In memory of Dan Klein (1938 – 2009), a special fund has been set up at the North Lands Creative Glass center that he helped to establish in 1995. Klein’s vigorous support was a prime reason this glass center at Lybster in the north of Scotland was able to grow into an international destination for [...]
Entries from August 2009
August 30, 2009
Glass Curiosities: Dutch beer baron’s unrealized green dream of bottle as building block
Good intentions run deep in the Heineken family. In 1864, when the Dutch brewery’s founder, Gerhard Heineken, worked to convince his wealthy mother to bankroll his brewery start-up, his pitch was that there would be fewer displays of drunken behavior if there were a lower-alcohol alternative to gin. It is with the same spirit of [...]
August 29, 2009
Ironic Pop, meet earnest Craft: Boston exhibition seeks to make peace between longtime aesthetic rivals
A reaction to the high-art elitism of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art emerged in Britain and the U.S. in the 1950s, freely employing mass produced imagery of comic books and product labels to prove a point: meaning in art is in the associations with an image and its context rather than intrinsic to the artwork itself. [...]
August 27, 2009
The Toledo Museum of Art’s Jutta-Annette Page offers a fresh take on the Chihuly legacy
One hundred miles north, The Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan, has 39 Chihuly works from his “Seaforms” series on display through September 8. One-hundred-fifty miles to the south, The Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio, has a Chihuly exhibition that will remain up through May 2010 (visitors also can access the garden’s John [...]
August 24, 2009
3 Questions For … Susan Taylor Glasgow
GLASS: What are you working on? Susan Taylor Glasgow: My new series of work is inspired by my interaction with abused women during my residency at the Pittsburgh Glass Center last fall. At the time I was building The Communal Nest made up of hundreds of glass twigs. I invited women from the Bethlehem Haven [...]
August 21, 2009
After audacious expansion falters, Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft merges with local arts college for survival
UPDATED 08/22 This week, the Pacific Northwest College of Art has made official its “merger” with the Museum of Contemporary Craft, one of Oregon’s oldest cultural institutions, with the announcement of a joint operations agreement leading to “a formal integration.” Overextended, and with its finances in dire shape, the Museum of Contemporary Craft will continue [...]
August 20, 2009
Design Miami to push emerging American designers this December
If you’re an American designer with a bold new vision, the organizers of Design Miami want to see your work. All the Europeans crossing the Atlantic to attend the biggest design event of the year have not been seeing enough new ideas from the home of the brave.
August 19, 2009
Glass Curiosities: Transparent violin adorns new building in rural China for no apparent reason
What could this building contain? The architectural signifiers of this piano-and-violin-shaped glass building in the rapidly growing city of Huainan in the Anhui province of China seem painfully obvious. One might safely assume this structure is a concert hall, music school, or possibly a museum of music. But that interpretation would be incorrect.
August 17, 2009
A conversation with Tom Hawk about “Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass”
“Breakthrough Ideas in Global Glass,” now on view at a commercial gallery and a university art space, is an exhibition with big ambitions. If 1979’s seminal “New Glass: A Worldwide Survey” was the art form’s last attempt to define the most important new ideas of using glass as an art form, “B.I.G.G.” hopes to have [...]
August 14, 2009
3 Questions For … Jill Reynolds
GLASS: What are you working on? Jill Reynolds: The project I’m working on this fall is a permanent installation for the lobby of a skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh, for the Sculpting Light on Stanwix competition that was organized by Pittsburgh Glass Center. This is the first truly collaborative project I’ve done with my husband, Dan [...]
August 13, 2009
Back in control of the show he created, SOFA’s Mark Lyman gears up for Chicago
“I always knew that, at its very core, SOFA had to be about the art,” says Mark Lyman, founding director of the biggest art expo for work made from glass as well as other craft media. This year, the show’s founder will have a chance to reexamine his original vision after repurchasing the SOFA shows [...]
August 12, 2009
Last-minute registrations still possible for North Lands 2009 conference
A few places remain for last-minute reservations to attend the 2009 North Lands Creative Glass conference. This event, which invites leading figures in the wider world of contemporary art to exchange ideas with artists working with glass, will take place September 5th and 6th at this unique glass center located on the windswept northeastern coast [...]
August 7, 2009
Book Report: The definitive history of beads gets a makeover for new, expanded edition
Bead authority Lois Sherr Dubin is re-issuing her book, The History of Beads: From 100,000 B.C. to the Present ($75) through its original publisher, Abrams Books. The History of Beads was first published as a hardcover coffee-table book in 1987 and became the definitive reference. Since then, its coverage of 40,000 years of bead history [...]
August 7, 2009
DVD Report: Beadmaking with Kristina Logan
Beadmaking with Kristina Logan Corning Museum of Glass Master Class Series VII $19.95 Beginning students and professional beadmakers alike find themselves knocked back to square one when they compare Kristina Logan’s dot-festooned creations with their own.
August 5, 2009
Tim Tate featured on NPR tech program for his melding of glass and video
If glass and video have anything in common, it might be that both struggle to be fully embraced by the world of fine art – the former pegged all-too-frequently as craft, the latter straining to break free of its roots as a commercial medium. Joining these two mediums together in singular works of art, artist [...]
