Viewing articles by Andrew Page

Artist and professor Helen Lee at the 2015 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium.

Thursday September 7, 2017 | by Andrew Page

A salary survey seeks insights into compensation levels in the field of glass art and design

FILED UNDER: Art Market, News

What's the average starting salary for a glass professor at a private art college? How about someone starting at a state school? How much debt is incurred on average to earn an MFA in glass? Until now, these questions, and more basic ones such as the going rate for a glassblowing assistant in the hot shop, have simply been unavailable. Now, artist and assistant professor Helen Lee, who heads the Glass Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is trying to crunch these numbers as part of an ambitious confidential research project she is undertaking to collect and analyze data on how much people are paid for their work in the glass art arena. Lee will share a summary and analysis of the results of her survey at the 2017 Robert M. Minkoff Foundation Academic Symposium at UrbanGlass. As an incentive to participate, those who take part and include an email address will receive a detailed report on the project's findings. Over 100 responses were received in the first two days, so this project promises to provide a significant sample size.

Julie Conway designed this pendant light, called "Tuffo" wth a clear crackle to cast a dramatic shadow pattern that has been incorporated into the Motif Seattle's logo for the 2017-18 artist residency period. courtesy: julie conway

Friday September 1, 2017 | by Andrew Page

DESIGN: Julie Conway wins visiting-artist competition at Seattle hotel

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Design, New Work, News

Seattle-based artist and designer Julie Conway has been named "visiting artist" for the Motif Seattle, a hotel that, true to its name, blends its identity to the vision of an area artist on a rotating basis. The recently redesigned hotel works with the artists to create a unique design "motif" that is incorporated into everything from the hotel's business cards to the room keys to elements of staff uniforms, and the collaboration is promoted on the hotel's social media presence. Conway was chosen from 20 applicants, and will receive a $2,000 honorarium. As part of her role as Motif Seattle's 2017-2018 visiting artist, Conway will be listed as the hotel's visiting artist throughout the hotel, and her work will be featured in the relaunched Website for the Motif Seattle later this month. She will also be running private glassblowing events for the hotel's clients throughout the term of the residency.

Friday August 25, 2017 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Fall 2017 edition of GLASS (#148)

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News, Print Edition

The Fall 2017 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#148) will hit newsstands and subscriber mailboxes next week. The issue marks a major upgrade in paper quality to better showcase our recent total redesign. The result is superior photo reproduction with richer colors, deeper saturation, and sharper details, all of which make the cover image of a tautly furled thread vessel by Toots Zynsky even more striking. In the featured article, regular magazine contributor Alexander Castro spends time in Zynsky's Providence, Rhode Island, studio, where he learns of the creative ferment spurred by the artist's recent Specialty Glass Residency at The Corning Museum of Glass and Corning Incorporated. Access to new materials have rekindled Zynsky's passionate interest in experimentation, which Castro investigates as he also considers her established, and much-coveted, sculptural vessels made through a process of fusing thousands of delicate glass fibers that are hand-formed into complex objects that display "tidal movement," which Castro writes "isn't superfluous but integral to their being."

James Baker's leadership of Pilchuck began in the summer of 2010.

Tuesday August 15, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Pilchuck announces James Baker will retire in early 2018, begins search for executive director

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Education, News

Effective February 2018, James Baker, who has served as the executive director of the Pilchuck Glass School for seven years, will step down from the top staff position at this influential Washington State arts center with locations in Stanwood and Seattle. Baker's appointment in the summer of 2010 ushered in a period of stability and growth at Pilchuck, after the brief tenure of his immediate successor, Arthur Jacobus, who resigned in December 2009 after taking over just a year earlier from the long-serving Patricia Watkinson. Under Baker's watch, Pilchuck added a Pioneer Square exhibition gallery in Seattle's arts district, while also upgrading and making its studios and shops in the main location in Stanwood more energy efficient. Pilchuck, and by extension Baker, was recognized with a 2016 Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass Organization Award, which specifically credited the leadership of its executive director.

Tuesday May 30, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CURIOSITY: A new species of glass frog with translucent skin discovered in Ecuador

FILED UNDER: Curiosities, News

"Glass frog" is a term given to a group of South and Central American arboreal frogs distinguished by a uniquely translucent skin, with some having a practically transparent underside of the abdomen which allows a clear view of working internal organs. A newly discovered species of glass frog, Hyalinobatrachium yaku, has been identified in Ecuador, according to an article recently published in the journal ZooKeys. One of the special features of this newly discovered variant is an almost completely see-through belly, where the heart, stomach, and blood vessels are on vivid display, albeit covered in some kind of white coating.

The cover of the upcoming edition of New Glass Review features work by Thaddeus Wolfe.

