CONVERSATION: Jasmine Anokye on #BlackGirlMagic, bridging cultures, and challenging stereotypes through multimedia glass artwork

Jasmine Anokye, a Ghanaian-American artist, celebrates the resilience and triumph of Black women through her multimedia glassworks. A sculptor, painter, and glass artist, Anokye combines her range of skills to create pieces that encourage reflection and introspection on the black female experience. With her childhood spent between Ghana and America, she brings together ethnic and street cultures in an aggressive harmony that explores the diversity of femininity and pushes back against stereotypes that limit black women. Earlier this year, Anokye's day/dreams exhibition graced the Agnes Varis Art Gallery's window gallery with wall-to-wall beaded curtains and mixed media art focused on African proverbs that allowed the viewer to truly dream as they passed by. (Disclosure: UrbanGlass is also the publisher of the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet.)

Tuesday December 7, 2021 | by Andrew Page

The annual Rakow Commission returns with a large-scale assemblage by New York City's Leo Tecosky

After a hiatus during the pandemic in 2020, The Corning Museum of Glass has resumed its annual Rakow Commission, in which an artist is granted $25,000 to fund explorations into glass that would not have been possible due to financial limitations. For 2021, the resumed Rakow Commission has been awarded to multimedia artist, Leo Tecosky, who recently installed his work, The 36th Chamber, in the museum's Contemporary Art and Design Wing.

Saturday November 27, 2021 | by Andrew Page

HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Give A Year's Worth of Glass, and Get a Gift-Wrapped Bonus of an Additional Year

SPECIAL LIMITED-TIME HOLIDAY OFFER: 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 in the mailbox. A gift-wrapped set of the full year's worth of issues from 2021 (including our two blockbuster articles on Lino's retirement and legacy), will be rushed to your gift-recipient's mailbox with a hand-written holiday card featuring your name as the source of this bountiful package.

Monday September 6, 2021 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: UrbanGlass seeks a Development Director

Do you have five or more years leading the fundraising for a non-profit organization? Familiar with a wide range of funding sources, including corporate partnerships and special events? Are you a fantastic communicator? Do you look for the big picture and approach your projects from a strategic perspective? Are you a Google suite expert who has also tamed the wild world of Salesforce or other CRM?

Monday August 30, 2021 | by Andrew Page

Hot Off the Presses: The Fall 2021 edition of Glass (#164)

The Fall 2021 edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#164) is hitting newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. On the cover is a time-based work by David Schnuckel, an epic story told in 16 panels. Like a graphic novel, it records a decay sequence as an expertly created wineglass made by the artist is subjected to the intense heat of the kiln, which causes it to deform, collapse, and end as a shriveled silica mass. Rich with metaphor for the lifecycle, it was chosen as fitting for the season of harvest, and for its challenge to the tendency to fetishize technique in glassmaking. Schuckel's work is highly original, takes advantage of new technical opportunities thanks to a high-temperature camera setup at Corning, and revels in the artist's interest in provocation and deconstruction.

Tuesday July 27, 2021 | by Andrew Page

EXCLUSIVE: About to turn 87, Lino Tagliapietra announces his retirement from glassblowing, though not from teaching

Taking what he considers "the hardest and most important decision" of his life, glass maestro Lino Tagliapietra has announced his official retirement from glassblowing today. Citing the challenges of manual work at the furnace as he approaches his 87th birthday on August 10, the man widely acknowledged as the greatest glassblower in the world will put away his tools for the last time.

Saturday July 10, 2021 | by Andrew Page

THE GLASS QUARTERLY CONVERSATION #3: Alex Bernstein on the accidental discovery that changed his career

For our third installment of "The Glass Quarterly Conversation," we present Alex Gabriel Bernstein, who is the subject of an in-depth feature by regular magazine contributor Alexander Castro in the current edition of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (Summer 2021, Glass 163). In conversation with Glass editor Andrew Page, Bernstein shared the story behind his accidental discovery working in his father's studio while home for Christmas from grad school, when showers of steel sparks embedded themselves into a glass surface. Thus was born a technique that would come to be known as "Bernsteining," though its inventor shares all he knows about his technique openly in classes and demos, encouraging others to explore this fusion of glass and steel.

Thursday July 8, 2021 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Alison Kinnaird on the expansive possibilities of the ancient art of glass engraving

Copper-wheel glass engraving, an ancient technique that has defied forecasts of its imminent obsolescence, is a highly-expressive type of shallow rendering in glass that dates back to Roman times. The technique reached its peak of popularity in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, after which it was eclipsed by less labor-intensive processes such as cutting or etching glass. Though not as widely practiced as it used to be, the contemporary art of glass engraving is not only proving to be continually relevant, its artistic potential continues to be expanded by artists such as Alison Kinnaird. Aspects of the copper-wheel technique, such as its limits in scale as the glass must be small enough to handle precisely under the engraving wheel, have continued to push Kinnaird to find innovative solutions to challenges she regularly encounters, even after her own 50 years of experience in the process.

Alison Grace Koehler in her Paris studio: photo: sabine dundure

Thursday June 17, 2021 | by Andrew Page

CONVERSATION: Paris-based Alison Grace Koehler searches for new ways of fusing poetry and stained-glass

Alison Grace Koehler, who's been seeking ways to fuse stained glass and poetry through innovative performances that use projected imagery during live readings, has recently published a book that brings together the word and ethereal image in printed form. An American expatriate, Koehler discovered stained-glass while walking along a winding street near the Gare du Nord in Paris and spotted a series of paintings and glass panels through a studio window. Out of curiosity, she knocked on the door and was invited in by the Kurdish artist, who for decades had been living in Paris, where he offered stained glass workshops. Koehler had experience cutting glass when she assisted an artist in Copenhagen, Denmark, after graduating with a BA from Macalester College in 2008, and so she signed up. She was so enamored by the stained-glass process, she would go on to get an advanced degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art, and would be admitted into a guild of emerging stained-glass artists. Based in Paris, Koehler now shares a studio space with another stained-glass artist from the guild. Since she began working with stained glass, she has sought ways to animate the form -- from manipulating glass components on an old-fashioned transparency projector to using a live video feed projected on her own figure as she reads her poems, using the sounds of breaking glass as rhythmic interludes of the performance. The Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet recently interviewed Koehler via email about her new book project, and her attempts to bring her various media together into a single work.

Monday June 14, 2021 | by Andrew Page

Prize-winning documentary, an epic tale of near-disaster in stained-glass fabrication, available for free screening and discussion

Holy Frit, a harrowing tale of the near-disaster when Judson Studios, artist/designer Tim Carey, and the famed Narcissus Quagliata teamed up to create a massive glass window. A fast-paced documentary by director Justin Monroe recreates the seat-of-the-pants story of how an extremely ambitious Carey took on the job of creating the world's largest stained-glass window for the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, and struggled to turn the concept into reality, eventually bringing in stained-glass maestro Quagliata for emergency assistance. With a lighthearted take on what was no doubt a gut-wrenching process, director Monroe follows Carey as he defies several potential disasters along the way of pioneering new fusing techniques to realize the outsized vision. The film's trailer captures the zany energy of a project repeatedly just missing going off the rails with a sense of humor only possible in hindsight, though much of it was filmed as it unfolded.

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.