On the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, when “the ball drops” in Times Square, New York City, to mark the start of 2010, the iconic Waterford cut-crystal sphere will be twice as large as last year, fitted with more than 32,000 LED lights, and wired with the latest high-tech lighting controls that will [...]
Entries from December 2009
December 29, 2009
Glass Curiosities: A revamped Waterford New Year’s Eve crystal ball reflects historic Irish company’s new outlook for 2010
December 28, 2009
An ambitious new online course for flameworkers seeks to encourage a move from functional work to fine art
In mid-December, the website of the John Burton Program, a new online course aimed at educating flameworkers about using borosillicate to create fine art, went live. This online educational initiative is named for the Los Angeles-based physicist whose interest in flameworking in the mid-1960s laid the groundwork for the creative use of borosillicate in the [...]
December 26, 2009
A very cold Christmas for Wheaton Arts caught in the middle of New Jersey’s budget crisis
It wasn’t just a severe winter blizzard that has made December a bitterly cold month for Wheaton Arts in Millville, New Jersey, which is home to a museum housing the most complete collection of historic American glass, plays host to galleries and collectors through its biannual Glass Weekend, and directly supports contemporary artists working with [...]
December 25, 2009
Faculty Position: University of the Arts in Philadelphia calls for applicants
Applications for a full-time, non-tenure-track position are now being reviewed by the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where glass is taught as part of the Crafts department cirriculum. The full text of the announcement reads as follows …
December 23, 2009
Call for Submissions: Exhibition in London seeks established artist portfolios
The organizers of “Remarkable Glass,” an exhibition that will take place in summer 2010, are looking for submissions from European artists working with glass, ideally for at least seven years. Taking place from June 18th to July 17th at the gallery of Contemporary Applied Arts, London, the juried exhibition will showcase “outstanding work that demonstrates [...]
December 22, 2009
New “cottage craft” advocate Garth Clark ratchets up his criticism of “palace craft” and the American Craft Council
With the recent shows in Miami still top of mind, the glass community might turn its attention once again to gallerist Garth Clark, whose remarks at the American Craft Council’s Minneapolis conference last October (just recently made available for listening online) emphasize a very different view of art-from-craft-media than what we recently saw at Art [...]
December 18, 2009
Glass Curiosities: Piece of glass art history makes for an unusual holiday gift
This holiday season, thousands of travelers will be arriving and departing from New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport on their way to join their families for the holidays. Passing through or driving by Terminal 8 at JFK isn’t the same these days since the epic 317-by-23-foot stained glass window known as “the Cathedral” that [...]
December 17, 2009
Recasting of a Karen LaMonte work purchased by the Chrysler Museum
During this past summer’s “Art of Glass 2” event, glass sculptures took over the major art museums in and around Hampton Roads, Virginia. At the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, among the many exhibitions and events celebrating glass, a Karen Lamonte cast glass reclining figure was installed just off the main stairway in [...]
December 16, 2009
Deborah Czeresko’s “World’s Largest Ornament” Project, Take 4
Deborah Czeresko’s fourth, and largest-yet gargantuan Christmas ornament project is, in her own words, “an estrogen-conceived, testosterone-driven, high-octane-embodiment of unquenchable virility, with life-affirming allure.” Blown at the studios of Wheaton Arts, in Millville, New Jersey, during the last weekend in November, the creation of the epic ornament brought together a 15-person team hand-picked by Czeresko. [...]
December 15, 2009
The year the glass ceiling was shattered? Thoughts on the 2009 Miami shows
As the heat and light surrounding the Miami contemporary art shows begin to dissipate (at least until next year), it’s an appropriate time to reflect on how glass figured into what has arguably become the most important commercial event in visual art. Anchored by the behemoth Art Basel Miami Beach and the longer-running Art Miami [...]
December 14, 2009
3 Questions For … Mark Zirpel
GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on? Mark Zirpel: I’ve been quite busy lately completing some small- to medium-sized kinetic sculptures in the form of orreries, which are small models of the solar system common in the 1700s. An orrery depicts the rotation of the planets and their moons around the sun. This [...]
December 11, 2009
On Other Blogs: Australia’s long-running Glass Percussion Project discovered
Spotted by Daily Art Muse, Susan Lomuto’s blog celebration of “handcrafted excellence,” is a YouTube clip of the collaboration between an Australian glass artist and a percussionist which they have named the “Glass Percussion Project.”
December 10, 2009
Oldest glassmaking school in Europe threatened with closure
Just three years after celebrating its 150th anniversary, The Secondary School of Glassmaking in the Czech town of Kamenický Šenov in Northern Bohemia is facing an uncertain future. An urgent open letter from the principal Frantisek Janák went out via email this week. The school, which trains students for professions in the glass industry and [...]
December 9, 2009
Opening: Litvak Gallery prepares to unveil state-of-the-art exhibition space in Tel Aviv next week
Litvak Gallery, which has generated significant buzz for its lavish exhibition displays at SOFA Chicago 2008 and 2009, is taking the wraps off of a 9,000-square-foot gallery in Museum Tower, a prestigious office building in Tel Aviv, Israel, with an opening party at 8:30 PM on December 17th.
December 7, 2009
Howard Ben Tré and Toots Zynsky: In their own words
Elegantly filmed portraits of two of the most established artists working with glass can be found in YouTube video profiles of Toots Zynsky and Howard Ben Tré. The films about these two ground-breaking artists at mid-career are part of a project to document Providence, Rhode Island’s creative class.
December 7, 2009
3 Questions For … Paul Stankard
REVISED 12/8 GLASS: What are you working on? Paul Stankard: Lately I’ve been looking at the single flowering plants I did in the 1970s as botanical portraits. I’m interested in reconnecting to that spirit of discovery that defined my early work. Over recent years, my floral designs have become compressed into complex clusters of flowers, [...]
December 4, 2009
Seen: Glass art in Miami during the Art Basel Miami Beach madness
This weekend, the international contemporary art world descends on Miami, Florida for the infamous Art Basel Miami Beach exposition, and its numerous satellite events. In its eighth year and already shaping up to be more outrageous than ever, Art Basel opened its doors to the public yesterday at the Miami Beach Convention Center, while, back [...]
December 4, 2009
Opening: A celebration of the handmade drinking vessel in Louisville
The goblet is a time-honored glass object, rich with tradition and history. It also remains one of the most difficult things to blow, especially the thinner and more finely it is made. This has made the form a favorite of glassblowers looking to prove their technical prowess and tap into a centuries-old tradition. Drinking from [...]
December 3, 2009
Exhibition Opening: Katherine Gray curates Southern California glass mini-showcase
When you think West Coast glass, Seattle is the obvious first place to come to mind, with Portland, Eugene, and the Bay Area not far behind. But few realize that a budding glass scene has been blossoming in Southern California over the past few years thanks to longtime residents such as Joe Cariati, as well [...]
December 2, 2009
Exhibition: Transparency is theme of multi-media work at regional art museum
With an opening this Sunday afternoon, the “See Through” exhibition on view at the Islip Art Museum in East Islip, New York, will run through January 24th, 2010. This regional museum halfway between New York City and the Hamptons on Long Island has a reputation for putting on provocative exhibitions that often challenge preconceptions about [...]
