HOT OFF THE PRESSES: The Summer 2024 edition of Glass (#175)

The Summer 2024 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#175) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. On the cover is an unusual banquet table installed by brothers Jamex and Einar de la Torre, lifelong cultural travelers between Mexico and Southern California who collaborate in a multimedia art practice where glass plays a starring role. Their critique of conspicuous consumption is notable for its grotesque imagery, and of course, the overfilled banquet table is not a new concept in the glass art world. In her haunting and elegant monochromatic table installations, Beth Lipman pioneered this concept over two decades ago, as exemplified by her 2003 Bancketje (Banquet) installation in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. What Jamex and Einar do differently is to layer upon layer imagery, materials, and ideas. The result is a kind of visual overload that mimics the intensity of information contemporary life overwhelms with. And with the addition of taxidermy and gory details rendered in garish cartoon imagery, we are invited to contemplate our own attraction and revulsion at the concentration of wealth on display.

Laura de Santillana, Space II, 2002. Hand-blown, shaped, and compressed glass, metal leaf. H 17, W 14 5/8, D 1 3/8 in. photo: enrico fiorese

Wednesday May 15, 2024 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Laura de Santillana's glass homage to Japanese aesthetics will debut this evening in New York

This evening, the poetic and sensitive expressions in glass of the late Laura de Santillana (1955 - 2019) will inhabit the third-floor exhibition space at New York's Ippodo Gallery, where an exhibition of 25 of her works titled "Echoes of Her Gaze, Impressions of Tokyo and Kyoto in Glass," opens this evening. The assembled artwork was inspired by de Santillana's experience of Japan, where the contrasting influences of the intensity of Tokyo’s neon lights on the one hand, and the meditative aura of Kyoto’s aesthetics, inspired the artist's responses in sculpture. Aspects of Japanese culture such as the unique cinematography of director Yasujiro Ozu, or the dedication to craftsmanship in all aspects of the built environment are also explored in de Santillana's glass structures that are both translucent and opaque.

Petr Novotný pictured at the bench of his Novy Bor workshop.

Saturday May 4, 2024 | by Andrew Page

IN MEMORIAM: Petr Novotný (1952 - 2024), an ambassador, glass virtuoso, and innovator who helped sustain the historic glassmaking culture of Nový Bor, dies at 72

Petr Novotný, the owner of the Nový Bor glassworks, museum, and tool-making company, known as Novotný Glass, died on Friday, May 3rd, after a long illness. Renown as one of the most technically skilled glass masters from this Northern Bohemian town where glassmaking can be traced back to the 14th century, Novotný was a regular presence at international glass gatherings since the 1980s, and a force who single-handedly helped to sustain and advance the field in the centuries old glassmaking town just over an hour's drive north of Prague.

Monday April 29, 2024 | by Andrew Page

Amidst a wave of New York gallery closures, Douglas Heller will turn the lights off for good at his Tenth Avenue exhibition space to focus on online sales and art fairs

On the last day of May 2024, soon after the close of the Matthew Day Perez solo show "Accumulation" now on view, the lights will go off at the 10th Avenue gallery space that has been home to Heller Gallery since 2013. Doug Heller, who, over the past half-century has moved Heller Gallery from its origins on the Upper East Side to Soho, the Meat Packing District, and Chelsea, says the time has come to go virtual. Though the gallery's year-round exhibition space will close, he plans to continue representing artists through appearances at art fairs, online sales, private viewings, and pop-up exhibitions.

Monday April 22, 2024 | by Andrew Page

IN MEMORIAM: Gerry King (1945 - 2024)

The sudden passing of prolific artist and educator Gerry King, who died of a stroke on April 18, has sent shockwaves through the Australian and international glass communities who knew and cherished a true pioneer in contemporary glass. In addition to building an impressive art practice over the past four decades, as well as his work as a teacher and mentor, King was a past chair and president of the board of Ausglass, and an honorary lifetime member. With work in the collections of many prominent museums, he recently was celebrated in a retrospective 2022 exhibition entitled "Towards the Finishing Line" at the National Art Glass Gallery of the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in New South Wales, which was followed by a solo exhibition at Sabbia Gallery in Sydney that same year.

