Viewing: Exhibition

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.

Wednesday November 11, 2015 | by Andrew Page

3 Questions for ... Jean-Simon Trottier

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?Jean-Simon Trottier: For the past two years, I've been working continuously on a collaborative project with my partner Montserrat Duran Muntadas. We have created several sculptural installations that explore the issues of immigration and borders. For this project, we were especially inspired by seeds of various plants as metaphorical symbols of freedom. Because the organic forms of our sculpture were inspired by nature, this especially made our technical research an enriching one, while giving us pieces that surpassed our expectations.

Vesna Jovanovic. "Elisabeth Morrow," 2014, 24"x36," Gouache, Ink, Watercolor, Graphite, and Colored Pencil on Paper

Friday November 6, 2015 | by Sia Lenaburg

EXHIBITION: Medical glass takes center stage at Chicago’s International Museum of Surgical Science

FILED UNDER: Curiosities, Education, Exhibition, Museums

Advances in glass technology have paralleled the development of modern medicine since Anton van Leeuwenhoek's breakthroughs in optical lenses and microscopes in the 17th century began to unravel the mysteries of blood flow, yeasts, and the how small parasites can affect human health. Glass instruments in medical science are directly or indirectly responsible for a substantial number of the improvements the world has seen in health and health care, and glass participates in forwarding expansion of the human lifespan. Just how indispensible the material is to the medical field is brought home in an exhibition currently on view at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, a great detour for those in town for the big SOFA art fair this weekend. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet recently interviewed Collin Pressler, curator at IMSS, to discuss the museum’s take on how glass is both an historical and aesthetic display of beauty and purpose.

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

3 Questions For ... Doreen Garner

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

Anyone who dismisses the material of glass as too beautiful or perfect to communicate signifcant content or emotion hasn't encountered Doreen Garner's raw mixed media work, which cultivates strong reactions ranging from from desire to disgust. Walk into an exhibit of this 2014 graduate of RISD's MFA program and you know this is sophisticated work that plows deep psychological territory, confronting viewers with sometimes-disturbing works that take on the human body, sexuality, race, gore, and objectification. By adding unexpected materials such as latex or petroleum jelly as well as organic substances such as human hair, this Philadelphia native cannily pursues her agenda of peeling away layers of distance, digging down into a primordial strata of experience and consciousness. There's no shortage of concept either, with her recent work confronting the assault on black bodies in the name of medical research. The work's boldness is no surprise to those who saw the artist's 2014 "Observatory" exhibition in which she exhibited herself as a specimen unclothed in a glass box covered in glitter and stuffed condoms. There's nobody in glass taking on these issues in this manner, or with this level of risk-taking. GLASS recently interviewed Garner via email about where her work is going and where it can be seen.

Hot Shop Heroes instructor Conor McClellan guides a student through the beginning steps of the glassblowing process.

Friday October 2, 2015 | by Lindsay von Hagn

EXHIBITION: Museum of Glass unveils work made by soldiers and veterans in therapeutic program

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Education, Exhibition, Museums

Recently opened at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, the exhibition “Healing in Flames” features work produced by the spring and summer 2015 instructors and students of the museum’s "Hot Shop Heroes: Healing with Fire" program, an educational project to offer glassblowing and art-making experiences to soldiers and veterans. The exhibit showcasing this life-changing program will remain on view through March 2016.

Thursday October 1, 2015 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Dante Marioni, Rik Allen at Traver Gallery

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Opening

New work by Dante Marioni and Rik Allen is being unveiled at Traver Gallery in Seattle this evening. Marioni is continuing to push scale and precision in his newest work that features bravura canework patterning rendered at unforvingly large scale. A 39-inch-tall blue leaf, titled Standing Reticello Leaf (2015) is a further exploration of his attempts to push traditional technique to new levels, marrying it to a decidedly contemporary color scheme. The outsized scale takes this work out of the realm of design in a bid to make a monumental statement on technical skill and skills passed down for centuries.

Thursday September 17, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

OPENING: Katherine Gray’s “A Rainbow Like You” is a Feast for the Senses

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

UPDATED 9/19/2015

Thursday September 3, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

OPENING: “Canberra + Berlin” celebrates the Australian-German glass art connection

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Opening

"Canberra + Berlin," a collaborative exhibition between the nonprofit center Berlin Glas e.V. and the Australian National University, will open on September 18th in Berlin. The show features a variety of artists graduating from the Australian art school (ANU-SOA). Founded by Hamburg-born artist Klaus Moje in 1982, the glass program at ANU's School of Art was one of the first that was not limited to glassblowing, emphasizing instead kiln-forming, carving, and cold-working techniques. Moje's significant influence on Australia's glass movement came from his formative effect on the country's first university curriculum for glass as a fine art medium, which he created to stress technique as much as concept. Moje's own work has advanced the international Studio Glass movement through its aesthetic of glass fusing, through which rods, strips or canes are joined in an interplaying pattern which is then melted together. Moje's role in glass education is credited for a generation of artists using glass as a principal material, several of whom will be represented in the upcoming show.

Wednesday August 19, 2015 | by Emily Ma-Luongo

EXHIBITION: Alison Lowry’s “Captive” at S12 gallery in Norway

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, New Work, News

Alison Lowry's "Captive," a series on the brain as construct and constraint, just opened at S12, the artist-run workshop and gallery space in Bergen, Norway. Lowry's work is an ever-developing exploration of memory, and her series follows up on "A place for Everything/Everything in its place," her solo show at the Ebeltoft Museum in January. The artist's previous series will also be on display with her new works, as she continues a conversation about what the past does for us, how it carries us and vice-versa. The focus in her sculptures and installations is the body's varying ways of remembering, including the emotional and physical, the personal and collective.

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.