Designer Heidi Jalkh's "Entre Medio" pushes the uneasy relationship between fused glass and ceramic to find compatible form and commentary on freedom

Buenos-Aires-based Colombian industrial designer Heidi Jalkh stepped out of her prescribed role for a new series "Entre Medio" ("In Between" in English), which fuses glass and ceramic without a glaze or glue. In an interview with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet, Jalkh said of industrial design: “you want things to work.” For "Entre Medio," however, she shifted her focus away from creating perfect products that adhere to a predetermined blueprint to embrace experimentation and the process of creation. She was especially intrigued by the push and pull that occur when glass and ceramic, which are normally fired at different temperatures, are fused solely based on form. The resulting pieces appear to be frozen in the act of creation and bear the cracks and fissures that result from thermal shock. "Entre Medio" embodies Jalkh’s focus on matter, morphology, and technique. It also reflects her overall practice, which is, in part, about receptivity and working within and around the constraints of the properties of given materials, themes that also speak to the larger environment in which she works in Latin America.

Thursday February 15, 2018 | by Allison Adler

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline nears for submissions for prestigious 2018 glass residency at Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale glass program is currently accepting applications from professional glass artists for a semester-long residency (from August 20th to December 14th, 2018). The application, which is due on February 22nd, is open to both national and international artists (the latter must meet requirements for the University’s J-1 VISA Exchange Visitors).

James Carpenter, Rondel Screen.

Thursday February 1, 2018 | by Allison Adler

Schantz Galleries now offering residential architectural commissions by James Carpenter

For artist and designer James Carpenter, glass is not a passive, transparent medium. It is a medium capable of being manipulated, either in itself or through architectural elements, to modify natural light, engage viewers, and transform our experience of an interior space and the natural world around it. We see this at play in his large-scale architectural projects like the exterior envelope and lobby of 7 World Trade Center Tower, the campus of the Israel Museum, and the Gucci Asia Headquarters in Tokyo.

Beth Lipman, One Portrait of One Man, 2017. Glass, metal, paint, adhesive. H 120, W 108, D 16 in. courtesy: the artist. photo: weisman art museum, university of minnesota.

Thursday February 1, 2018 | by Allison Adler

EXHIBITION: In a museum commission, Beth Lipman's artistic dialogue with renown American painter Marsden Hartley spans a century

Beth Lipman spent almost ten years planning a commissioned work for the Weisman Art Museum (WAM) that reflects on the paintings of acclaimed American Modernist Marsden Hartley. The invitation came as part of the Minnesota museum's series entitled "Sympathies", in which artists were invited to, in the words of senior curator Diane Mullin, "ponder their own work with and through the work of other artists/makers" in the museum's permanent collection. Mullin has long been an admirer of Lipman's explorations of material culture inspired by the 17th-century Still Life tradition, and chose her because of "the manner in which she entwine[s] material, history and biography in her salient objects and arrangements."