetics and the nature of beauty through light, pattern, and imagination.
July 2025, San Francisco- The Museum of Craft and Design is pleased to announce Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural, on view from October 4, 2025, to February 8, 2026, an exhibition exploring the universality of natural elements, patterns, and ornament as vehicles for meditating on beauty.
At the heart of the exhibition is Schaechter’s most ambitious work to date (also titled Super/Natural), an 8-foot-tall, 5.5-foot-diameter, stained glass dome created during her residency at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. Designed to accommodate a single viewer inside, the artwork represents a three-tiered cosmos that reflects her study of biophilic design and its impact on human consciousness. Biophilic principles are often used in hospitals and office buildings to create “refresh rooms” and non-secular chapels—places designed to lower stress and foster feelings of serenity and peace.
Judith Schaechter, Super/Natural, 2025, stained glass panels and steel and wood frame. Photo by Christian Giannelli
The Super/Natural dome features 65 vibrant stained-glass panels teeming with fantastical insects, flora, birds, and beasts. By situating the viewer at the center, Super/Natural invites contemplation of inner space, how we experience environments neurologically and psychologically, and outer space, how we extend ourselves into our surroundings.
“The imagery in Super/Natural references nature, but it is entirely derived from my imagination. They are intended to evoke the sense of nature as understood by a human mind,” notes Schaechter. “My goal is to invite viewers into a deeply personal, immersive experience that explores the connections between self, nature, and imagination.”
Beyond the immersive and meditative experience of her work, Schaechter sheds new light on the traditional medium of stained glass. Working with “flash glass,” a type of hand-blown glass featuring a paper-thin veneer of vibrant color on a clear base, Schaechter pioneered her own labor-intensive process, sandblasting, etching, and layering colors to achieve rich, nuanced tones and painterly effects, completed with black enamel and silver stain.
Judith Schaechter, The Life Ecstatic, 2016. Stained glass lightbox. Photo courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery.
In addition to the dome, the exhibition at MCD will feature seven additional artworks by Schaechter, which share themes of natural elements, pattern, ornament, and examine the cultural construction of nature. The work in Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural aims to offer meditation on our psychological and aesthetic relationship to the natural world. Schaechter’s stained glass becomes a lens, both literal and metaphorical, through which visitors are invited to consider how beauty, imagination, and nature are intertwined in shaping human experience.
MCD’s Executive Director, Nora Atkinson, comments, “In a moment marked by environmental and cultural unease, digital saturation, and a growing desire for spaces of reflection, Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural offers a timely and deeply resonant experience. Widely regarded as the foremost living artist working in stained glass, Schaechter has revolutionized the medium through her pioneering techniques and haunting imagery, at times both beautiful and grotesque. The Museum of Craft and Design is honored to present an exhibition that affirms the power of craft as a tv transformative, healing, and intellectually vital force.”
Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural is generously supported by Anonymous and Glass Alliance of Northern California. The Museum of Craft and Design’s exhibitions and programs are generously supported by Anonymous, the Windgate Foundation, and Grants for the Arts.
Top Image: Judith Schaechter, Super/Natural (detail), 2025, stained glass panels and steel and wood frame. Photo by Christian Giannelli.
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Press/Media Preview:
Friday, October 3, 2025 | 5:00 PM–7:00 PM
For additional information and interview requests, contact Sarah Beth Rosales, Marketing and Communications Director, Museum of Craft and Design at sbrosales@sfmcd.org or 415.773.0303.
About the Artist
Judith Schaechter is a renowned glass artist who has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited widely, including in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, the Hague, and Växjö, Sweden. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hermitage in Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, and numerous other public and private collections. Schaechter was inducted into the American Craft Council of College Fellows in 2013, and, in 2024, she was the recipient of the Smithsonian Visionary Award.
About the Museum of Craft and Design
The Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) is San Francisco’s only museum devoted to craft and design. Founded in 2004, MCD showcases designers, makers, and artists through an exciting and distinctive series of craft and design-focused exhibitions and public programs. MCD explores the creative process and current perspectives in craft and design through inspired exhibitions and experiential programs. Learn more at sfmcd.org.
