Joanna Manousis, Reaching an Ulterior Realm, 2010. Blown glass, mirror, bronze. courtesy: the artist
Though glass dominates at UrbanGlass’ 7th annual MFA Exhibition, opening tonight, each piece on view incorporates materials as varied as mirrors, natural artifacts, antiques, birch, and flannel. Open through March 17 at 111 Front Street in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, the show features work by four recent MFA graduates from North American glass programs. Continue reading
Filed under Opening
David Ruth, Sculpture from the "Light Maker" series: Tabueran, Pinaki and Rapa, 2006. courtesy: the artist
The Thoreau Gallery in San-Francisco is opening a group exhibition tonight entitled “57 Degrees.” The exhibition which will feature an opening reception this evening from 5 to 7 PM will feature the work of David Ruth and 20 other bay area artists. Continue reading
Filed under Exhibition, Opening
The state-of-the-art Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion hot shop will host a rebuilt 1962-style furnace during the Toledo Workshop Revisited residency in 2012. photo: floto+warner studio.
It all started with a furnace. Although there are now companies wholly devoted to building energy-efficient furnaces and glass studio equipment, in the 1960s the artists themselves did most of the building of modest stacks of bricks and gas pipe where they could access the wondrous material of molten glass. The development of a small-scale furnace took glass out of the large-factory setting and put it into the hands of individual artists, launching a movement in glass sculpture that is celebrating its 50-year milestone in 2012. Museums around the country are hosting special exhibitions and events, including a unique artist residency at the Toledo Museum of Art. Continue reading
Tanya Lyons and Mathieu Grodet, Drift, 2010. Flameworked glass, leather straps, stainless steel. photo: hans-joachim becker. courtesy: alexander tutsek-stiftung.
Timed for the month when Valentine’s Day is celebrated, The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung in Munich, Germany, will open a new exhibition of glass and mixed media objects revolving around the theme of love in early February. Titled “In the Name of Love,” it will feature 30 works by 26 artists including Silvia Levenson, Christina Bothwell, Jose Chardiet, Luke Jerram, Dafna Kaffeman, Marta Klonowska, Sibylle Peretti, Elizabeth Swinburne, and Lino Tagliapietra. Continue reading
Filed under Exhibition, New Work, News
Jeremy Lepisto, What Lies Below, 2008. Kiln-formed glass. photo: aimee sones.
The computer network that holds your bank records and your Facebook photos. The refrigerator that keeps your milk cold. The highway or subway that carries you to work. Contemporary life relies on an increasingly intricate infrastructure, but we so rarely notice much less consider the power lines, generators, or road systems that permit us to run through our days. In fact, we usually do our best to avoid them: cropping out utility poles from the edges of a photograph, concealing the wires behind our computer into flexible tubes, and stowing away power lines underground. Why do we feel the need to hide the infrastructure that are actually central to our daily lives? A mixed-media exhibition now on view at Ohio State University Urban Arts Space gallery seeks to put the focus squarely on the industrial and technological landscape in which we live.
Filed under Exhibition, New Work
Jeannet Iskandar, Between Fragment and Whole Ellipse I, 2011. courtesy: heller gallery, new york
This past Monday, the curtain came down on the 15th year of Art Palm Beach, which ran from January 20th to the 23rd at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Fair spokesperson Ashlea Heck estimates this year’s attendance was 28,000, exceeding the previous year’s number by 2,000 despite being a day shorter. Eighty two galleries from the U.S. and abroad showed contemporary art, furniture, photography, and design objects. Exhibitor Corey Hampson, the director of sales for Habatat Galleries based in Royal Oak, Michigan described this year’s Art Palm Beach as having “a lot of energy” and “very contemporary.” Continue reading
Filed under Art Market, Exhibition
Michelle Bufano makes her move from Pratt to the new Chihuly Center. Photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindes/224801469/) by David Lindes (http://photo.lindes.net/).
The executive director for the nonprofit Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, Michelle Bufano is taking up a new position as the executive director at the for-profit Chihuly Garden and Glass. (Her last day at Pratt will be February 3rd.) The new tourist-friendly arts center project is a collaboration between the Wright Family, owners of the Seattle Space Needle, and glass artist Dale Chihuly. A contentious approval-process was resolved in December 2010, when Seattle’s mayor negotiated a compromise between Chihuly and the local independent radio station that has also been vying to use the same public space. Bufano, who’s been in arts management for the last 20 years, says she got involved with the Chihuly project early. Concerned with how the center would affect local artists and Pratt, Bufano started conversations with the Wright Family. Seeing an opportunity for artists to show their work and a potential collaborator for Pratt, she became an early advocate for the Chihuly Center. It wasn’t until later in the center’s development that Bufano was asked to come on as executive director. She says the offer came at an opportune time. Bufano just finished overseeing a $500,000 campus-improvement project at Pratt, allowing her to leave the organization on a high note. She’s also ready to take the next step in her career. Continue reading
two glass artist demonstrate finesse and teamwork in the showroom; courtesy of Corning Museum of Glass
Our Winter 2011-12 edition of the print edition of GLASS Quarterly (#125), includes a feature article entitled “Flawless to the End” by Lee Brooks, which examines the storied history and recent demise of Steuben, the premier American glasshouse until it officially closed down production in late 2011. Although Steuben continue to ship remaining goods for online orders, the company’s one-time owners at Corning, Inc., have decided to use the shuttered facility for an expansion of The Corning Museum of Glass. According to an article in the Ithaca Journal newspaper, The Corning Museum plans to expand their exhibition area as well as their facilities to offer the public hot glass demonstrations. Continue reading
Jaume Plensa, "Glassman" 2004, at Glasstress 2011 in Venice, Italy.
