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.

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.

Tuesday November 10, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

YaYa Center for the Arts readies for its first fundraising auction in new home on Friday

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Auction, Education, Opening

UPDATED: November 12, 2015 Of all the cities I've visited, New Orleans is the most human — the most alive. The city of New Orleans is a lot like a person, someone who is full of life, yet who has suffered and survived. A person with a story to tell, which undoubtedly begins and ends with an obstacle that has been overcome. Driving up to the YaYa Arts Center in Central City New Orleans, I was taken aback by how “new” the architecture of the buildings appeared. Construction had just been completed, and the shiny new center is surrounded by other new infrastructure, which, explained Lesley McBride, YaYa’s events and special projects manager, is the result of economic growth of the Central City neighborhood where the new YaYa is located.

Jeff Mack, who managed the studio at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, will join the Corning Museum of Glass Hot Glass Programs team in December.

Saturday November 7, 2015 | by Lindsay von Hagn

MUSEUMS: Jeff Mack moving from Toledo to Corning in December 2015

FILED UNDER: Announcements, News

UPDATED: 11/8 11:50 AM -- Artist and educator Jeff Mack, after seven years as the manager of the studio at the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, will be joining the The Corning Museum of Glass in December as the Hot Glass Programs and Projects Supervisor. This position, created in light of the recent museum expansion and the rapidly evolving hot glass programs at the Corning institution, will involve managing the daily operations of the popular Hot Glass Show, scheduling the team of glassmakers and guest artists, and managing hot shop maintenance and supplies. Though he will be doing some travel with the Hot Glass Roadshow and GlassLab Design Program, Jeff will not be heading out to sea with the cruise ship glassblowing programs, primarily facilitating recruitment and deployments from the home base in Corning. "I hope to realize the potential of the CMOG's incredible new space," he says, referring to the renovated Hot Glass Show amphitheater.

The Glass Guillotine, where unsold works are smashed, adds to the free-wheeling atmosphere of this unconventional fundraiser.

Thursday November 5, 2015 | by managingeditor@glassquarterly.com

Texas glassblowing studio hosts Steampunk fundraiser Saturday

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Auction, News

Steampunk is alive and well in Grapevine, Texas, where it’s the theme of an annual fundraiser put on by Vetro Glassblowing Studio and Gallery. Featuring a “twisted version of a live auction,” Glass On The Tracks will take place Saturday, November 7, from 7–10 pm.

Wednesday October 28, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

EXHIBITION: Tina Aufiero makes provocative words into challenging glass sculptures

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Artist Interviews, Events, Exhibition, Opening

Artist Tina Aufiero doesn’t make Word Art — written language rendered in glass and presented in a gallery context — as a way to reclaim meaning, as some of the best-known practioners of the genre such as Jenny Holzer do, but rather to consider how her own perception of a word develops in time while she is creating the piece. For Aufiero, meaning develops as a response to the process of creation. She works with a variety of materials, but returns to glass, possibly because the material is uniquely suited to conveying elusive concepts and surface reflections with a purity of expression. Though her work has been described as whimsical, the playfulness of her art speaks to deeper questions of our everyday language, as well as elusive concepts such as “love” and “happiness.”…

Tuesday October 20, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Two new Dan Graham installations in Paris embrace urban flux

FILED UNDER: Announcements, New Work, News, Public Art

Through October 25th, the busy Place Vendome, ground zero for Parisian fashion boutiques, will feature two new works by American sculptor Dan Graham, whose architectural installations employ partially mirrored surfaces and refraction to juxtapose viewers with their surrounds and one-another. Two Nodes (2015) features two mirrored cylinders that mix reflectivity with transparency to create a constantly shifting environment that distorts bodies, and overlaps images. In an adjacent outdoor work, Passage Intime (2015), Graham invites users to traverse a narrow passageway, which also provides shape-shifting reflections to viewers, as well as draws narrow boundaries of shared public space.

Thursday October 15, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Matt Szösz awarded 2015 University of the Arts Borowsky Prize

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, News

The Irvin Borowsky Prize in Glass Arts, a $5,000 award and artist residency organized by the University of the Arts since 2013, has been awarded to glass artist Matthew Szösz for 2015. Designed to recognized "an artist whose work advances the field of contemporary glass art," the recipient is also given a residency at the Philadelphia university's studios, and is invited to give a talk, which Szösz will deliver on November 12, 2015. This year, two additional Jurors' Awards were announced, going to the Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio programming director and manager Charlotte Potter and artist-educator David King.

Wednesday October 7, 2015 | by Andrew Page

HELP WANTED: National Glass Centre in Sunderland, England, seeks new director

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Help Wanted, Museums

The National Glass Centre in Sunderland, England — an ambitious hub for glass education, research, fabrication, and exhibition — is seeking a new director. The art center is part of the University of Sunderland, and also in the national porfolio of the Arts Council England, meaning it receives substantial funding from the British government. The gallery showing new design and sculpture using glass attracts 250,000 visitors per year, and the center also is the classroom and workshop for 130 students at the University of Sunderland's arts, design and media program. The ideal candidate for the director position will "lead the organisation through the next stage of its development, ensuring its place in local, national, and international networks," according to the official job posting.

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.