The UrbanGlass Spring Gala on May 5th honors artist Layo Bright, auctioneers David Rago and Suzanne Perrault

At 6 PM on Monday, May 5, 2025, guests will begin arriving at the first-floor Agnes Varis Art Center at UrbanGlass in Downtown Brooklyn. This nonprofit arts center sits at the epicenter of a major arts hub of New York, with gleaming new high-rise residential buildings springing up in all directions as the neighborhood attracts legions of new residents drawn by all the buzz, but UrbanGlass has been at this location since the early 1990s as an outpost for glass art in the cultural capital of the U.S.

Thursday April 25, 2024 | by Sponsored Content

The 2024 Summer Intensives at UrbanGlass bring top pracitioners who offer total immersion and rapid elevation of skills

School may be out for some this summer, but for students of UrbanGlass intensives in July and August, the flow of technical knowledge will be coming fast and furious with some of the best practitioners in the field sharing their wisdom (and techniques).

Sunday January 28, 2024 | by Sponsored Content

Dan Clayman to look back and into the future as part of the Paul Hollister Lecture series at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City

On January 31st, artist and designer Dan Clayman will deliver the latest offering in the Bard Graduate Center's long-running Irene and Paul Hollister Lecture Series, when the Rhode Island-based artist delivers a Wednesday evening talk entitled "Fragile Materiality." In his talk, Clayman will journey into the history of Studio Glass, mapping out the connections that link it to the contemporary moment, when applications of glass are expanding in the wider contemporary art and architecture realms.

Artist and designer Robert DuGrenier (second from right) has been honing his cooking on molten glass in anticipation of an unforgettable night of hot-shop cuisine at UrbanGlass for the winning bidder.

Tuesday October 10, 2023 | by Sponsored Content

The UrbanGlass 2023 Gala and Auction offers a chance to bid on a sizzling evening to remember in the hot shop

For its 2023 Gala and Auction taking place on October 11, UrbanGlass is putting a wide range of artworks up for bid as part of its annual fundraising event. At $9,000, the auction item with the highest minimum bid is for an unusual blend of performance art, glass blowing, and fine dining that will take place in the open-access art center's state-of-the-art hotshop. This unique experience will see the winning bidder and up to 11 guests meet up to celebrate the fusion of glass art and culinary ingenuity as glass artist, designer, progressive farmer and UrbanGlass board member Robert DuGrenier, working together with New York Times-starred chef Alex Sorenson of Blank Slate Kitchen, whip up an unforgettable feast for the senses.

Trenton Quiocho on the set of Blown Away, Season Three. photo: david leyes. courtesy: marblemedia

Thursday July 13, 2023 | by Sponsored Content

Up your technical game by grabbing one of the remaining slots in an UrbanGlass summer intensive

Whether you're working to develop more complex hot-sculpting or expanding your glass designs into lighting, there are unique educational opportunities at UrbanGlass to turn the Summer of 2023 into a game-changer for your studio practice. Learn from Blown Away contestants Jason MacDonald or Trenton Quiocho, whose skills earned them a spot on the international reality-show sensation. Or dive into glass-bead techniques in the Native American tradition with Lenise Omeasoo, or learn from glass-bead expert Sheila Checkoway without having to travel to her usual Massachusetts turf. The UrbanGlass hot shop, flat shop, and flame studio will be buzzing with activity this summer, so reserve your place to be a part of it before these classes are full!

Tuesday November 15, 2022 | by Sponsored Content

Registration for the 2023 GAS Conference in Detroit is now open

The Glass Art Society has announced the location and dates for the upcoming 2023 annual conference, which will take place in Detroit from June 7th through 10th. Following their post-pandemic return to in-person programming with 2022’s Tacoma conference, the Detroit event is planned to be in-person and tickets are already available for purchase at a special early-bird discounted rate, which will expire on January 10th. Along with attendee registration, applications for exhibition slots and scholarships are also open.

Thursday August 25, 2022 | by Sponsored Content

This November, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show will once again be live and in-person

For the first time since going virtual in 2020, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show will resume as an in-person event for November 2022. The official list of fine contemporary artists selected to present at the 46th annual PMA craft show has been announced, boasting 195 craftspeople from across the country, carefully selected from over 500 applicants. The 2022 jury comprised gallery professionals, academics in the field, and Glass Quarterly editor Andrew Page.

Thursday June 16, 2022 | by Sponsored Content

Exquisite technique and bold experimentation go hand-in-hand in the UrbanGlass Summer course lineup

The roster of artists teaching the UrbanGlass 2022 summer intensives share a dedication to rarefied technical skills as well as highly experimental processes. Together they make up a unique group of instructors at the forefront of new directions in neon, kilnforming, flameworking, and glassblowing. All are coming to Brooklyn, New York, this summer for the city's unique artistic energy that has been a destination for generations for its power to recharge and inspire creative explorations.