UPDATED 01/18/2012 and 1/19/2012
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of Studio Glass in America, and the Museum of Arts and Design has made an unusual choice to observe this occasion through its upcoming exhibition “Glasstress New York: New Glass from the Venice Biennales.” The decision for an American museum that helped put Studio Glass on the cultural map with major exhibitions of Chihuly and others (in the days it was known as the American Craft Museum) is quite provocative. After all, one could easily point to the under-representation of Studio Glass artists at both GLASSTRESS shows in 2009 and 2011 and wonder how such an exhibition relates to the institution’s own historical role in the advancement of sculpture made from glass. (Editor’s note: Since this item was initially published, the museum has alerted us to a second exhibition honoring Studio Glass called “Playing with Fire” and drawing from the permanent collection of the museum that it is planning to open in October 2012. Look for a follow-up article when more details become available. ) And GLASSTRESS creator Adriano Berengo is an outspoken critic of some aspects of Studio Glass, which he feels suffers from too much focus on the material. In an interview published in the Fall 2011 issue of GLASS Quarterly magazine, Berengo said, “If the Studio Glass movement made a mistake, it was to make a world apart, to engage in an insularity that created, if I may, a kind of material masturbation, more interested in how things are made than about what is made.” Continue reading
Filed under Events, Exhibition, Museums
Since its introduction in 2007, Corning Gorilla Glass has become the most ubiquitous cover glass in the world.
If you own a smart phone or tablet, chances are you’re touching Corning Gorilla Glass every time you use it. On Jan. 9, four years after marketing the damage-resistant material, Corning unveiled Gorilla Glass 2, a thinner version of the company’s highly scratch-resistant and durable Gorilla Glass. The new iteration of this product is currently on view at the company’s both at the Consumer Electronics Show, which continues in Las Vegas through Jan 13. The glass is slated to appear in a range of smart phones, tablets, and laptops this year, adding to the more than 600 million devices that include its predecessor, reported The New York Times in an article by Brian X. Chen on the Gadgetwise blog. Continue reading
Filed under On Other Blogs
Agnes Kerteszfi, Dancer Cube, 2011. Colored, fused, bent glass. H 7, W 12 1/4, D 12 1/4 in.
Despite sharing a border with Austria, and practically being neighbors to the Czech Republic and Poland, Hungary has never been known as a force in the glass arts. It wasn’t even until the 1950s that Hungary had any kind of glass art education. Porcelain designer turned glass artist Julia de Bathory developed the first glass art classes at the Secondary School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1953. Since then, the country has made major strides to train and educate students in the material. The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design hosts a glass program at the undergraduate and graduate level, and the Hungarian Glass Art Society, formed in 1996 , has helped promote glass artists countrywide. This week, the society will show work by 45 local artists at it’s “HuGlass” exhibition. Continue reading
Filed under Events, Exhibition, New Work, News
Michael Janis, Seeking Clarity, 2011. Kiln-formed glass and steel. H 12 1/2, W 12 1/2, D 1 in.
