Sheridan College will host event that celebrates its central role in the Netflix "Blown Away" phenomenon

On Saturday, October 19, Sheridan College will host a discussion for media and the public about the successful Netflix reality program "Blown Away," a Canadian-based television production that worked closely with the art college. In an afternoon of discussions and demonstrations at its Oakville, Ontario, campus, Sheridan sees the event as a way "to celebrate our deep connections -- and the fiftieth anniversary of our glassblowing program," as it was explained in the announcement of the event. At 12 noon on October 19, a press-only event will offer interviews with the show's artists Deborah Czereskoand Alexander Rosenberg, as well as assistants Emma McDonald and Alyssa Getz. There will also be high-level representatives from the production staff of the program, as well as the head of the glass program at Sheridan, Koen Vanderstukken, who served as Blown Away's series consultant.

Friday September 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Schedule released for the upcoming 2019 Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass (October 24 - 26, 2019)

The full program of the 2019 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass , which will run from October 24 through October 26, has been published. Among the highlights is an award to be presented to Lino Tagliapietra in recognition of his profound impact on the history of glass education in the United States. The ceremony will take place as the culmination of the Thursday evening gallery tour that kicks off the symposium and will take attendees through the Manhattan art neighborhood of Chelsea with stops at contemporary art galleries showing glass such as Marianne Boesky, Pace, and Luhring Augustine. The award will be presented at the final stop, Heller Gallery, where, during a catered reception in honor of Tagliapietra, the maestro will share his thoughts on the history and future of American glass-art education in a public conversation with Glass magazine editor and symposium organizer Andrew Page.

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener also writes for Artforum, Art in America, and The New Yorker.

Thursday August 29, 2019 | by Andrew Page

New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener will deliver keynote lecture at the 2019 UrbanGlass symposium that runs from October 24th through the 26th

The theme for the fourth biennial academic symposium at UrbanGlass is "Issues in Glass Pedagogy: Criticism, Critique, and Critical Thinking," and the keynote speaker will be a prominent New York Times art critic. Martha Schwendener, a visiting associate professor at New York University, writes for several top art publications, but most often for the Times, where she focuses on non-mainstream artists. Just this year she's reviewed Nancy Spero's feminist art exhibition at PS 1, the big MoMA show on art and technology, and the Karrabing Film Collective.

Tuesday August 27, 2019 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2019 edition of Glass (#156)

The Fall 2019 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#156) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover is a glass tapestry by Amber Cowan, who creates elaborate three-dimensional wall works by flameworking fragments of discarded, machine-made pressed glass. As new contributing editor Samantha De Tillio writes: "The work demands slow observation and challenges preconceived stereotypes regarding ornamentation, femininity, and the dominance of modernism."

Monday July 22, 2019 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Deborah Czeresko, who won the Netflix glassblowing competition Blown Away, tells all

New York-based artist Deborah Czeresko has a foot in two glass camps. She was drawn to glass by the precision of Venetian glassblowing, which she studied at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop under the tutelage of William Gudenrath, now resident advisor at the Corning Studio. (Disclosure: Czeresko is currently a board member of UrbanGlass, the successor of NYEGW.) But she is also an accomplished conceptual and performance artist, and has fabricated work for Kiki Smith and Rob Wynne, among other prominent contemporary artists. When not making her own work, or fabricating for others, she is often at work on her lighting-design line that helps provide income. Surprisingly, despite her wide-ranging skill and high-level art-world connections, Czeresko is not presently represented by an art gallery, though that might change given her recent star performance (and victory) in the Netflix reality show Blown Away. If you've somehow missed the big debates about the program, think of the Great British Baking Show except, instead of fancy desserts, the contestants are asked to create on-demand glass artworks under time pressure. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet caught up with Czeresko to discuss her experience behind and in front of the Blown Away cameras in an exclusive interview with the show's winner.

