Glass Curiosities: Concrete made translucent through glass fibers

FILED UNDER: Curiosities

What material is as strong as concrete, can be over a meter thick, and yet transmits light? Litracon (LIght TRAsmitting CONcrete), invented by Hungarian architect Áron Losonczi, is a concrete building material which can display light and shadow. “Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block,” Losonczi explained in an article for a photonics industry trade magazine.

Monday June 7, 2010 | by Kim Harty

In Memoriam: Louise Bourgeois (1911 - 2010)

FILED UNDER: In Memoriam

Louise Bourgeois, the influential and prolific sculptor who worked frequently with glass as a medium, died last Monday, May 31st, in Manhattan. She was 98. Born on Dec 15th, 1911 in Paris, she was the second of three children to Louis and Josephine Bourgeois. Much of her work was inspired her emotionally conflicted family life growing up. She famously stated “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” She had great affection for her mother, and saw her as a pillar of strength, and anguish and disdain for her father, who carried on a 10-year affair with their live-in tutor. After attending various art schools in Paris. in 1938 she married Robert Goldwater, an art historian, and migrated to New York. Although Bourgeois’s art career spanned her entire adulthood, she wasn’t widely recognized for her work until she was in her her seventies. Among her hundreds of awards and honors, in 1996 she received the First Annual Urban Glass Award for Innovative use of Glass by a Non-Glass Artist.

Wednesday May 12, 2010 | by Kim Harty

Last Chance: “Ends and Means” at Fullerton Art Museum closes tomorrow

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work

Today and tomorrow will be your last chance to see “Dylan Palmer and Colby Bird: Ends and Means,“ at the Robert V. Fullerton Museum of Art at the California State University, San Bernadino. The show, which includes sculpture, neon, photography, and glass, is accompanied by a printed pamphlet of nine essays by editors and curators such as Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass a the Corning Museum of Glass, and Colby Chamberlain, managing editor at Cabinet Magazine. The show title is an apt reference to the Adlous Huxley book, Ends and Means (an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization).

Wednesday April 28, 2010 | by Kim Harty