3 Questions for ... Rui Sasaki

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

In 2010, I had the good fortune to be invited as a visiting critic to an especially strong RISD graduate show of glass MFAs, which that year included Charlotte Potter, Matthew Day Perez, and Rui Sasaki. I was impressed across the board, not only with the work, but the confidence with which all three artists worked with materials, embracing readymade and non-glass media in their respective thesis projects. Rui Sasaki presented a 4-hour video of her multi-day performance art piece that involved a block of ice made up of the same amount of water in the human body. A test of endurance and risking hypothermia, she curled her nude body around the block to hasten its melting, displaying a similar block of ice while the document of her marathon performance was screened. Since her graduation, she's taught glass and contemporary art at Worcester State University in the U.S., and Kyoto University of Art and Design as well as the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan. Working with "transparent materials," which includes ice and glass, she is building on her long-standing interest in the concepts of "home" and, by extension, "intimacy," something she felt the profound loss of when she left Japan to study in Rhode Island in 2007. Since her graduation, she's been traveling widely to residencies in the U.S., Sweden, Belgium, and Japan, as well as to exhibitions around Europe and Asia. As she writes in her artist statement: "Wandering is a part of my work to achieve the definition of intimacy in empty space and intimacy without space. Through my work, I document the intimacy and memory of the home." The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently caught up with Rui at her residency in Norway, where she answered some questions about her latest projects. —AP

Thursday May 5, 2016 | by Andrew Page

GALLERY EXHIBITION: Toots Zynsky artist reception tonight at Heller Gallery

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, News, Opening

Toots Zynsky's sensuous forms, made up of thousands of undulating glass fibers that have been fused into wide-throated vessels that reach skyward with sinuous lines and luminous colors, are on exhibit at Heller Gallery through May 28th. Tonight, the exhibition entitled "today tomorrow yesterday | oggi domani ieri," will celebrate the artist and her 40-year career with a reception at the Chelsea, New York gallery from 6 PM to 8 PM.

Thursday April 21, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Corning exhibition celebrates the enlightenment brought by early glass microscopes

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Museums

Opening this Saturday, April 23, 2016, and running through March 18, 2017, a new exhibition at The Corning Museum of Glass entitled "Revealing the Invisible: The History of Glass and the Microscope" will examine the 17th century figure of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch dealer in fabric who intitally was looking for a way to examine in greater detail the threads in of the cloth he was selling. His interest in lensmaking led him to develop very fine glass spheres that, when installed in a simple handheld device, could reach magnification levels of 275 times. Van Leeuwenhoek would go on to keenly observe and describe for the first time blood cells, bacteria, and sperm, advancing the fields of biology and medicine. Through his regular correspondence with the Royal Society in London, he eventually won their endorsement and his continuing discovery made him a celebrity in his time, even winning an invitiation to visit with the Tsar of Russia. Among the highlights of the Corning exhibition will be an extremely rare original 300-year-old van Leeuwenhoek microscope. Less than 12 are known to have survived, and none have ever been exhibited in the United States.

Thursday April 14, 2016 | by Andrew Page

Juried exhibition of stained glass set to open in June in Chicago — Washington D.C. in July

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Opening

“American Glass Now: 2016, ” a juried contemporary stained glass exhibition organized by the American Glass Guild will take place in two venues this summer. From June 17th to July 11th, the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago will host the fifth annual survey show, which will then move to the Washington National Cathedral, where it will be on view from July 17th through September 28th. A reception for the artists will be held in Chicago on Friday, July 8th, from 7 PM to 9 PM, with the date and time of a similar Washington D.C. reception yet to be determined.

Thursday April 14, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Tacoma youth share personal stories through glass works inspired by Bangladeshi textiles

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, Opening

"Common Threads: A Glass Exploration of Kantha Embroidery" is the title of a new installation by Hilltop Artists students. An opening reception will take place at the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Tacoma’s Wright Park tomorrow evening, April 15th. Kantha embroidery is a textile artform from South Asia that Hilltop Artists students learned about when Cathy Stevulak and Leonard Hill, co-producers of the documentary film Threads, visited the program to discuss their film, which profiles a self-taught artist who trained poor women in Bangladesh to translate their life experiences into Kantha. The Hilltop Artists students were encourage to translate what they learned into allegorical works of glass art.