Thursday May 30, 2019 | by Andrew Page

In Memoriam: Critic and Glass contributing editor Victoria Josslin (1946 - 2019)

Victoria Josslin, a critic and contributing editor to the print edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, died suddenly at her home in the desert Southwest on May 12, 2019. She would have turned 73 in December. Josslin divided her time between homes on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she began to live part of the year after she married her former high-school boyfriend David Margolin in 2011. She is survived by her husband, her two children from her first marriage, two of her younger siblings, her mother, and her granddaughter. Josslin was the author most recently of the Spring 2019 cover article "Intense Quiet" on the new series of glass-on-glass paintings by Dale Chihuly (Glass #154), and her insightful, clearly articulated articles and reviews had been a regular feature in Glass magazine since she began writing for us in 2007. Born in 1946 in Dunnigan, California, Josslin grew up in Washington State and later Arizona, where she played in a folk band in high school with her future second husband. Majoring in painting, she graduated from Occidental College in Pasadena, California in 1969, where she met her first husband, Richard Josslin. They had two children and moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1986. There, she would go on to earn her MA in art history from the University of Washington in 1995, and became a regular art reviewer for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She also founded the successful arts blog Artsdish.com, which she ran for five years. Josslin also spent a decade at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, an arts center where she served as director of education and information until 2013. Just last year she published her first novel, The Bookstore of Other Languages.

Thursday May 23, 2019 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Summer 2019 edition of Glass (#155)

The Summer 2019 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#155) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover is a collage of images from Mary Van Cline's "Documenta Project," an ongoing photographic quest to capture the images (and personalities) of the unique community of artists, dealers, and collectors who coalesced around glass as an art medium. In her cover article, critic and curator Patricia Grieve Watkinson writes: "Perhaps it says something about those involved in the Studio Glass movement that they are willing and used to collaborating with a fellow artist in a way that might expose their vulnerability, and that there are so many -- artists and collectors -- who are willing to ham it up in front of the camera for a slice of posterity."

Tuesday May 7, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Tale of Two Chandelier Dresses: Susan Taylor Glasgow responds to Katy Perry's Met Gala showstopper

The theme of last night's 2019 Met Costume Institute Gala was tied to its current exhibition on "camp," so the celebrity red carpet this year featured even more outrageous outfits than the usual star-studded fashion show. Pop singer Katy Perry, a self-professed fan of camp who has dressed up as a hamburger in the past, knew this was a special opportunity to pull out all the stops. In a New York Post interview leading up to the big event on Monday evening, Perry's longtime fashion guru Moschino creative director Jeremy Scott said "there probably isn’t a performer in pop history that’s used camp and humor more than she has. I have guesses at what people expect from us, but I’m trying to outdo those expectations. It’s going to be an eleganza extravaganza.“

Tuesday April 30, 2019 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR PROPOSALS (updated): The 2019 UrbanGlass Academic Symposium will focus on criticism, critique, and critical thinking

The 2019 UrbanGlass Academic Symposium will take place on the updated dates of October 24th, 25th, and 26th in venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The jury has also been updated to include artist and educator Alli Hoag. In addition, the deadline for proposals on the expanded theme of "criticism, critique, and critical thinking" has been extended to June 1, 2019.

R & Company principals Zesty Meyers (L) and Evan Snyderman.

Thursday April 18, 2019 | by Andrew Page

Upcoming UrbanGlass Gala to honor artists Tauba Auerbach and Keith Sonnier, as well as gallerists Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman

UrbanGlass, the nonprofit art center that publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet, will celebrate its 2019 Gala + Auction on May 16, 2019. The event will honor UrbanGlass-affiliated contemporary artists Tauba Auerbach and Keith Sonnier as well as principals Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman of the design gallery R & Company. The annual gala is a critical fundraiser for the Brooklyn non-profit's year-round programs serving more than 12,000 people each year through exhibitions, studio demonstrations, performances, and the internationally distributed magazine Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly. Since its founding in 1977 as the New York Experimental Glass Workshop, UrbanGlass has been a resource for major artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith who have relied on its facilities and community to realize their ambitious projects in glass. This year's honorees continue that tradition: