Hot Off the Presses: GLASS #140, Fall 2015

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

The Fall 2015 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#140) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes over the next few days. On the cover is a work by French installation artist Baptiste Debombourg, a room with massive windows collapsing inward. For her article, contributing editor Victoria Josslin presents a mediation on Debombourg’s grand catastrophe in Aerial (a 2012 site-specific installation at the Brauweiler Abbey near Cologne, Germany), considering the scene as a frozen moment just after the impact of some cataclysmic explosion outside.

Tuesday August 25, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: Toledo Museum of Art Glass Studio seeks Assistant Manager

FILED UNDER: Help Wanted

The Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, is seeking an assistant manager who will work with the Glass Studio manager in the daily operations of the multi-use, state-of-the-art facility that is a major site for the museum's programming, education, and special events. The successful applicant will be responsible for leading the technical staff in maintaining studio operations, which include hot glass, flame working, kiln forming and stained glass studios as well as a mold-making and cold-working shop. "The position will be lead on all maintenance related activity and assist in planning long-term projects taking place in the Glass Studio," reads the official job announcement.

Rachel Owens, "Smile Always" exhibition at Zieher Smith & Horton in 2015.

Saturday August 8, 2015 | by Andrew Page

On Tuesday, artist Rachel Owens to lecture about her glass-and-resin work that critiques consumerism

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Artist Interviews, Events, News

On the evening of August 11th, internationally-exhibiting artist Rachel Owens will speak about her work and process during an evening lecture at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn (UrbanGlass publishes the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet). The artist, whose work graced the cover of the Summer 2015 edition of GLASS (#139), explores the corrosive effects of consumer culture driven to unsustainable levels of desire by retail mercandising and marketing. Ownes makes sculptures of molded broken glass and resin, which she employs for its seductive and repulsive push-puil.

Wednesday June 10, 2015 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Stanislav Libenský Award invites recent grads to submit

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions, Exhibition

The Prague Gallery of Czech Glass has announced a call for entries to the seventh Stanislav Libenský Award. Designed as an international juried exhibition for glass art, the award is open to recent grads of B.F.A. or M.F.A programs around the world, as long as they used glass as an element in their final thesis project.

Monday June 1, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HOT OF THE PRESSES: Glass #139, Summer 2015

FILED UNDER: New Work, News, Print Edition

The Summer 2015 edition of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#139) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. It comes bundled with the just-published 2015 edition of New Glass Review, a special subscriber bonus at no additonal charge (It is also available at select newsstands, but at a higher cover price). On the cover is a striking work by sculptor Rachel Owens, who employs glass for the same light-mediating qualities that draw so many sculptors. But she is especially focused on its metaphoric resonance. She began to notice broken green glass on the sidewalks of her Greenpoint, Brooklyn, neighborhood shortly after moving to New York after earning an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Keeping its sharp edges intact and giving it shape using a resin casting process, she has made it a primary material in her work, tapping into its associations of consumption and violence—two forces she zeroes in on in her critique of the excesses of our culture of rampant consumerism and its dire implications for the natural world. An in-depth conversation with Owens explores the importance of her investment in making her own work, which brings together concept and material for a powerful, multi-layered effect.

Tina Oldknow in the Heineman Gallery. photo: allison lavine

Tuesday May 26, 2015 | by Andrew Page

A conversation with Corning’s Tina Oldknow on the announcement of her retirement

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Museums, News

This morning, The Corning Museum of Glass will announce that Tina Oldknow plans to retire from the position of senior curator of modern and contemporary glass in September 2015. Oldknow has been in this high-profile position since 2000. Her 15-year-tenure has been marked by numerous exhibitions, publications, and frequent appearances as a lecturer, critic, and panelist (including those I've moderated). Her visibility, as well as prodigious output as an author and curator, have made her perhaps the most-visible and best-known figure in the world of contemporary art made from glass, and one of its most-enthusiastic proponents. Oldknow's retirement will come just months after the March 2015 opening of The Corning Museum's new Contemporary Art + Design Wing, which she curated, and for which she made several major acquisitions while being intimately involved in its planning and design. Oldknow also wrote the exhibition catalog for the new wing, entitled Collecting Contemporary Glass: Art and Design After 1990 from the Corning Museum of Glass (2014).

Wednesday May 20, 2015 | by Andrew Page

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Emerging Canadian glass artists vie for $10,000 prize

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Call for Submissions

Applications are now being accepted for the 2015 RBC Award for Glass, which goes to artists working in glass professionally for no more than 10 years, and who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Organized by the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario, the competition's winner will receive $10,000. The jury is made up of contemporary glass artists (there is also a $10,000 award for ceramic artists) and is limited to artists who sell their work, and who have developed their skills "through training and/or practice in the field." The deadline for applications is September 14, 2015, and winners will be presented with their awards at a gala event in Waterloo, Ontario, on November 14, 2015.

Thursday April 2, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Susie Silbert to deliver Metropolitan Glass Club lecture linking Tiffany to Studio Glass

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, News

Meeting the first Tuesday of the month, from Fall through the Spring, the New York Metropolitan Glass Club brings together historic and contemporary glass collectors, dealers, and enthusiasts for a monthly lecture presented at an Upper West Side church that features a number of significant Tiffany windows. The setting will be especially appropriate for the upcoming April 7th meeting, in which design historian, GLASS magazine contributor, and educator Susie Silbert discusses the relationship between the legendary designer Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Studio Glass movement.

Tuesday March 24, 2015 | by Andrew Page

The glorious new Corning wing pioneers the use of Gorilla Glass to make display cases disappear

FILED UNDER: Architecture, Design, Exhibition, Museums, News, Opening

As readers of the Spring 2015 edition of GLASS (#138) know, the design of the new Contemporary Art + Design wing at The Corning Museum of Glass is based on the power of natural light to allow artwork in glass to come alive. The issue's feature article ("A New Frame for Contemporary Glass") and back-page essay by the wing's architect Thomas Phifer ("Designing the New Contemporary Wing of The Corning Museum of Glass") reveal a single-minded focus on bathing glass in indirect natural daylight to provide optimal viewing conditions. With architect Phifer viewing the museum wing itself as a vitrine, how to approach protecting the work without interfering with the visual effects so painstakingly achieved? The answer came when the architect, together with the Corning team and exhibit designer Kubik Maltbie, hit upon using the museum's corporate parent's specialty-glass known as "Corning Gorilla Glass," which is widely used in smart phones and tablet computers for its strength, lightness, and optical clarity.

Tuesday March 17, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Flameworkers to gather in South Jersey for international conference this weekend

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, News

Headlining the 2015 International Flameworking Conference (IFC) at Salem Community College taking place this weekend (March 20 - 22) will be Junichi Kojima, a.k.a, Rose Roads, and David Willis. Collaborative demonstrations by Eric Franklin and Jason Chakravarty will also be a major draw. The three-day event kicks off Friday evening at 7 PM with a presentation by the Chrysler Museum of Art curator of glass, Diane Wright who will deliver a lecture titled "From B.C. to Boro: A Short History of Flameworking" at the Sol and Jean Davidow Performing Arts Theatre at Davidow Hall on the community college's Carneys Point, New Jersey, campus.

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.