Tuesday May 23, 2017 | by Andrew Page

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Summer 2017 edition of GLASS (#147)

FILED UNDER: Announcements, New Work, News, Print Edition

The Summer 2017 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#147) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes next week. Once again, GLASS is partnering with The Corning Museum of Glass to distribute the latest edition of its annual exhibition-in-print, New Glass Review (#38), which is bundled with the summer issue of GLASS magazine at no extra charge to subscribers (newsstand copies carry an increased cover price for the special bonus issue). On the front of the new edition of GLASS is a striking work in neon and paint by celebrated American artist Glenn Ligon investigates issues of racial identity, American history, as well as the nature of language itself. The 2012 work Double America, features the word "America" shown twice, in white neon and inverted and painted black, creating a powerful graphic that challenges the nation's ideals and aspirations at a time when the country is so profoundly divided.

Dan Clayman, Mapping 16,000 Parts, 2017. Burned paper. collection: the artist

Tuesday May 9, 2017 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Dan Clayman takes his glass panel assemblages to new heights in sculpture park exhibit

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Architecture, Artist Interviews, New Work, News, Opening, Public Art

With a rainy VIP opening on Friday, May 5th, and the sun breaking through for a Saturday "Meet the Artist" afternoon event on May 6th, Dan Clayman unveiled Radiant Landscape, a monumental new project installed at the Grounds for Sculpture's Museum Building in Hamilton, New Jersey. This large-scale work that rises two stories is made up of thousands of 22-by-32-inch glass sheets rigged together in an intricate but elegant engineering solution which presents three fields of glass suspended vertically, at a steep pitch, and horizontally. The individual components are in shades of sunset gold, clear, and oceanic blue glass. The gold and clear are adjacent to one another and interact as they diffuse light that filters into the building's large windows, altering its hue and connecting to the landscape outside, and revealing several of Clayman's mapped-boulder sculptures (named for the geolocation where the natural boulder was found). The blue color field is suspended horizontally, and, bathed in its aquatic hues, one cannot escape the feeling of being under the surface of a large body of water.

Monday April 17, 2017 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Moving on, Susan Warner reflects on the glass museum she joined in 2001

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

In her 16-year-tenure at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, Susan Warner has served as executive director, artistic director, and director of public programs. Last week, she announced she'll be leaving her current position as the institution's artistic director and major gifts officer next month to once again assume the title of "executive director" but at a very different arts organization. The Vashon Center for the Arts is located on the largest island in the Puget Sound, which sits almost midway between Tacoma and Seattle. Unlike the glass museum, the Vashon is primarily focused on performing arts, and grew out of an arts league established in 1949. It currently has a staff of eight full-time employees, offers 120 classes a year, and puts on over 40 events per year, both exhibitions in its galleries and performances in its newly built theater. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently spoke with Susan by phone about her impressive tenure at the Museum of Glass, her reflections on how the institution has changed over the years, and the accomplishments she's most proud of.

An upcoming sale of 20th-century glass art at Rago is promoted on the auction house webpage.

Wednesday April 12, 2017 | by Andrew Page

The secondary market for glass heats up with online auctions, new players

FILED UNDER: Art Market, Auction, News

With glass a relatively new art material (Harvey Littleton's seminal Toledo Workshop took place only in 1962), it's perhaps no surprise that the secondary market for work in glass is only now experiencing a maturation as resales pick up in volume. The value of works in glass, once mostly set in private transactions brokered by glass dealers or by appraisers documenting museum gifts, is being hammered out at public auction as an increasing supply of works at all price levels comes up for sale. As the generation that championed Studio Glass as it was ascendant in the 1980s and 1990s has reached an age where many are looking to sell or donate works, the supply of secondary works is growing, and sales are increasingly taking place in the open air of an auction with both established and new players. New York City auction houses such as Sotheby's and Bonham's organized Studio Glass sales throughout the 1990s and early-2000s, but in recent years, much of the activity has coalesced around Lambertville, New Jersey-based Rago Auctions, which studiously publishes sales prices of its glass-art auctions and provides exhaustive condition reports at all price levels.

The cover of the upcoming edition of New Glass Review features work by Thaddeus Wolfe.

Tuesday April 11, 2017 | by Andrew Page

Summer issue of GLASS Quarterly will again include bonus of latest edition of New Glass Review

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, New Work, Print Edition

As a special bonus, current subscribers to GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly will once again receive the latest version of The Corning Museum of Glass's annual exhibition in print of notable new work for no extra charge. Overseen for the first time by Corning's new curator of modern glass, Susie Silbert, New Glass Review 38 will identify the 100 most important new works in glass from over 1,000 submissions from around the world. Subscriber copies will arrive in mailboxes on June 1st, 2017, poly-bagged with the extra bonus of the beautifully printed 2017 edition of New Glass Review. Newsstand copies will also include the extra bonus issue, but the retail cover price will be higher than the typical $11/copy. Subscribers, who already enjoy a discount off the cover price, pay nothing extra to receive this definitive publication that has successfully picked some of the most important new artists to emerge in its nearly two-decade run.

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.