Installation shot of the SARAHCROWN Gallery exhibition "THE BUILDERS" photo: amy lemaire

Friday April 19, 2024 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: John Drury discusses curating his New York City gallery exhibition exploring contemporary approaches to glass

Through May 11, unusual glass constructions have taken over the white cube of SARAHCROWN Gallery, bringing new forms and rare coloration. Collaborations by Amy Lemaire & Nicolas Touron occupy the center of the gallery, while works by Michael Aschenbrenner, and Jennifer Crescuillo round out the experimental nature of the various objects arranged on plinths or along the wall. Some of the works are made with the mediation of technology, as in the Lemaire-Touron collaborations that merge flameworking with 3D-printed porcelain, a dialogue between two makers, but also between the machine-made and hand-worked processes. Aschenbrenner's meditations on mortality, shaped by his experiences during the Vietnam War, contrast man's capacity for brutality with literal and figurative healing. Crescuillo's intuitive hand-built vessels and sculptures remind us of why we are drawn to the handmade, objects that reflect intuition and encapsulate time in their subject matter and making. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet recently caught up with curator John Drury (who is also a contributing editor to the print publication Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly) to find out more about his choices and intentions in grouping these artists together in a single exhibition. The interview was conducted via email exchange.

Monday April 15, 2024 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Fall 2024 Toyama Institute of Glass Art Residency

The Toyama Institute of Glass Art, better known as "TIGA," is seeking applications for its 2024 artist residency. This program has been bringing international artists to Toyama City since 2020 as a way to promote glass art and the development of this center for glass in Japan known as "Glass Art City." The six-week residency offers a studio space for the duration of the residency, as well as opportunities to interact with art students and local citizens through artist lectures and demonstrations. It culminates in a solo exhibition at the Toyama Glass Museum.

Artists and friends Jason Christian and Dan Friday collaborated on Heritage Totem, blending their varied approaches to hot-working and transparent glass sculpture in a single work.

Thursday April 11, 2024 | by Andrew Page

A Seattle friendship takes physical form in Dan Friday and Jason Christian's Montague Gallery exhibition in San Francisco

Two different approaches to hot-sculpting glass find common ground in "Transparent Collaborations," an exhibit opening tonight at San Francisco's Montague Gallery that features work by longtime glassblowing friends Jason Christian and Dan Friday.

A poignant documentary film examines the life and work of Paul Stankard, who set the standard for botanical compositions encased in glass. film still courtesy: paul stankard: flower and flame

Thursday March 28, 2024 | by Andrew Page

REVIEW: An exquisitely crafted film examines Paul Stankard's elevation of the paperweight form, as well as the life and times of the man behind the torch

The film Paul J. Stankard: Flower & Flame quickly sets itself apart from many documentaries about glass artists with its opening scene. With sonorous Baroque chamber music as the soundtrack, a close-up lens tracks across the artist's softly lit studio, passing over a pair of gloves on a workbench, plates arranged with botanical components waiting for encasement in glass, a library of color rods, and an unlit torch. Then the moving camera comes to rest on a set of hands poised to light the burner. With a bright flick of the sparker, the flame comes alive as the film begins, cutting away from the jet of flame to Paul Stankard himself, facing the camera in the first of many intimate interviews about his life and work that are inter-cut with archival images, shots of process, and experts who extol what Stankard almost singlehandedly accomplished -- to bring the botanical paperweight to another level.Art dealer Doug Heller, who has shown Stankard's work for decades, recounted his first encounter with Stankard's early paperweights and being impressed even though he disliked the genre in general."He transcended the paperweight world," Heller said. "Paul takes it somewhere else completely."

A 2011 photo of Jeffrey Beers at an UrbanGlass gala celebration.

Wednesday March 20, 2024 | by Andrew Page

In Memoriam: Architect, artist, and longtime UrbanGlass board member Jeffrey Beers dies of cancer (1956 - 2024)

New York City-based architect Jeffrey Beers, founder and CEO of the successful hotel and hospitality design firm Jeffrey Beers International, died on Monday, March 18, 2024, from complications of cancer. Even as he built JBI into the global architecture firm it has become, and, with his wife, Connie, raised two sons, Beers found time to remain an active board member of UrbanGlass, which publishes the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet. As an architecture student at Rhode Island School of Design, Beers had taken courses in glass with department chair Dale Chihuly, and, when he later moved to New York City, he continued to blow glass at The New York Experimental Glass Workshop before it moved to Brooklyn and became UrbanGlass.

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.