Tuesday April 5, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Glass designed by masters of Viennese Modernism at Le Stanze del Vetro

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Design, Exhibition, Museums, Opening

On April 18th, a new exhibition entitled "Glass of the Architects. Vienna 1900-1937," organized by Le Stanze del Vetro, will open at this center of glass scholarship and exhibition in Venice, Italy. With the cooperation of the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, Le Stanze has assembled key works in glass designed by seminal architects and designers of a unique era of innovation including Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Leopold Bauer, Otto Prutscher, Oskar Strnad, Oswald Haerdtl, and Adolf Loos. Running through July 31, 2016, the exhibition, which is curated by MAK curator Rainald Franz, includes more than 300 individual works notable for their embodiment of the period's restless search for new form that marked the turn of the 20th century through the escalating conflicts that led to World War II. Even before this movement was labeled "Modernism," there was a widespread feeling that established styles were out of date and something new was needed.

Tuesday March 29, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Annual tea pot exhibition in Pittsburgh set to debut Friday

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Opening

For the tenth year running, Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery will host its annual teapot invitational exhibition, an event celebrating the timeless form as interpreted by contemporary artists working in craft media including glass. Opening this Friday, April 1st, and running through May 28th, the "teapots!" exhibit will feature more than 60 artists working in ceramics, fiber, metal, wood, and glass. For those who follow the show, many glass artists reappear with further meditations on the form.

Thursday March 24, 2016 | by Andrew Page

EXHIBITION: Recent RISD MFA grad has solo exhibition in New York City embassy

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work

Phillippines-born artist Christina "Goldie" Poblador is currently exhibiting a multi-media interactive installation at the Phillippine Center Gallery, her first solo exhibition in New York City. Running through April 15, 2016, the exhibition entitled "Venus Freed" uses interactive blown glass objects, flowers, and found materials to examine the Philippine myth of the ylang ylang, a distinctly shaped and scented flower used in many perfume formulations but rarely identified or sourced from the Phillippines. Earning her MFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 Poblador finds rich metaphoric associations in the complex Colonial history of her native country, and employ the unique scent and shape of this distinctive and mythic flower as an object specific resonance for the exploitation of Phillippine women.

April Surgent, Boathouse, 2014. Fused glass, cameo-carved.

Tuesday March 22, 2016 | by managingeditor@glassquarterly.com

OPENING: To celebrate 10th anniversary of the TMA Glass Pavilion, a survey show

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

To celebrate that 10th year since its Glass Pavilion opened, the Toledo Museum of Art will survey Studio Glass with a new exhibit opening in April. "Hot Spot: Contemporary Glass from Private Collections" will be on view in the exhibition gallery of the Glass Pavilion from April 15th through September 18th, 2016, and will feature work from North American, Asian, Australian, and European artists. Since it opened in 2006, the 74,000-square-foot Glass Pavilion has housed not only glass exhibitions, but artist studios, demonstration areas, and special museum events. The new building across the street from the historic art museum was ground-breaking in its use of glass not only for exterior walls, but for interior walls as well. Designed by the Pritzker-Prize winning architecture firm of SANAA, Ltd., the unique structure was chosen for its light imprint on the park it occupies, as well as an architectural marvel that celebrates a material so connected to the institution founded in 1901 by industrial glass magnate Edward Drummond Libbey, whose Libbey corporation continues to operate in the city of Toledo.

Preston Singletary, Journey Across the Fire, 2016. H 28 in. courtesy: traver gallery

Monday March 21, 2016 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Preston Singletary to debut new work at “Journey across the fire” exhibition

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

Opening April 7th, and running through the end of the month at Traver Gallery in Seattle, a new exhibition by Preston Singletary will unveil new forms that marry traditional Northwest Coast Native American imagery with new glass shapes. Entited "Journey Through the Fire (and in to the World)," the exhibition's work employs Modernist vessel forms as three-dimensional canvases for the artist's ongoing study of Native American iconography — specifically Tlingit Formline art.

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