The richest award for work in glass Down Under (AU$ 7,500/ US $6,600) is the Ranamok Prize. Celebrating its 14th year, this annual competition started by gallerist Maureen Cahill and collector Andy Plummer has just announced the finalists for the 2009 Ranamok Prize, as well as the overall winner. The 33 artists who made the [...]
Entries from September 2009
September 30, 2009
Ranamok Prize finalists show range of work in glass from Australia and New Zealand
September 29, 2009
Pittsburgh Glass Center mines G20 summit for strong auction results, international glass relations
As reported on the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet last week, the organizers of the Pittsburgh Glass Center’s annual auction made a high-stakes bet that having their event coincide with the G20 summit would be a boon and not a bust. Their risk-taking paid off in the form of the $115,000 raised from the 300 attendees [...]
September 29, 2009
Exhibition preview: The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery reveals as it conceals
In the simplest of conceptions, masks conceal while glass reveals. Such conceptions collide, however, in a new exhibition opening in October at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, a progressive non-profit arts space less than two hours’ drive from Toronto in Waterloo, Ontario. Taking as its point of departure a quote from Ralph Waldo [...]
September 28, 2009
3 Questions For … Mary Van Cline
GLASS: What are you working on?
Mary Van Cline: Because I consider myself a photographic sculptor, I create black-and-white glass photographic images in my work. I am working to turn imagery into an installation with pâte de verre photographic life-like objects that expand the narrative story. In my third decade of working in these combined materials, [...]
September 27, 2009
German design student takes 2009 Bombay Sapphire Designer Glass Prize
Beating out eight other finalists from Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and Thailand, a product design student at the Schwäbisch Gmünd school of design near Stuttgart, was awarded the £ 5,000 prize for his entry in the annual Bombay Sapphire Designer Glass Prize, which he called ‘Liquid Sapphire.’ The prizewinner was announced [...]
September 25, 2009
Opening: Glassblower Kanik Chung unveils his Brooklyn design showroom
Glassblower, designer, and artist Kanik Chung will celebrate the opening of his new showroom in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn tonight. Chung, who has recently been commissioned by famed industrial designer Eva Zeisel to fabricate a new lighting project, will be exhibiting his “tablescape” of opaque white glass vessels which draw on shapes derived fom [...]
September 25, 2009
Old craft vs. new craft at the Philadelphia Art Alliance
“State of the Union: Contemporary Craft in Dialogue,” the exhibition that just opened at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, is a bid to move beyond the decades-long debate on craft versus fine art, and present work by emerging artists employing so-called craft media as a simple artistic choice. Melissa Caldwell, the PAA’s director of exhibitions and [...]
September 25, 2009
Jay Musler survives cardiac arrest thanks to fast-acting Starbucks manager
On August 28, noted artist Jay Musler was standing in line to get coffee at a Starbucks in Emeryville, California, when he crumpled to the ground experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. A customer called 911 and handed the phone to assistant manager Cerina Rodriguez, who administered CPR with the guidance of the emergency operator. [...]
September 24, 2009
Seen: Kelsey Harrington’s delicate glass color-field at Brooklyn art expo
The pigmented-water-and-glass installation by painter and designer Kelsey Harrington was among the highlights of the “Objective Affection” exhibition at a Brooklyn waterfront factory building turned into a temporary performance and art space. The exhibition, organized by non-profit organization Boffo, gave equal time to emerging designers, installation artists, and performance artists during its crowded opening on [...]
September 24, 2009
Prolific public artist Gordon Huether unveils latest glass sculpture
With more than 50 public art projects to his credit, many of them with glass as a central element, Gordon Huether is among the most successful public artists working in any material. Add in the 150 private art commissions he has also completed, and you see how he was able to move his thriving public-art [...]
September 23, 2009
Glass Curiosities: A NASA lens becomes a filmmaker’s obsession
At the tender age of 17, Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999) was hired as a staff photographer for LOOK magazine, where he began to develop an appreciation for the power of visual imagery that he would hone throughout his career. A perfectionist, Kubrick became known for his controversial and provocative films which possess his distinct [...]
September 22, 2009
Etsy-find: Sarinda Jones’s stand-out sculptures
Even within the “Art” category, serious work in glass is hard to come by when browsing the mecca for all-things-handmade that is Etsy.com. Yet, hidden among the pages of small-scale glass objects that often have their decoration painted-on is the occasional piece that announces itself as serious, ambitious, and far more carefully made. The [...]
September 21, 2009
3 Questions For … Rik Allen
GLASS: What are you working on?
Rik Allen: I’ve just launched a new fleet of rockets, many of them with entirely new forms. I’ve always seen my work as more kinetic than static, and this newest series has a heightened sense of potential energy, as if the objects are about to crawl or lunge forward. I’ve [...]
September 18, 2009
Pittsburgh readies for the G-20 summit (and PGC glass auction)
While President Obama and leaders of the most powerful industrialized nations on earth convene in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit on September 24th and 25th, only slightly less powerful glass collectors, artists, and arts philanthropists will be meeting across town for Art on Fire 2009, the Pittsburgh Glass Center’s annual fundraising auction taking place on [...]
September 17, 2009
A conversation with Hank Adams on the state of the Creative Glass Center of America
UPDATED 9/21
Tomorrow evening, Friday, September 18, the WheatonArts glass studio in Millville, New Jersey, will throw open its doors to the public from 7 PM – 8:30 PM for a demonstration by current Creative Glass Center of America fellows Megan Biddle and John Moran. As is customary for the recipients of one of the most [...]
September 16, 2009
Free Art: September 26th is Smithsonian magazine’s Museum Day
If you’ve been meaning to see the work of Judy Hill at the Seattle-area Bellevue Arts Museum, you can do so for free on September 26th. During the fifth annual Museum Day sponsored by Smithsonian magazine, the Bellevue and the Museum of Glass in nearby Tacoma (which has a major show of Preston Singletary’s work) [...]
September 14, 2009
Face Time: Last chance to bid in Coney Island, USA fundraiser
The iconic face that had been the logo of Coney lsland’s Steeplechase Park until it closed down in 1963 has several names: “Steeplechase Face,” “Tillie,” “Smiling Face,” and “Funny Face.” The grinning man with 44 teeth (12 more than normal) was revived in the 1980s when his wide-mouthed visage became the logo for Coney Island, [...]
September 14, 2009
3 Questions For … Jamie Harris
GLASS: What are you working on?
Jamie Harris: I’m in the middle of finishing my new “Infusion” series of solid-sculpted kiln-cast sculptures for SOFA CHICAGO. I started experimenting on these pieces two years ago during a residency at the Corning Museum of Glass as I began developing a way to combine my love of [...]
September 11, 2009
Josiah McElheny colorizes austere architectural modernism in new exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery
Former Lino Tagliapietra apprentice and current art world intellectual Josiah McElheny will unveil his latest explorations of modernism through a mash-up of the contrasting styles of two architects who took opposite approaches to glass building design in Weimar Germany. For his latest exhibit at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City, opening on Saturday, [...]
September 10, 2009
What’s in a Name: How Marx-Saunders Gallery became Ken Saunders Gallery
In July, when Marx-Saunders Gallery began contacting its collectors and artists to inform them that, at the end of the summer, Bonnie Marx would be stepping away from the gallery she had built up over 20 years and leaving operations in the hands of her partner of 15 years, Ken Saunders, the plan was to [...]