With an opening reception this evening, Bullseye Gallery kicks off a month-long celebration of two-dimensional painting on glass in their exhibit, “Facture: Artists at the Forefront of Painterly Glass.” The group exhibition will showcase kilnformed glass paintings (mostly frit on sheet glass) from the artists Kari Minnick, Martha Pfanschmidt, Ted Sawyer, Abi Spring, Jeff Wallin, and Michael Janis. Continue reading
Filed under Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening
Timothy Close has served as executive director of the Museum of Glass since 2006
This afternoon, the executive director of The Museum of Glass, Timothy Close, officially resigned after a five-year tenure as leader of this Tacoma, Washington, institution devoted to glass as a material for art. The announcement was issued at 3 PM EST, on January 3, 2012, and was effective immediately. Deputy director and recently appointed head curator Susan Warner has been named interim director in the wake of Close’s departure. Continue reading
The barren Sahara desert is an unlikely setting for the creation of cutting-edge artwork, but German artist Markus Kayser has found it the perfect place to make solar-powered glass from arid sand. image courtesy of the artist
The desert sands of the Sahara are famous for many things, including hostile living conditions, intolerably arid weather, unrelenting heat, and brutal wind and sand storms. The largest hot desert on Earth, it is home (and burial ground) for many particularly plucky species of plant and beast. It is not a place one associates with fertile territory for life or art. Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Design, New Work, News
A newly opened East Village design boutique fills its narrow space with design objects, many from glass, that is both affordable and contemporary, featuring work from up-and-coming designers. photo: nora wolf
Still House, a recently opened design boutique in Manhattan’s East Village, occupies a narrow storefront on East Seventh Street. Inside, owner Urte Tylaite presides over a carefully curated selection of design objects, many in glass, that represent her unique aesthetic — a marriage of the clean precision of minimalism with the unruliness of the organic. Tylaite, a native of Lithuania and a graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (BFA, painting, 08), aims to keep her prices accessible (read: affordable). This means the merchandise she sells is a mix of carefully selected imports from affordable design wholesaler Roost (a museum-store staple) and one-of-a-kind works by young designers who are still establishing their names and are priced accordingly. Continue reading
Filed under Design, Exhibition, New Work, News, Seen
Luke Jerram at work in the Museum of Glass hotshop during his November 2011 residency.
GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?
Luke Jerram: At the moment, I’m investigating the implications of the visualization of data. I think there’s a lot of that going on. And what it means to turn a line into three-dimensional form. It sounds a bit weird, but an example of that would be taking the 28 seconds that the Hiroshima bomb was going off. I have the sound file, and I rotated that sound file on the computer to create this … well, it looks almost like a carrot which is the only problem with it … it’s rotated on a computer to create this virtual 3-D form, then it’s printed as on a 3-D printer. I quite like 3-D printing because at no point is the human hand involved. You’re taking out any man-made element. You’re just taking data, transforming it, printing it as a three-dimensional form to create something else. Continue reading
Filed under Artist Interviews, New Work
Karol Wight brings her experiences from the three-year renovation of the Getty Villa to the Corning Museum of Glass.
Karol Wight took the reins as executive director of The Corning Museum of Glass at exactly 8 AM on August 15th, 2011. But she had already arrived in the town of Corning, New York, weeks earlier with her family to set up their new home. She is grateful to have had extra time to reorient to the culture and climate of Western New York state from Los Angeles, where she had been the senior curator of antiquities at the Getty Villa. Among other things, she had enrolled her children in school well before starting her duties at The Corning Museum for a simple reason: “I knew once I got started I wouldn’t have time to do anything else,” she told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet in an in-person interview earlier this month at the museum’s cafe. Continue reading
Filed under Exhibition, Museums, News
Neglected under socialism, Ljiubljana castle now stands sentinel over independent Slovenia's capital, and its interior has become a venue for art.
A monument to Slovenia’s complex history, Ljubljana castle occupies the highest point in the country’s capital city. From regal medieval residence to an Austrian prison, from low-income tenement housing to its current position as a thriving cultural center, the castle has undergone nearly as many changes as the people for whom it was built. In its most recent incarnation, Ljubljana castle invites tourists and history enthusiasts alike to enter its walls, into its towers and beneath its depths to view exhibitions of contemporary art. Continue reading
Filed under Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening
David Schnuckel at work in his studio.
GLASS: What are you working on?
David Schnuckel: I’m currently expanding upon a body of work I started about two years ago comprised mostly of found and altered materials with an effort to reinterpret the traditional practice of painted portraiture. My interest in using glass over the past several years had always been in drawing from its rich history in pictorial application and this current body of work still takes root in that. However, my current efforts are a dramatic deviation from previous work in that I’ve put blown-glass form to the side, questioning how I can use imagery and the written word as abstracted, visual components within a sculptural context as opposed to narrative surface ornamentation. Also, without access to the kind of glass facilities I rely on to compose the previous work I’ve been using the idea of “limitation” to my advantage by translating the ideas and interests that motivated the blown work into new methods of creative introspection. Continue reading
Filed under Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work
Jitka Kamencova Skuhrava Icefall (2011) takes center stage in the atrium at DBK Budejovicka, a shopping mall in Prague.
Czech glass artist and designer Jitka Kamencova Skuhrava is currently exhibiting her work at the DBK, a major shopping center in Prague. The center’s fifth floor is a gallery space devoted to showcasing up and coming work by young Czech designers. Included in her works on display will be lighting fixtures she created for Lasvit, a leading lighting design and fixture manufacturer. Her chandelier “Icefalls,” which first premiered at this year’s International Design Exhibition in Dubai as part of Lasvit’s Mysterious Forrest exhibit, will be prominently featured in the super store’s atrium. Icefalls is a cascade of glass and light emulating the way icicles are formed and inspired by time the artist/designer spent in Finland. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
