GLASS magazine awarded National Endowment for the Arts funding for 2016

FILED UNDER: Award, News, Print Edition

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly $15,000 for 2016, part of $27.7 million in arts funding the government agency is distributing to 1,126 projects across the nation next year under its "Art Works" major funding category. The Art Works program has a "focus on the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields," according to the NEA announcement.

Tuesday November 24, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Hot Off the Presses: GLASS #141, Winter 2015-16

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Print Edition

The Winter 2015-16 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#141) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes this week. On the cover is a detail of an exuberant work by Tony Cragg, which was exhibited as part of the fourth iteration of Glasstress, a collateral exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Cragg is one of more than 150 contemporary artists who have taken Adriano Berengo up on the offer to come to his Murano studios to realize work in glass with the assistance of a team of highly skilled glass masters. Cragg exhibited work at the very first Glastress in 2009, his participation giving the event added prestige as he also represented his native Britain in the main Venice Biennale in 1988. Cragg chooses materials for their ability to behave according to a set of rules and processes, building up cross sections into sculptures that vibrate with rotational energy, which is especially appropriate for working with glass, something he's done since his early works with found objects. Cragg's untitled work on the cover is a fitting image for the new issue which features artists who embrace the material's unique properties and process in service of very different visions.

Thursday November 19, 2015 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for .... Anne Petters

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?Anne Petters: I'm currently a visiting artist in the glass department at Southern Illinois University for the Fall 2015 semester. Being in the academic environment with access to so many art studios offers an incredibly valuable opportunity to reflect on my sculptural work, and to find new facets to a specific pate de verre printing technique I've been developing and teaching in recent years. I discovered this process on the search for a translation of a specific image I had in my mind, trying to picture and freeze transient moments of thought for my “Disegno” series in 2011.

Wednesday November 18, 2015 | by Andrew Page

CURIOSITIES: MIT’s Peter Houk interviewed about unearthed 1957 glass time capsule

FILED UNDER: Curiosities, Design, Education, Events, News, Video

Even before construction of the new nanotechnology lab at MIT has been completed, the facility is already yielding unexpected discoveries. Workers digging into the campus near Building 26 unearthed a sealed glass time capsule that had been buried in 1957 by students and their famous MIT professor Harold Edgerton (1903 – 1990), best known for his strobe photography that froze splashing liquid or the impact of bullets and explosions. The flameworked capsule stuffed with paper and scientific samples bears clear instructions not to open until 2957, or 1,000 years from its time of burial. In an official MIT video, director of collections Deborah Douglas talked about what remains enclosed in the sealed capsule. Whether it will be opened or not is unclear from the video.

Tuesday November 17, 2015 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: The new Glass Wheel Studio expands art offerings in Norfolk, Virginia

FILED UNDER: Events, Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening

The Norfolk, Virginia, glass scene, dominated by the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio, just got bigger with last weekend's opening of a brand-new multi-media art center last Saturday evening, November 14. Unlike the museum's program of demos and performances, the Glass Wheel Studio aims to "serve as an incubator for extraordinary ideas and aim to encourage artists across all disciplines to pursue and elevate their craft." (Disclosure: Glass Wheel Studio is an advertiser in GLASS Quarterly magazine.) As its name implies, the organization puts a special emphasis on work in glass but is open to artists working in all materials. The 8,500-square-foot facility features two rotating galleries and affordable artist studios. Each year, it will provide 13 visual artists an immersive studio practice program, which provides opportunities "for research, experimentation, and professional development." The inaugural exhibition features the glass work of Philadelphia-based artist Jon Goldberg, founder of East Falls Glassworks. Also featured is work by Natalie Abrams and Liz Berk. The

Monday November 16, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Today is the 100th birthday of the iconic Coca-Cola bottle design

