Thursday June 29, 2017 | by Stella Porter

OPENING: At Tansey Santa Fe, Noel Hart takes flight in colorful new works referencing bird plumage

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, New Work

Noel Hart’s solo exhibition, entitled “The Rewilding,” will open at Tansey Contemporary's Santa Fe location on July 7th. The Australian artist's latest work reveals an evolution toward more transparency, a greater sheen to the glass, as well as more depth to the individual works. Inspired by his close observations of the bird life in the backyard of his home in the Australian rainforest, which is teeming with birds and is a showcase of biodiversity and species interaction.This daily intimacy with biological diversity has led to increasingly vibrant artworks. “He’s going into a more sculptural direction," said Tilly Badham, marketing director for Tansey Contemporary, in a telephone interview with the Glass Quarterly Hot Sheet. The new work also has a glassy transparent finish rather than an etched finish.” Hart, who was showing at Jane Sauer Gallery before it was purchased by Tansey four years ago, sees an increase in scale, and confident approach to color that betrays Hart's training as a painter.

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Monday June 26, 2017 | by Lindsay Hargrave

Traver Gallery turns 40 on July 7th, and there’s much to celebrate

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Events, Exhibition, News

On July 7, 2017, Traver Gallery, an icon in the Seattle glass art community as well as in the Studio Glass Movement, will turn 40, and it plans to celebrate with a party that evening. Founded in 1977, the gallery exhibits paintings, ceramics, and installation art of all kinds, but it has been the medium of glass where the gallery has had a particularly consequential role in developing the careers of artists as prominent as Bertil Vallien and Lino Tagliapietra. The gallery lays claim to helping discover such notable glass artists as Martin Blank, Sonja Blomdahl, Gregory Grenon, Doug Jeck, Dante Marioni, Preston Singletary, Therman Statom, and Jamie Walker. The story of the founding of the gallery by a young interior designer who discovered a need for better sourcing of local artists, is one of seizing an opportunity, and then executing it so well it changes the field. Seattle's role as an epicenter of glass art would not have been as firmly established without Traver's important role as a leading art dealer in the field.

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Wednesday June 21, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

Channeling collective unease, Baptiste Debombourg shatters glass in three European exhibitions

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Exhibition, Seen

For the past decade, French artist, Baptiste Debombourg, has exploited the fragility of glass to explore the “evidence of humanity" out of scenes of apparent wreckage, as GLASS Quarterly contributing editor Victoria Josslin put it in a Fall 2015 (GLASS #140) profile of the artist. And Debombourg’s three recent exhibitions prove just as gasp-inducing as their predecessors. “RAGING DREAMS—over the horizon” by Debombourg opened May 19 at Gallery S12 in Bergen, Norway to celebrate the gallery’s 10th anniversary. According to the S12 event announcement, energy and the power of dreams are guiding motifs in the installation, composed mostly of laminated broken glass. Like the artist’s previous works, “RAGING DREAMS” references the destructive power of natural forces with large, immersive and engulfing installations that creep from the gallery walls to its floors with edges that resemble a breaking wave. 

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Wednesday June 14, 2017 | by Lindsay Hargrave

CONVERSATION: Adriano Berengo talks Glasstress 2017

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Image Gallery

Glasstress 2017, on view through November 26 in the Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, is a collateral event, which means it's a satellite to the international Venice Biennale. A carefully curated survey of contemporary art in glass, Glasstress includes work by artists who have devoted themselves to glass for their entire careers, but the majority of what's on view in the exhibition is by internationally known artists who came to the island of Murano to have their creative ideas fabricated in glass. This, the fifth iteration of Glasstress, was curated by Hermitage Museum contemporary art department director Dimitri Ozerkov,  Austrian artist Herwig Kempinger, and Glasstress founder and the head of Berengo Studio, Adriano Berengo. This Glasstress may be a high-water mark for bringing the biggest names in contemporary art to glass as the exhibition includes work by Sarah Sze, Paul McCarthy, and Ai Weiwei. With artists hailing from Austria to Iraq, the event also includes a site-specific installation in Murano. The "The Unplayed Notes Factory" is an installation in an abandoned glass factory by Loris Gréaud, who is making his Glasstress debut.

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Thursday June 8, 2017 | by Stella Porter

OPENING: Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen continue their collaborative embrace of Buddhist concepts

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

When glass artists Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen come together, artistic accidents are embraced. Instead of tossing aside a mistake, the two consider it important to give value to an accidental creation as part of their effort to create art with a Buddhist sensibility in mind. The artists continue their 5-year-long collaboration in a new exhibit entitled “Permutations: A Collaboration Featuring Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen,” which will have an opening reception at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (PAA) this evening. The two began collaborating in 2012, fusing together two unique styles and a combined experience of more than 50 years working with glass. Although neither artist considers herself a practicing Buddhist, they self-consciously sought to take on on the Buddhist style of thought as a strategy in the creation of their collaborative art, and they consider the work to share the aesthetic approach of Thangka, an elaborately composed Tibetan Buddhist tradition of painting.

