Youth-nonprofit GlassRoots seeks executive director as long-time leader Barbara Heisler steps back after eight years

As it embarks on its 20th year, the Newark, New Jersey-based nonprofit GlassRoots has announced a search for a new executive director to take over as its longtime leader Barbara Heisler steps back. Dedicated to using the unique power of glass art to reach young people, and help them develop the skills and confidence to succeed in life, the organization is poised for a year of major changes. It is preparing to move into a brand-new facility later this year, growing its footprint from a 5,700-square-foot facility to a 25,000-square-foot location in a newly created center called the Newark Arts Commons, and broadening its offerings to include a coffee shop and a worker space to support emerging craft artists in multiple media.

Thursday December 31, 2020 | by Andrew Page

Without crowds, the six-ton Waterford Crystal ball will descend in New York's Times Square this evening, marking the transition to a more-hopeful new year

Each year since the turn of the millennium, the Waterford Crystal brand has been involved in the famous ball drop in Times Square. It unveiled a totally updated all-crystal design in 2009, and has been renewing its 12-foot "New Year's Eve Times Square" ball, made up of more than 2,500 individual crystals and weighing almost six tons, around a new theme every year. When the team chose for 2020, the pandemic hadn't hit yet, but the "happiness" theme they arrived at could not be a more perfect reminder as the calendar turns to 2021. With vaccines and promising treatments, there is reason to hope for an improvement and, eventually, a resolution to the Covid-19 virus that has killed more Americans this year than soldiers who died in battle in all of World War II. When the ball descends 70-feet this midnight, it will be to an empty Times Square save for a few celebrity performers. But the event, like so much in 2020, will be experienced virtually through live broadcast on television and via this link, to an estimated 1-billion-person live audience.

Wednesday December 16, 2020 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: With a new body of work on view at Traver Gallery, Matthew Szösz discusses experimentation, innovation, and survival

Billed by Traver Gallery as a "surprise exhibition" and presented within a high-end interior residential setting set up within the gallery space, the unique experimental work of Matthew Szösz is on view at the leading Seattle glass gallery through January 9, 2021. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet caught up with the Seattle-based artist to discuss the show's German title "Luftschlösser", how his experimental forced-air glassblowing process has evolved, and his newfound embrace of color.

Monday December 14, 2020 | by Andrew Page

Holiday Flash Sale -- Give a gift subscription to Glass, and get a gift-wrapped bonus of the year in glass arriving before Christmas

For a limited time only, when you give the gift of a year's subscription to Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, there's no waiting for the first issue to arrive. Before Christmas, your gift recipient will receive a special bonus gift ($44 value) of all four issues from 2020, gift-wrapped and sporting a hand-written holiday card with your name on it.

Monday November 30, 2020 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Winter 2020 edition of Glass (#161)

The Winter 2020 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#161) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. On the cover is a work as voluptuous as it is complex by the late Michael Glancy (2050 - 2020), who passed away in August due to complications of lung cancer. The 2014 work is titled Shimmer, and features a repeating plus-sign pattern that forms a type of metal armor which is not uniformly protective but is broached several places by clear sections where the pattern on the opposing blown-vessel wall is visible from beneath. The work hints at complexities that lie beneath surfaces, revealing an inner dimension that can never be fully understood given the restricted vantage points. Viewed from our current perspective of political and pandemic turmoil, the plus signs might be seen as voting marks or positive Covid-19 test results, neither on Glancy's mind when he created it, but which speaks to the timelessness of his sculptural expressions.

Saturday November 21, 2020 | by Andrew Page

The potent relationship between glass and photography explored in gallery exhibition curated by Kim Harty

In 1877, inventor Edward Muybridge used tripwires to photograph a horse in motion, proving something impossible for the human eye to see in real-time. While his photograph that froze a trotting horse with all four hooves off the ground settled a bet, it became one of the best-known motion studies of the Victorian era, a field called chronophotography. The title of Rebecca Solnit's biography of Muybridge, River of Shadows, was adopted by artist and educator Kim Harty for her group photography exhibition that brings together the camera lens and glass artists who use photography to reveal insights into glass process, and could be considered a contemporary type of chronophotography.

Tuesday October 27, 2020 | by Andrew Page

The Glass Virus academic workshops in Europe go online in new Zoom seminar series that debuts Wednesday, October 28

The Glass Virus is a European initiative to foster dialogue among educators exchanging ideas about the best approaches to teaching glass art. The semi-annual in-person "Think Tank" gatherings had been centered at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where artist and Glass Virus founder Jens Pfeifer heads the glass program. But the group has changed formats in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and is planning a monthly series of Zoom meetings to discuss a range of current issues and challenges to the field. The first event will take place online on Wednesday, October 28th.

Behind the scenes of the 2020 Live Auction broadcast of Pilchuck: Through the Kaleidoscope. Auctioneer Fred
Northup, Jr. and executive director Christopher R. Taylor. © pilchuck glass school

Monday October 26, 2020 | by Andrew Page

Pilchuck's $1.1 million virtual gala is a bright spot in a pandemic-ravaged economy

As the pandemic stretches on, much of the economic news from the glass-art world is more about survival than success. But the impressive auction results from Pilchuck's first-ever virtual annual gala, themed "Through the Kaleidoscope" and held online on October 17th, were something to celebrate. The results were all the more notable because zthe staff of Pilchuck, which in June canceled its 2020 in-person programming, braced themselves for sharply lower gala income for 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic 2019 gala's $1.2 million. And instead of the usual 150 to 200 auction items, they pared this year's offerings down to 96,

Tuesday September 8, 2020 | by Andrew Page

In Memoriam: Robert M. Minkoff (1951 - 2020)

Philanthropist and glass-art collector Robert Minkoff died on Sunday, September 6, 2020, from complications of central nervous system lymphoma, first diagnosed in 2018. Through the Potomac, Maryland-based Robert M. Minkoff Foundation, he funded a number of artist residencies, scholarship programs, and academic conferences, as well as giving to the Jewish Federation and Housing Unlimited, a program that makes it possible for those with mental-health issues to live independently. (Disclosure: The author served as the director of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation until 2018.)

Charlotte Potter Kasic returned to the Hampton Roads area in January 2020 after three years in Vermont.

Thursday September 3, 2020 | by Andrew Page

Charlotte Potter Kasic named interim director of the Barry Art Museum as founding director Jutta-Annette Page nears retirement

Charlotte Potter Kasic, who returned to Norfolk, Virginia, in January 2020 to become the manager of museum education and engagement at the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University, has been named as the museum's interim director as the founding director Jutta-Annette Page is set to retire in October 2020. Kasic is credited with the museum's fluid transition to virtual exhibitions and activities when the pandemic hit, and the institution is now open with limited hours.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.