FILED UNDER: Design, Museums, News

Even though aluminum cans and plastic bottles predominate, there's something about an ice-cold Coca-Cola served in its signature voluptous glass bottle that never fails to impress. The thick glass, shaped to perfectly fit into the hand and with raised lettering, telegraphs ripeness in its organic hourglass form. The patent for this design was issued on November 16, 1915, making today the centennial of this celebrated product packaging that is known around the world. The original design is referenced today in a variety of packaging materials for the world's best-selling soft drink. But it is in the greenish glass blottle that the form is most powerful, providing a visual and tactile sensuality that retains its power despite the proliferation of sophisticated package design in the century since. The story of how this quintessential design came to be is little-known and quite amusing.

Monday November 16, 2015 | by Andrew Page

AWARD: Therman Statom named as 2015 United States Artists Fellow, receives $50,000 prize

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, News

Therman Statom has been named as one of 36 United States Artists Fellows for 2015. With the honor, which includes an unrestricted $50,000 award, Statom joins the ranks of artists working with glass such as Beth Lipman, Sibylle Peretti, Judith Schaechter, Mary Shaffer, Joyce Scott, and Einar & Jamex de la Torre, all of whom have been honored by the organization since it was founded in 2006. The purpose of the fellowship is to identify "the most accomplished and innovative artists working in the fields of Architecture & Design, Crafts, Dance, Literature, Media, Music, Theater & Performance, Traditional Arts and Visual Arts." Though the organization identifies Statom as a "sculptor, glass artist, and painter" who is "most notably known as a pioneer of the contemporary glass movement for his life-size glass ladders, chairs, tables, constructed box-like paintings, and small scale houses; all created through the technique of gluing glass plate together," he, like the other artists working in glass who have won the award, is listed in the "Crafts" category.

The Rakow Commision work Tantric Object (2015) by Swiss studio jeweler Bernhard Schobinger features glass skulls crafted from the bottom of antique poison bottles.

Thursday November 12, 2015 | by Andrew Page

MUSEUMS: Corning to unveil subversive jeweler’s Rakow Commision work today

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News

Today, The Corning Museum of Glass will unveil its 30th Rakow Commission, the first to be awarded to a jeweler and the first new work to be added to the collection of the museum's Contemporary Art + Design Wing since the March 2015 opening. The work is titled Tantric Object by the avant-garde Swiss jeweler Bernhard Schobinger. It is a necklace of tiny skulls made from the bottom of green poison bottles. Gold laquer adds a decorative flourish to this provocative neckwear, and the word "GIFT" is evident in one of the glass pieces -- which in German means "posion." In a provocative 45-year career, the artist-jeweler has built his reputation on his use of castaway materials such as broken glass and ceramic shards, worn-out erasers, and even the elastic that once kept underwear from falling down.

Wednesday November 11, 2015 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Jean-Simon Trottier

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?Jean-Simon Trottier: For the past two years, I've been working continuously on a collaborative project with my partner Montserrat Duran Muntadas. We have created several sculptural installations that explore the issues of immigration and borders. For this project, we were especially inspired by seeds of various plants as metaphorical symbols of freedom. Because the organic forms of our sculpture were inspired by nature, this especially made our technical research an enriching one, while giving us pieces that surpassed our expectations.

Wednesday November 4, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: Royal College of Art seeks new Head of Glass & Ceramics Program

FILED UNDER: Education, Help Wanted, News

The Royal College of Art, located in the Kensington area of London, is seeking a new head of its Ceramics & Glass Program, which is unique in only offering graduate-level studies. Masters and doctoral students at RCA are pursing glass and ceramics from different perspectives, including as product designers and individual artists, but all are driven by a desire to achieve material understanding. Reporting to the college's dean of the "School of Material," the successful applicant to head the program will be in charge of the academic direction, research, and resources allocations of the program and its staff, according to the official job posting. Key qualities sought are business acumen and creative thinking to help bolster the program's prestige as a venue where creativity, science, and technology meet.

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.