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Wednesday June 7, 2017 | by Lindsay Hargrave

SEEN: Doreen Garner deploys glass as abstracted organs in inquiry into abusive medical research

FILED UNDER: Exhibition, Image Gallery, New Work, Seen

Doreen Garner's exhibition "Doctor's Hours," on view in New York City gallery through June 18, 2017, is an assemblage of drawings, video, and sculptural specimens that blend revulsion and attraction to provoke inquiry into atrocities inflicted on African American research subjects in the name of science. Most visceral is the response to the eerily intestinal yet abstract creations made from careful combinations of petroleum jelly-smeared glass, silicone, crystals, human hair, condoms and glitter, perched on shelves at nearly eye-level, spot-lit in the darkened pop-up gallery space on New York City's Lower East Side. Garner, who is often present in the gallery space, plays the role of both artist and surgeon as she invites her audience to become literally one with her art by receiving an actual tattoo, which she will administer either by appointment or for those inspired by their walk-in visit.

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Tuesday June 6, 2017 | by Sarah Thaw

OPENING: Amy Lemaire’s “History of the Present Moment” documents life in the age of Twitter

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, Glass Quarterly, Opening

Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Amy Lemaire explores themes of history as a form of currency in her upcoming exhibit, "History of the Present Moment." The exhibition, which will include glass sculptures seeking to ignite thought and conversation around modern historical documentation, will be on display from June 7 to June 28 in the Window Gallery at UrbanGlass’ Agnes Varis Art Center. (Disclosure: The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet is published by UrbanGlass.)

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Wednesday May 31, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

CONVERSATION: Seeking a certain clarity, Ethan Stern explores the aesthetics of cut crystal

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work, Opening

Seattle-based glass artist Ethan Stern, whose work will be on view at Traver Gallery tomorrow as a part of a new exhibition titled "Cut Clear," is perhaps most well-known for his used of saturated gem-tones in high-contrast, semi-opaque engraved sculptures. This exhibition, however, marks the end of a slow-drifting departure from the chromatic intensity of his previous work. The work in the "Cut Clear" series employs similar forms and textures of Stern’s past work, but without the color that was so aesthetically integral. The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet spoke with Stern by phone to discuss the artist’s evolution and his unlikely recent source of inspiration — stylistically dated and aesthetically overwrought cut-crystal.

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Tuesday May 30, 2017 | by Gabi Gimson

CONVERSATION: Laura Kramer mines her archaeologist past in works unearthed from creative depths

FILED UNDER: Artist Interviews, Exhibition, New Work

On a deep-sea archaeological excavation in the Caribbean, designer and glass artist Laura Kramer discovered that she was perhaps too invested in the aesthetic form of each artifact. In the process of cleaning a find, Kramer labored assiduously over the excavated object almost as if each was an individual work of art rather than an objective relic of past civilizations. Her temptation to influence the aesthetic presentation of these pieces helped her decide not to continue her career as an archeologist.

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Monday May 29, 2017 | by Lindsay Hargrave

OPENING: Second “Emanation” at WheatonArts harnesses synergy between fabrication and concept

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

WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey, is preparing to unveil its second “Emanation” exhibition during its long-running GlassWeekend event, a biennial gathering of collectors and artists to celebrate, discuss, buy and sell glass artwork coming up on June 9, 10 and 11, 2017. WheatonArts is a multi-dimensional nonprofit in Southern New Jersey, with programs ranging from a museum of American glass history to programming celebrating regional folk culture. But “Emanation,” initiated in 2015, is focused on the contemporary moment in art through an ambitious program to break down the barriers between fabricators and contemporary artists, something that other programs such as the high-profile Glasstress program by Berengo Studio in Venice don't directly address. Unlike that program, which brings well-known artists to Venice to have their ideas realized by glass masters, the "Emanation" project is based in the studios of WheatonArts' Creative Glass Center of America, best-known for its long-running fellowship program that allows artists free rein to realize experimental ideas at this unique facility. The New Jersey project is careful to avoid the one-way street of becoming a fabrication station. There are multiple efforts to create synergy between the artists and the facility, including during the installation of the exhibition component. The artists chosen for the second iteration of "Emanation" -- Emily Brown, Vanessa German, Michael Joo, Lorna Simpson, Therman Statom, Matthew Szösz, and the group Flock the Optic -- reveal varying levels of technical expertise working with glass, which creates interactions that cross-pollinate between artists approaching the project with different perspectives. 

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